FastestVPN review: A VPN with a low-price lifetime subscription

Best Prices Today: FastestVPN

FastestVPN’s name says it all: It aims to be the fastest VPN service around. It’s no easy feat to lead with a superlative like that and back it up. It strives to be a top VPN and at least on the surface, FastestVPN makes a persuasive case for itself. 

The company is based in the Cayman Islands, which bodes well for privacy and security. Their service also offers a solid premium feature set with 10 simultaneous connections, P2P and streaming optimized servers, plus a no-logs policy backed up by an independent audit.

FastestVPN in brief:

P2P allowed: Yes

Simultaneous device connections: 10

Business location: Cayman Islands

Number of servers: 800+

Number of country locations: 49+

Cost: $5 per month, $19.95 per year, or $40 for a lifetime plan

Further reading: See our roundup of the best VPN services to learn about competing products.

What are FastestVPN’s features and services?

From the time of my last review, FastestVPN has once again upgraded the design of its interface to make it simpler and easier to use across devices. Upon first opening the application in Windows, you’ll find a list of countries you can connect to separated by category into Countries, Streaming, D-VPN, and P2P. Off to the right you’ll find a large button to connect to your chosen server along with basic info about the connection (IP address and server location). On the left sidebar there are four buttons for the home screen, settings, support, and account info.

The settings screen is similar to what we saw in the last version of the app. Here you have the ability to adjust your VPN protocol, turn on the kill switch, and configure split tunneling, as well as options to Launch at start, Reconnect if connection drops, and Auto connect after launch — all standard fare for most modern VPN applications.

In regards to its server network, FastestVPN claims to have 800+ servers across 49+ country locations, which is a big increase from my last review, but still on the small side compared to services such as Private Internet Access and CyberGhost VPN. 

Additionally it offers split-tunneling and D-VPN (Double VPN, also known as multi-hop) features with its Windows app. The addition of multi-hop connections is a nice touch as not all competitors offer the feature and it’s a great way to further increase your privacy by bouncing your connection through more than one VPN server to provide double encryption.

FastestVPN has done a great job including app support for a ton of devices. These range from the standards such as Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android to others such as Linux, Roku, and Amazon Firestick, among others. It even has browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox.

Also since my last review, the company has added server latency numbers next to each server, allowing you to conveniently pick the lowest latency server for the fastest connection. This is in fact something that not only myself, but others had recommended to FastestVPN and its implementation shows that the company genuinely listens to customer feedback.

FastestVPN also provides a few bonus features such as helpful 24/7 chat and email support, a free password manager, and up to 2TB of cloud storage.

The addition of multi-hop connections is a nice touch and a great way to increase privacy.

How much does FastestVPN cost?

FastestVPN offers three subscription plans, all of which are extremely affordable. The monthly subscription plan costs $5 per month, about the same as privacy top-pick Mullvad VPN, but much cheaper than other top premium VPNs such as NordVPN and ExpressVPN.

There is also a one-year plan which will set you back a total of $19.95 annually, which won’t change year-to-year like other services. FastestVPN also offers a pretty incredible lifetime subscription plan for a mere $40, as well. It might be one of the few, if not the only, VPN that offers a lifetime subscription plan for that cheap.

While there is no free trial, all subscription plans do come with a 31-day money back guarantee and can be purchased using either a credit card, PayPal, or AliPay.

How is FastestVPN’s performance?

During my testing I rated connection speeds across FastestVPN’s servers in six different countries around the world and then compared them to my baseline internet speed. This time around I did notice a very slight improvement from my last review. FastestVPN servers averaged up to 50 percent of the base download speed and 68 percent of the base upload speed.

The results don’t quite put FastestVPN into the running for fastest VPN — despite its name. Still, they’re solid numbers and the company’s much-touted upgrade to 10Gbps+ speed servers is obviously making a difference for its users.

FastestVPN does an alright, if unspectacular job at getting around region locks and geo-restricted content. Using their normal servers was rather hit-or-miss when trying to access sites such as Netflix and Disney+. Some servers were able to bypass the region locks while many others were actively blocked and the streaming sites wouldn’t load properly. That being said, FastestVPN has around 19 streaming specific servers, which all worked just fine in our tests. The only catch here is that if you want to access content from countries other than these streaming server locations, you may be out of luck.

How is FastestVPN’s security and privacy?

FastestVPN provides a good number of protocol options including WireGuard, IKEv2, TCP, UDP, and Auto. The recent addition of the WireGuard protocol is more than welcomed as it’s one of the fastest and most secure protocols currently available.

FastestVPN’s official business location is the Cayman Islands. This was on purpose in order to avoid any laws requiring them to keep browsing records on its customers. The Cayman Islands is also not a member of the Five, Nine, or Fourteen Eyes alliances and therefore not subject to any data sharing requirements with other countries.

The company’s privacy policy states that it does not log any information about its customers. The only thing the company keeps, it says, is the email address you use to sign up for the service. In mid-2023 FastestVPN completed an independent audit by AltisIT to successfully verify their no-logs policy. Independent audits are always a huge plus for a VPN company and I’m glad that FastestVPN took the steps to prove to its customers that their privacy is being taken seriously.

The service uses the industry standard AES 256-bit encryption and comes with IPv6 and DNS leak protection. DNS leak tests proved that there were no IP or DNS leaks while using the VPN. This is important as IP and DNS data leaks can allow for outside parties to know your true location and watch your activity while online.

Is FastestVPN worth it?

FastestVPN continues to improve upon its service each time I do a new review, but there are some areas that still need improvement. It’s obvious that it doesn’t have the same resources as some of the largest VPN services, but nonetheless it is still able to make the core VPN features work and it is slowly filling out its feature set with tools such as split tunneling and the introduction of the WireGuard protocol.

Despite what the name states, FastestVPN isn’t truly the fastest, nor does it have the largest server network. But that’s not their main draw anyways. The company seems to know where it stands in the marketplace and it’s leaning heavily on privacy and cost — an arena in which it can compete with the industry titans.

It offers enough speed and security for most everyday uses, and its extras such as free cloud storage and a password manager are nice-to-haves. Ultimately, it’s the price that will appeal to most people and for only $40 for a lifetime plan, it’s certainly worth considering for those on a budget.

Editor’s note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article.