Surfshark VPN review – is it good on mobile in 2025?

Keeping your online activity private has become increasingly challenging over the years, as the internet slowly invades all aspects of our lives. The growth of VPNs – services that encrypt your data and hide your real IP address – is evidence of this.

Choosing a VPN isn’t easy, but you can generally rely on the premium VPN providers to offer a smartphone app for Android and iPhone. Keeping your activity encrypted while out and about is a good idea, especially if you’re likely to connect to free (or even paid) public Wi-Fi in coffee shops, transport terminals, or shopping malls. (VPNs have various other uses, from finding lower online shopping prices to joining an online game from an overseas server. Just make sure you don’t breach the game rules when doing so…)

In the pantheon of premium VPNs, a well-regarded option is Surfshark VPN. Launched in Lithuania in 2018, Surfshark has recently merged with Nord Security, the company behind NordVPN, although the companies operate independently. I’ve often considered Surfshark to be an afterthought, a popular third choice that rarely topped lists of the best mobile VPN apps.

Is it time for a rethink? Could Surfshark actually offer more than the competition? To find out, I installed it on my Samsung Z Fold 4.

Specs

Surfshark VPN specs:

Privacy features

Whether you’re looking for a way to watch your favorite streaming service on your phone or need to use a VPN to protect your IP during online gaming, you need a VPN with decent privacy features.

Most importantly, Surfshark offers the standard AES-256 encryption. This is used on both OpenVPN and IKEv2 protocols, with ChaCha20 encryption (offering a similar degree of security) being used with the WireGuard protocol. In most cases, you won’t need to switch protocol – how the VPN establishes a connection and manages the data between the VPN server and your device – but it’s useful to have the option.

A VPN is, of course, the safest and most reliable way to hide your IP address, and Surfshark handles this as a baseline feature.

If you’re looking for a more advanced set of VPN features, these are also on offer. While Surfshark is competitively priced, these additional tools are bolt-ons, so you pay extra. A unique, dedicated IP address is available, with the immediate result of reducing the frequency of CAPTCHAs and avoiding the fallout from “bad” activity of other VPN users. Rather than suffering from the VPN’s IP being blocked and changing servers, you’ve got your own IP address.

Surfshark also offers an “alternative personas” feature. While the main aspect of this – a digital persona for capturing spam, complete with fake email and physical address – is free, an alt phone number is also available as a premium bolt-on.

Using Surfshark VPN on your smartphone

The number one reason mobile apps succeed is down to how easy they are to use. In most cases, you don’t want to spend ages thumbing through a VPN client. Rather, you want to make a connection and then get on with your day.

With Surfshark, you get a good-sized quick-connect button, which reconnects to your last-used VPN server. You can also choose the fastest connection and nearest country options. Once connected, you see information about the connection and the protocol in use, along with a Kill Switch toggle (useful for maintaining privacy if you are disconnected).

Choosing servers is simply a case of browsing the list of locations. You can also choose from the Static IP tab or the MultiHop tab (which I’ll explain in more detail later). Meanwhile, all of the other features are nicely tucked away in the Settings menu. This is where you’ll find things like protocol toggles.

In spring 2025, Surfshark launched a free trial, so I was keen to try this out. You can sign up in your browser or download the mobile app from Google Play or the App Store and sign up that way. The trial is full-featured and works for new and old customers. I’ve used and tested Surfshark before, so I expected to be ineligible for its 7-day free trial. This is not the case. Although I had to submit payment details, no payment was taken, and I was able to easily cancel (even if I didn’t want to).

Other Surfshark VPN features

Surfshark has a collection of privacy features that are similar to those that you might find with other premium VPN services. However, its double VPN, split tunneling, and network restriction avoidance systems have been given quite interesting names.

So, instead of double VPN (routing traffic through two servers), it’s “Dynamic MultiHop.” Instead of obfuscated servers, Surfshark offers “Camouflage Mode.” The SurfShark ad-blocking tool is called “CleanWeb,” and its split tunneling system is known as “Bypasser.”
Its kill switch is still a kill switch, though.

I really like these names. They seem to have been coined to make sense to normal people, rather than those of us who have used a VPN for years. Take Camouflage Mode, which sounds like “Incognito Mode.” I’ve long encouraged the mainstreaming of VPNs, and perhaps this terminology can help Surfshark crack that barrier.

Performance

What you really want to know, of course, is how this VPN handles streaming and gaming.

With streaming, I’ve tested it with Disney+, Netflix, and Prime Video, accessing US libraries from the UK. Everything worked fine, with no noticeable delays or disconnections.

Using Surfshark to access online games is equally slick. Naturally, I tried Fortnite (using a local VPN server), and the lag was negligible compared with the non-VPN connection. Speedtest.net did not rate the connection good enough for gaming, however, so keep that in mind.

I’ve tested Surfshark using its UK, US (New York), and South Korean VPN servers over a standard domestic Wi-Fi connection.

• Baseline (UK Vodafone): 47.6Mbps/39.4Mbps
• UK: 33.0Mbps/30.3Mbps
• US: 26.8Mbps/37.7Mbps
• South Korea: 43.6Mbps/37.8Mbps

These speeds seem comparable to other VPNs I’ve tested and come with the added benefit of streaming support. If you’re clued up about the VPN industry, you might think that this is purely due to its merger with Nord Security. However, I think there is more to it than this.

Final verdict

For the price, Surfshark is as attractive as its slightly more well-known competitors. But its useful mobile app and the smart removal of “jargonista” in favor of clear, descriptive names for its main features elevate it. Throw in the basics of encrypted connections, enhanced online privacy, and support for streaming services – not to mention online games – and it becomes clear that Surfshark isn’t just a regular runner-up in those lists of the best VPNs.

Surfshark is a solid VPN service, an ideal entryway to VPNs for newcomers, and the mobile app has quickly become my favorite VPN client.

Read our Roblox VPN guide if you want any insight on using it with a particular game. You can also read our NordVPN review if you would like to gain a deeper insight into another popular VPN service.