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Hotspot Shield Free is the free tier of the VPN service founded in 2008 and owned by Point Wild, a US-based cybersecurity company that owns several other VPNs, including Betternet, UltraAV, VPN360, OVPN, and Total Security. It has applications on several platforms and servers in three countries, as well as split tunneling and support for multiple protocols.
Hotspot Shield offers both a free and a paid version, and we tested both. See more in the Differences Between Variants section.
Our Verdict
Hotspot Shield Free is great for torrenting. It allows you to download P2P files and doesn't have a data limit. Its security is acceptable, as it keeps your IP address and DNS queries within its tunnel while you use it. Also, since you don't have to sign up for an account to use the service, there's less personally identifiable information that can potentially be compromised. However, its kill switch doesn't work properly, as it allows some unencrypted traffic to leak past the VPN in the event of a software crash or system reboot.
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Doesn't leak your IP address or DNS queries.
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Proper TLS implementation protects you from man-in-the-middle attacks.
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No account required.
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Kill switch leaks unencrypted traffic after system reboot or software crash.
Hotspot Shield Free has acceptable security. It doesn't leak your IP address or DNS queries while you're connected to it, and it has proper TLS implementation, protecting you from man-in-the-middle attacks. Unfortunately, its kill switch doesn't work as intended, as it leaks some unencrypted traffic upon restarting your system or after a software crash. This is a concern if you need all your traffic to be encrypted after a crash.
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Doesn't leak your IP address or DNS queries.
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Proper TLS implementation protects you from man-in-the-middle attacks.
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Kill switch leaks unencrypted traffic after system reboot or software crash.
Hotspot Shield Free delivers decent speeds overall that are suitable for general use. That said, its download and upload speeds are limited to around 100Mbps, so you can't take advantage of a faster internet connection if you have one.
Check Price
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
Hotspot Shield has a paid tier and a free tier, which we tested in this review. We also tested Hotspot Shield separately.
| Plan | Advertised Maximum Devices | Platforms | Protocol Support | Country Selection | Advertised Speed Throttling | Ads |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 1* | Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Chrome | Hydra, Wireguard, IPSec (macOS only) | 3 | Yes** | Mobile |
| Premium | 10 | Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Chrome, Linux, Smart TV, Routers | Hydra, Wireguard, IPSec, OpenVPN (manual configuration only) | 85 | No | No |
*While the free version advertises a limit of one device at a time, we were able to connect 11 devices simultaneously.
**Hotspot Shield advertises that the free version throttles speeds, but we didn't measure any significant throttling. Compare speed results between the two.
Compared To Other VPNs
Hotspot Shield Free is a standout free option because it doesn't require you to make an account, has no download limits, allows torrenting, and doesn't suffer from throttled speeds. That said, it serves ads on its mobile platforms, and like nearly all VPNs we've tested, it fails the kill switch test, which could be an issue if you need to keep your traffic encrypted after a system or software crash.
Regarding privacy, the community generally doesn't look favorably on Hotspot Shield Free. They have a confusing and convoluted ownership record, and their parent company, Point Wild, owns several other VPN companies. If that concerns you, check out other VPNs we've tested, like Proton VPN, but we can't verify privacy claims. Check out our article about VPN privacy for more details.
To see which services we recommend, check out our article on the best VPNs.
Test Results
You don't have to create an account to download or use this VPN.
The kill switch doesn't work properly, as network traffic leaks outside the VPN tunnel after a reboot and after a software crash. This is problematic if you're concerned with keeping your traffic encrypted when reconnecting to the internet after a reboot or crash.
Like most VPN services, this VPN doesn't implement BGP properly.
Hotspot Shield Free's download speeds are limited to ~100Mbps, so they're suitable for browsing and streaming video, but you may have to wait longer for downloads if you have a much faster internet connection.
This VPN's upload speeds are limited to ~100Mbps, which is suitable for regular internet use, like video calls and uploading files relatively quickly. That said, you can't take advantage of a faster internet connection if you have one.
This VPN has decent latency that's suitable for normal internet usage. However, its latency occasionally spikes, so you might experience some inconsistency.
This VPN's proprietary protocol, Hydra, is closed source, and Hotspot Shield doesn't publish many details about it other than that it's based on OpenVPN.
Despite advertising a limit of one connection at a time, we connected 11 devices simultaneously.
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