Psiphon Review 2023

Psiphon VPN is a virtual private network developed by the Canadian company Psiphon Inc. It was created back in 2006 and is completely open source. Psiphon VPN started out as an anti-censorship project in the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

Today, it’s a full-fledged VPN service operating from its headquarters in Ontario, Canada. For years, Psiphon has been a valuable online security tool for bypassing media censorship.

During the 2020 protests in Belarus, Psiphon provided people with access to independent news outlets. In 2021, the free VPN service was also widely used during demonstrations in Myanmar and Cuba.

We tested Psiphon comprehensively, focusing on speed, safety, usability, and its server network, and the results were quite interesting. Here’s our full Psiphon VPN review.

Psiphon VPN: A Short Review

Psiphon is a free VPN service, so it’s not really fast. If you wish to improve connection speeds, you have to option to buy special tokens (PsiCash).

Psiphon limits free users’ speeds to 2 Mbps, making it painfully slow. This rules it out as an option for streaming or gaming. For instance, you won’t be able to stream in HD or 4K without interruptions. If you want fast speeds, you’ll have to pay rather exorbitant amounts to activate a speed boost.

On top of that, Psiphon VPN is not the safest VPN around. Psiphon logs user data and lacks crucial safety features, such as a kill switch and IP leak protection. Its apps are dated and could do with better organization.

When testing for WebRTC leaks, we found out that Psiphon leaked our real IP address, which is a serious red flag. There’s no customer service team either, so you can’t reach out to anyone if you’re facing issues.

Psiphon’s server network is also paltry. There are only 26 server locations, most of which are in Europe. There’s none in South America, Oceania, and Africa. Plus, these servers can’t unblock Netflix and major streaming services.

While the software is available in several languages and the installation process is straightforward, we still can’t call Psiphon VPN a very user-friendly service. It doesn’t support torrenting and you can’t use it for streaming, since it’s incredibly slow.

Whatever your reason may be for using a VPN, we’d recommend a different provider over Psiphon any day. If you need a robust and high-performing VPN service, we recommend NordVPN. Read our NordVPN review to understand why we think it’s the best VPN.

If you’d rather use a free VPN, there are several great free VPNs on the market.

Specifications Psiphon VPN

💵 Price	From $0.73 a month
📱 Operating systems	Windows, Mac, iOS, Android
💻 Connections	Unlimited
💳 Payment methods	PayPal, Credit card, Cryptocurrency
🔒 Protocols	L2TP/IPsec, Shadowsocks
📥 Torrent options
📅 Money-back guarantee
📋 Logs
🎬 Works with

Visit Psiphon VPN

Speed – How Fast is Psiphon VPN?

Psiphon’s free service caps your speeds at 2Mbps. It gets better when you purchase a speed boost with PsiCash, but still falls way short when you compare it with other VPN providers. We give Psiphon a 6 out of 10.

Here’s what we found:

• Speeds barely go above 1 Mbps, regardless of your server location.
• If you’re willing to pay for a speed boost, local servers fare a bit better.
• It takes a long time for webpages to load: watching HD videos is not possible.
• Regular browsing is quite difficult due to inconsistent speeds.
• On Android smartphones, there’s an official limit of 2 Mbps.

Speed test results for Psiphon VPN

We conducted our speed tests from our headquarters in The Netherlands, starting with Psiphon’s free service. Afterward, we boosted our speeds using PsiCash to run more tests.

As we do in all our speed tests, we first checked our speeds without a VPN. This gave us baseline figures to compare speed drop-offs.

Next, we connected to Psiphon VPN’s servers in various countries on different continents to test speeds. Psiphon doesn’t have servers in South America, Africa and Oceania, so we don’t have results for those locations.

Note that your actual speeds might differ depending on your internet connection and location. However, the values below are helpful indicators to see how Psiphon performs.

Where possible, we use the same VPN protocol. For Psiphon, the standard settings provide us with the SSH protocol.

As you can see, Psiphon is very slow. Regardless of our own proximity to a VPN server, each one only managed to reach about 1% of our original connection speed. In general, a VPN tends to slow down your connection. However, a good VPN will outperform Psiphon VPN easily.

Surfshark, for example, maintains up to 96.15% of the original speed on a local server and 95.92% on a distant server. This makes it one of the fastest VPNs on the market right now.

Speed test results with speed boost (PsiCash)

We wanted to check whether investing in PsiCash would make a difference when it comes to Psiphon’s speeds. Here’s how Psiphon PsiCash performs.

Psiphon PsiCash is the paid version of Psiphon, so its speeds must measure up to the best VPN services. In Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, Psiphon maintains at least 80% of its speeds.

However, it loses significant speeds in the US and Canada. In Japan, the ping jumps significantly, and the upload and download speeds are nearly wiped out.

Speeds during daily use

When testing Psiphon for daily use, the results were fairly middling, with noticeable lags while browsing or downloading files, or even watching HD videos on YouTube.

It takes way too long to lead a webpage, even on a local server. When connected to a more distant server, we had to wait more than a minute for a page to load. Moreover, we could often only load one page before the connection would drop completely and we couldn’t go online at all.

We also ran into issues when trying to stream Netflix or watch videos on YouTube, with extensive buffering times. Also, watching videos in HD is virtually impossible due to the slow speeds.

We also tested Psiphon’s VPN in “Transport Mode” to see if we were able to go online safely. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a single page to load in this mode.

Psiphon PsiCash fared a bit better, but if you’re paying for a VPN, it’s recommended that you go with a top-tier option like NordVPN, which costs a mere $2.99 a month and doesn’t limit you to just 2 Mbps.

Safety – How Secure is Psiphon VPN?

Psiphon only scores a 3.5 out of 10 when it comes to security. It only offers one VPN protocol and often suffers IP leaks. These are our main findings:

• You can use the L2TP/IPSec protocol, but Psiphon’s standard settings provide you with SSH encryption.
• Psiphon offers HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 proxy servers.
• The VPN logs certain browser data.
• There is no kill-switch.
• Split tunneling isn’t always consistent.
• You can use Psiphon without having to create an account.
• To purchase PsiCash, you have to submit payment details and an email address.
• WebRTC leaks pose a serious risk, exposing your IP address.

Protocols

Unless you change the Psiphon VPN settings, you won’t be able to run the VPN on regular VPN protocols. The default settings only let you use Secure Shell encryption with an obfuscation layer.

Obfuscation is meant to hide the fact that you’re using a VPN, which makes it easier to bypass government censorship. Indeed, Psiphon was able to let us access RT.com, a Russian state-controlled website that’s blocked in Europe.

Psiphon uses the L2TP/IPSec protocol, if you enable Transport mode. Although this protocol is fast, it doesn’t offer any encryption. From a security standpoint, the VPN is unsafe to use. The best VPN services offer several protocols and also include AES-256 encryption.

L2TP/IPSec is generally a slower protocol that’s often blocked by firewalls. For comparison, the top VPNs now offer faster, more secure protocols like OpenVPN or WireGuard.

The third option is to use a HTTP(S) or SOCKS5 proxy server. Using this option won’t encrypt your data, but you’ll be rerouted via a proxy. Again, this is quite slow, and poses security risks.

For excellent protection and high speeds, you need a VPN that offers faster protocols like WireGuard or OpenVPN. Therefore, we recommend using one of the top 5 best VPNs, instead of Psiphon VPN. Even free versions of VPNs such as PrivadoVPN and Proton VPN use these faster protocols.

Logging and privacy

The Psiphon Inc. headquarters are located in Canada, which is part of the 5, 9, and 14 Eyes alliance of countries that exchange citizen data. This is not ideal when it comes to online privacy.

However, if you use a VPN that doesn’t keep any logs, there will be no information to exchange in the first place. Unfortunately, Psiphon does keep logs. According to its privacy statement, Psiphon collects the following data:

• Chosen protocol connection
• Session duration
• Connection timestamps
• Your ISP
• Aggregated server data
• Total bytes transferred
• Region codes

Psiphon states that it stores this data for a maximum of 90 days. After, the data will be gathered, together with other users’ data, and stored in back-up for “a reasonable time.”

Psiphon reserves the right to share this aggregated data with third parties, since it doesn’t include personally identifiable information. To exemplify, Psiphon suggests that it won’t share aggregated data if there’s only a couple of Psiphon users in a certain country.

Domain-related information is also not shared with other parties. However, Psiphon’s privacy policy states that if required, it may share information with third parties, including sponsors or certain organizations that it collaborates with.

PsiCash privacy

If you go with PsiCash and create an account, you’ll have to provide even more information. You do have the option to buy the tokens without an account. In that case, Psiphon only logs the following details:

• An automatically generated user token
• Your PsiCash reserves
• Time stamps of your most recent activity
• PsiCash purchases

Creating an account does allow you to use PsiCash on multiple devices. If you choose to do so, Psiphon will store your username, password, and email address on its servers. On top of that, Psiphon stores aggregated data, including:

• Users’ countries of residence
• How much PsiCash exists, as well as the flow of tokens
• User names
• Which version of the app people use

Psiphon claims that this data is never shared with third parties, except for when it’s aggregated and pooled. However, users should keep in mind that Amazon will automatically get access to all data, since Psiphon’s servers belong to Amazon.

Kill switch

Psiphon VPN does not have a kill switch. This makes it risky to use the VPN in sensitive situations, since your connection will be exposed in case the VPN fails.

All the top VPNs have a kill switch, automatically terminating your connection in case the VPN fails. . This means you’ll be protected, even when starting your PC or switching between servers. Even free VPNs like Proton VPN offer a permanent kill switch.

Split tunneling

Split tunneling is another common feature that you’d expect from any good VPN. The Psiphon VPN mobile app, also known as “Psiphon 3,” does offer offer split tunneling.

If you’re using the Psiphon Windows client, the feature works differently. The split tunneling option doesn’t differentiate between apps but between domain servers.
Essentially, you can adapt the settings so that your normal HTTPS traffic won’t get rerouted via Psiphon’s proxy servers unless you’re trying to access foreign websites.
This is because Psiphon is specifically designed to circumvent censorship. If a webpage is already available in the country you’re located in, the VPN will recommend you view it without the VPN tunnel to improve speeds.

Additionally, you’ve got the option to visit Chinese websites without using a proxy. This is because the Great Firewall of China specifically blocks proxy servers. Psiphon states that the chances of viewing a Chinese website are higher if you use your own network, rather than the Psiphon servers.

MalAware

In the Android app, Psiphon 3 offers a feature called MalAware. This feature is enabled by default and notifies you whenever Psiphon 3 detects data traffic that could potentially be malware. MalAware is able to detect specific forms of malware, including the Mirai botnet virus and Kraken ransomware.

Keep in mind that detecting the threat is the only thing Psiphon 3 can do. If you want to actually get rid of malware, you’ll need to use good antivirus software.

Does Psiphon VPN leak your data?

A secure VPN reroutes your internet traffic so your own IP address remains hidden. Unfortunately, not every VPN is actually able to hide the new IP address version known as IPv6.

Unfortunately, Psiphon did leak our real IP address. In other words, it shows your original location.

Psiphon also suffers from WebRTC leaks. You’ll notice from the image below that our public IP address is available for all to see.

There were no DNS leaks however, based on our testing.

What information does Psiphon VPN need?

It’s entirely possible to use Psiphon VPN without creating an account. In that case, you won’t need to submit any personal information. However, if you go with PsiCash, it will “strongly encourage” you to create an account.

If you choose to use PsiCash, you’ll need to submit payment details. On the plus side, Psiphon offers you the option to pay anonymously for your VPN by using cryptocurrency. Do keep in mind that this transaction is processed by Coinbase, which means that Psiphon will know your Coinbase account details.

Moreover, if you want to use your PsiCash speed boosts on multiple devices, you will need to create an account. Psiphon only requests your username and password. You have the option to submit an email address, but this is not a necessity.

Usability – How User-Friendly is Psiphon VPN?

Psiphon VPN isn’t the most user-friendly VPN we’ve seen. The VPN client is quite clunky and simple features are hard to access. Therefore, we give this online security tool a 5 out of 10 for usability. This is based on the following conclusions:

• The installation process is straightforward.
• The Psiphon website and software are available in other (automated) languages.
• Every time you connect, the software opens your browser automatically.
• There’s no customer service available; only a FAQ section.

Psiphon VPN’s website and installation process

Psiphon VPN’s website is clutter-free and easy to navigate. Its main downside is that there are no menu options at the top of the homepage, meaning you’ll have to scroll down to find the button you want. Certain elements, such as “User Guide” and “Psiphon Guide” also redirect to the same page.

The website is available in many different languages. However, the translation is automated, which leads to inaccuracies and mistakes. Psiphon VPN has apps for Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows. However, there’s no client for Linux. Read our best VPN for Linux guide for VPNs that support the operating system.

Installing the VPN is fairly simple. On Windows, you can take the following steps:

1. Visit the official Psiphon website.
2. Click “Get Psiphon” in the top right corner of the screen.
3. 
4. Scroll down to “Direct Downloads” and click “Psiphon for Windows.”
5. 
6. Open the file and run the installation wizard.
7. You should be able to go online immediately.

If you choose to install Psiphon VPN on a different device, you can find the Psiphon 3 download in the Apple App Store (iOS and macOS) and Google Play Store (Android).

Here’s how you can purchase PsiCash once you’ve downloaded the app:

1. Open the VPN app.
2. Connect to a Psiphon VPN server.
3. 
4. Click on “Buy PsiCash.” You can find this in the bottom corner of the app.
5. 
6. This will open a browser tab that allows you to purchase the amount of PsiCash tokens you want (using Coinbase).

Psiphon VPN’s appearance and ease-of-use

The client interface is different depending on your operating system. On Windows, the app looks quite old, though it’s easy to find the connection button and the settings tab. You can also change the language.

The settings won’t let you make major changes. You can enable L2TP/IPSec, though this disables all other Psiphon features, including selecting a proxy server location.

Rather annoyingly, when you connect to a server, Psiphon will automatically open your browser and display an ad.

Under the default tab is the option to buy PsiCash to improve speeds.

Next is the settings button, where you can tweak several options, including choosing which apps go through the VPN tunnel (split tunneling) and selecting your default server region and ports.

After Settings is the feedback section. It also contains links to the FAQ section and an email to reach the developers.

The next section is the About page, where you can find links to Psiphon’s end-user licensing agreement and privacy policy. There’s also an interesting logs section, which keeps track of all the actions you’ve performed while using the app.

The final button is titled “Language,” and that’s where you can choose from over 40 languages. The Psiphon 3 app for smartphones looks quite different, however, as you can see below.

In 2017, they also released a Psiphon browser for mobile devices. Like the iOS app and Android app, the Psiphon browser is freely available for download in the App Store and Google Play Store.

Pricing and payment methods

Generally speaking, Psiphon VPN is a free service. However, if you want a fast connection, you’ll have to buy speed boosts with PsiCash. The mobile Psiphon 3 app calls this “upgrading your account.”

When you download the Psiphon app, you receive 90 free PsiCash tokens. However, to use speed boost for an hour, you need 100 PsiCash. Here’s how much PsiCash you’ll need to use the VPN for different time periods:

• One hour for 100 PsiCash
• One day for 800 PsiCash
• One week for 4,000 PsiCash
• One month for 13,000 PsiCash

Note: you can’t use your speed boosts for Transport Mode.

You can only purchase PsiCash in the following (approximate) amounts:

• 1,000 PsiCash for $0.73
• 5,000 PsiCash for $3.66
• 10,000 PsiCash for $7.32
• 30,000 PsiCash for $21.97
• 100,000 PsiCash for $73.25

Say you want to use Psiphon’s speed boosts for about a month, you’ll have to buy 10,000 PsiCash for $7.31, plus three times $0.73. This totals to $9.50 (USD).

Unfortunately, this is the price without tax. Add in the tax you’ll need to pay in some countries (approximately 30%) and you end up with a total of $12.35 for one month.

If you purchase the PsiCash via the Psiphon 3 app, you can exchange your tokens for a specific number of hours of speed boost right away. For example, you can upgrade your speed for the duration of 10 hours and 1,000 PsiCash tokens.

Overall, if you want a well-functioning VPN, Psiphon is a pretty expensive service for what it offers. For comparison, our top 5 VPN services cost between $2.00 and $7.00 per month.

On the Android app, Psiphon’s pricing is a little different. It has a subscription-based plan and a time-bound plan. Here’s a breakdown of the plans.

Subscription:

• Basic: $2 per month
• Unlimited: $6 per month

Each of these plans has a seven-day free trial. If you don’t like the VPN, be sure to cancel your subscription before the trial period ends.

Time Pass:

• Seven-day pass: $1.50
• 30-day pass: $6
• 360-day pass: $42

In terms of payment options, you can pay with credit card, PayPal, and cryptocurrency (Coinbase).

Customer service

On Psiphon’s website, you can find an installation guide. The information in this guide is a bit dated and doesn’t always flow very well. Besides this guide, there’s a FAQ section with over 40 questions.

Many of the answers aren’t quite helpful either. For instance, to the question: “I can connect to Psiphon for Windows in the VPN mode, but why is it so slow? Sometimes web pages don’t load at all,” the VPN company simply suggests disabling VPN mode, which defeats the entire purpose.

If you’ve got a question that’s not answered on the website, you’re out of luck. There’s no real customer support available. You can send feedback via the Psiphon app, in the hope that you might receive a response. The automatically generated response, however, states that Psiphon receive many messages each day and won’t get back to each and every one.

You can also send an email to info@psiphon.ca, which leads to an automatic reply that informs you where to download Psiphon and to submit any feedback via the app. Till the time of writing, we didn’t receive any response.

Finally, you might try the Psiphon Chatbox on Facebook. Since Facebook has a lot of privacy issues, though, we don’t recommend this option. Moreover, linking Psiphon to your Facebook account, gives the VPN service access to your profile information, including your contacts and location.

There’s no live chat feature or phone support, which are essential if you need real-time support. Plus, the guides do not come with tutorial videos, which would make them a lot easier to follow.

Server Network – Can Psiphon VPN Unblock the Internet?

A VPN with a large server network is useful if you’re looking to get around geographical restrictions online. Special servers, such as P2P servers, also offer extra advantages.

Unfortunately, Psiphon neither has many servers at its disposal, nor any specialized ones. We can only give it a 5 out of 10 for server network. Here’s why:

• There are Psiphon VPN servers in only 26 countries.
• Psiphon doesn’t offer dedicated IP addresses.
• There is no support for streaming.
• Torrenting is not allowed with Psiphon.
• The VPN is able to circumvent government censorship.

Number of servers and locations

Psiphon VPN is curiously silent on the number of servers it has. You’ll have to dig into its apps to discover the number of servers on offer.

In the Windows app, the VPN has 26 server locations, but there’s no mention of the number of servers in each location. What’s clear, though, is that the bulk of Psiphon VPN’s servers is in Europe.

Unfortunately, Psiphon doesn’t have servers in South America, Africa, and Oceania. For comparison, Surfshark has over 3,200 servers in 65 countries. NordVPN also has a much larger server network, with over 5,000 servers in almost 60 countries.

You can only select your server location when using the standard settings. As soon as you select a specific VPN mode (Transport Mode), you’re no longer able to choose your server.

Each time, we were automatically connected to a VPN server in Singapore. The lack of control is very inconvenient and unusual for a VPN provider.

Psiphon VPN and streaming (Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, BBC iPlayer)

Since Psiphon leaked our real IP address, we didn’t think the VPN service would be able to unblock streaming sites. Regrettably, we were right.

Psiphon was not able to give us access to the British or American Netflix library. Disney Plus did not work with Psiphon, and neither did Amazon Prime Video. Finally, we tried HBO Max, which was also unavailable.

Surprisingly, we were able to unblock BBC iPlayer. It’s also good to note that, besides unblocking streaming sites, Psiphon still does what it’s meant to do: getting around state censorship.

Torrenting website The Pirate Bay was available, as well as the Russian state media site RT.com. For these purposes, it’s still a somewhat valuable censorship circumvention tool.

Psiphon VPN and torrents

The Psiphon website states that torrenting is not allowed. When testing the VPN, we expected that torrent traffic would be blocked. However, we were still able to download torrents, though the process was so slow that we don’t recommend this VPN service for this purpose.

As soon as we enabled Transport mode, we lost our connection. Indeed, P2P traffic seems to be blocked by the VPN. If you wish to torrent safely, we recommend using a special torrenting VPN.

Dedicated IP address

Psiphon VPN does not offer dedicated IP addresses. A dedicated IP provides you with a personal, static IP address that’s only for you to use. This is useful if you want to access foreign streaming content. However, since you’re the only person using that IP address, a dedicated IP is less anonymous than a shared server.

If you want a dedicated IP address, your best choice is NordVPN. This provider sells dedicated IP addresses for less than $3.00 a month.

Our Experience With Psiphon VPN

Psiphon is a free VPN that’s mainly useful for bypassing censorship. Apart from that, it’s not really a suitable choice. You’ll have to pay a lot more if you want passable speeds, since you can barely browse the web with the free version.
There’s no customer support team to assist you and the server network is limited. Another serious disadvantage is the lack of safety and online privacy. Psiphon VPN does not encrypt your connection properly and even logs user data.

Would you like to use a VPN that keeps you safe online and unblocks worldwide content for you? In that case, we recommend choosing a different provider. At the moment, your two best options are Surfshark and NordVPN.

If you’re confused between the two, we have compared both VPN providers to help you decide which VPN is best for you. Of course, you can also try both VPN services for yourself, since both of them have a 30 day money back guarantee.