Hide.me Review

Malaysia-based VPN supporting WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2, SSTP and SoftEther. Suits technical users who value protocol choice over reliable streaming.

eVenture Ltd has run Hide.me from Malaysia since 2012. That places it outside the 5/9/14-Eyes intelligence-sharing alliances and beyond the European Union's data-retention directives. The no-logs claim rests on that jurisdiction.

The company has also published a transparency report every year since launch. The 2023 report disclosed 42,487 DMCA complaints and 14 law-enforcement requests, with no user data handed over. Securitum, a Polish security firm, checked the policy independently in June 2024.

The auditors confirmed that the no-logs policy was applied in practice and that the servers run from RAM only, so a reboot clears their state. That audit closed a long gap. Defense Code ran the previous review in 2015, so for nine years no outside party verified the no-logs claim.

In late 2025 the VPN Trust Initiative re-accredited the service with its VPN Trust Seal, valid through 2026. The seal is a second signal about governance, though it does not involve a deep technical review. The protocol list is unusually long.

Reviewers from ProPrivacy and TheBestVPN confirm that WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2, SSTP and SoftEther are all available. OpenVPN uses AES-256 and WireGuard uses ChaCha20. There is a kill switch on Windows, macOS and Android.

SoftEther still allows weaker ciphers such as RC4. The iOS app still lacks a built-in kill switch, which matters for anyone routing mobile traffic over untrusted networks. Hide.me offers more features for technical users than most VPNs.

Paid plans include split tunneling, Stealth Guard's per-app VPN-only firewall, Bolt acceleration, port forwarding, multi-hop routing and the SmartGuard ad and tracker blocker. The free plan is throttled to 1 Mbps and limited to one device and eight locations. It excludes streaming, multi-hop, SmartGuard and port forwarding.

We treat it as a way to try the service before buying. It does not work as a long-term option. Streaming is the consistent weak point.

Regular servers do not unblock Netflix or Disney+. Only the paid plan's dedicated streaming servers work with reasonable reliability. A single month costs 11.99 dollars, which is steep.

The 26-month plan brings the price down to around 2.69 dollars a month. Reviews put the server count between 1,900 and 2,600 across roughly 49 to 91 locations. Reviewers also note sparse coverage in Africa and South America.

We think Hide.me suits users who value protocol flexibility and Malaysian jurisdiction more than streaming reliability or a deep audit history.