TorGuard VPN review

TorGuard is a popular name in the cybersecurity business, offering various security related services for both consumers and businesses. In this review, we’re only focusing on their VPN which has some impressive stats on the paper. The service has a fairly large network with more than 3,000 servers in 50 countries, with blazing speeds and plenty of configuration options.

However, there are some flaws. Compared to the best VPN services today, TorGuard VPN is can be complicated to use, especially for newbies and less knowledgeable users. In addition to that, the service has poor geo-unblocking capabilities, which is an important part for a good deal of users. In any case, read on to see our full review, where we go into details about both pros and cons of this VPN that should help you determine if TorGuard VPN is a good fit for you. 

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TorGuard 1-minute review

TorGuard has three plans: Standard, Pro, and Premium. Pro and Premium have some extras but the main difference between them is the number of devices they support. As we’ve seen with most other VPNs, monthly billing for the Standard plan is a bit pricey at $9.99. If you want a cheaper option you’ll have to commit to annual billing, which is much cheaper at $59.99 a year. Translated to a monthly billing that's $4.99 a month.

While the privacy policy states there is no logging, we’re left to trust the company on its word. As such, we’d like to see this proven by an audit. That said, the apps themselves have plenty of privacy-related features, like WebRTC or IPv6 leak blocking, and the ‘standard’ features like the kill switch.

However, to get the most out of it, you'll have to do some tweaking, so it's not perfect for beginners.

Performance when using OpenVPN is very good, with speeds of 315-330Mbps. However, with WireGuard the performance skyrockets, reaching a mind-blowing speed of 950Mbps, making TorGuard the fastest VPN service we've tested.

The service was disappointing in terms of streaming, as it failed to unblock any of the major streaming services. Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime, and Disney+, all managed to prove too much for it. TorGuard is great for torrenting though, with full support and, as expected, some in-depth features to improve the experience.

The apps are complex. There's a lot of information that experts will appreciate, but for newbies it may well be unintuitive and difficult to learn. The mobile apps are much the same. 

Customer support is acceptable, but the ticket system didn't hugely impress, and the forums and knowledge base are sparse and of limited use.

However, for the right user, TorGuard is an appealingly in-depth and powerful VPN – if you can live without using streaming services while connected to your VPN, it could be a good choice.

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TorGuard on paper

Number of servers: 3,000+
Number of countries: 50
Platforms supported: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, routers
Simultaneous connections: 8-30
Split tunneling: With some coding, yes
Kill switch: Yes
Supported protocols: OpenVPN, WireGuard
Country of registration: USA (apparently)
Support: Articles, live chat, email

TorGuard price: how much is it and is there a TorGuard free trial?

Pricing for TorGuard starts at $9.99 per month for the Standard plan. There are also Pro and Premium plans with prices starting at $12.99 per month and $14.99 per month. These two plans support more simultaneous connections (12 and 30), with the addition of some extras, like a dedicated IP. 

For more affordable pricing, you’ll have to check the annual billing. The price for Standard plan is $59.99 per year, which works out at $4.99 per month. The Pro plan is currently priced at $59.50 per year, down from the usual $119 per year, due to a sale – although this may change. Finally, the Premium plan is priced at $129.99 per year.

TorGuard also has something of a free trial, but it doesn’t work like other trials that you may be familiar with. You get seven days of free access when you provide a recent VPN bill, and another 30 days when you prove that you canceled that service.

Customers who don’t already subscribe to another VPN won’t get a free trial from TorGuard, although there is a seven-day money-back guarantee, with no questions asked. That’s not exactly generous though, seeing as our #1-rated service ExpressVPN offers 30 days to claim your cash back, and Hotspot Shield offers a massive 45.

TorGuard also offers add-ons, the most notable one being the dedicated streaming and residential IP which could come in handy for users that have streaming and unblocking websites as a priority. It is pricey though, at $7.99 a month. All things considered, TorGuard isn’t the cheapest service around, so if you’re looking for a more budget-friendly option, make sure to check out our guide to cheap VPN services. 

• More: Need something for your employees? See today's best business VPN

How private is TorGuard and does it keep logs?

As expected, TorGuard has a no-logs policy but for now, there’s no way to know for sure, as there have been situations with some other VPNs where a “no-log” VPN provided logs to law enforcement agencies. That’s why we’d like to see TorGuard submit itself to an independent audit in the future as that would clear any doubts. 

To be fair, TorGuard excels in other areas of privacy. Users can manually control their authentication method, port, and encryption algorithm, and the platform automatically blocks both IPv6 and WebRTC leaks. Furthermore, there’s a built-in kill switch that immediately ends your connection if the VPN cuts out.

On the other hand, this level of depth could also be overwhelming for users who are less familiar with the technical side of a VPN. The default configurations won’t add much value on their own, so you should consider using a simpler VPN if you don’t think that you would tweak any settings.

How fast is TorGuard?

TorGuard’s download speeds were through the roof with WireGuard, and using the OpenVPN protocol it still performed admirably. In the UK, with OpenVPN, the speed averaged between 315-330Mbps, which is above average when compared to other services.

As already mentioned, with WireGuard TorGuard showed amazing performance, with speeds reaching an astonishing 950Mbps, making TorGuard the fastest service at the moment, with only Hide.me and IPVanish coming relatively close with 900Mbps and 890Mbps respectively. 

How good is TorGuard for streaming and torrenting?

Unfortunately, TorGuard’s “experience content without any restrictions” claim didn’t hold up when we tested the service’s unblocking capabilities. We failed to access any of the major streaming services - Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+.

If watching geo-blocked content is your priority then it might be better to look elsewhere, as VPNs like ExpressVPN, NordVPN, and Surfshark all give you the ability to watch all four of the mentioned streaming services. There is an option to buy a dedicated residential IP that’s unlikely to be flagged, but it’s pricey at $7.99 per month, and you might be better off picking the best streaming VPN.

That being said, TorGuard is a great torrenting VPN. You can use torrents through the TorGuard client or via a SOCKS5 proxy, and TorGuard is compatible with several torrenting applications, including qBittorrent, Vuze, and uTorrent. Torrents are supported across the entire set of servers. However, as of a few months ago, the company said that they are blocking BitTorrent traffic on US servers. 

How good are TorGuard's desktop apps?

TorGuard’s Windows app has a huge amount of tools and settings to tweak, which does make it unfriendly and a bit too complicated for newbies and less experienced. After you connect, you’ll see remote and local IPs, your protocol and cypher, and many other data points. While this can be interesting and helpful to some users, for most, it’s redundant to have that kind of information on the interface. 

There are also notable idiosyncrasies that could confuse users even further. For example, Windows Defender Firewall blocked certain TorGuard features during our testing and had to be overridden manually. All things considered, it’s significantly less accessible than most other Windows VPN services.

The advantage of this depth is that experienced users can change more settings than they would be able to with almost any other VPN. Such settings include selecting from multiple DNS providers, configuring scripts to run when you connect or disconnect, or refreshing, saving, or recovering your DNS state. The TorGuard client has outstanding flexibility if you know how to take advantage of it.

How good are TorGuard's mobile apps?

With mobile apps, it’s mostly more of the same with similar advantages and disadvantages to their desktop counterparts. Fortunately, a few helpful quality-of-life tools are there, like the always welcome Favorite system, which eases the use and access. 

Furthermore, the TorGuard Android app supports the Always-On setting, ensuring that your activity is never vulnerable. You can also configure the app to pause when connected to the mobile network or a password-protected Wi-Fi network. However, like their desktop counterparts, both mobile VPN apps have a deep set of features, often to the detriment of their ease of use.

What customer support does TorGuard offer?

At first look, TorGuard seems to have a thorough support center, with many options to find help. You can find and read support articles, watch video guides, use community forums to post a question, open a support ticket, or talk directly to support agents via email or live chat.

Unfortunately, this isn’t as helpful as it sounds. For instance, the video guides are relatively limited and are only focused on specific technical questions, or on marketing. It’s the same with knowledgebase articles, where the only issues covered are mostly the most basic questions that newbies might have. 

The forums seem to receive only a few posts per day, and roughly half the questions go unanswered. Finally, even though our ticket received a quick response, it was only a boilerplate answer that didn’t speak to our specific question. Overall, we were not impressed by the depth of TorGuard’s support services.

TorGuard: Final verdict

The main advantage of TorGuard is its blazing speeds and performance, and powerful configuration options, which is something that advanced users will benefit from the most and it could prove an appealing wildcard choice for them.

As for disadvantages, the expert-level configuration will push inexperienced users away, and the support is not that good. Furthermore, TorGuard’s unblocking and streaming capabilities also fell short so any streaming enthusiasts should look elsewhere. 

All in all, while TorGuard has its good points it’s difficult to recommend it over ExpressVPN, for instance, or other top services from our best VPN services guide, but it sure has potential for experienced and more advanced users.