Some VPNs battle to make themselves stand out from the group, however VPN Proxy Grasp is not considered one of them. The web site boasts that it is the “world’s quickest free VPN”, and with a reported 60 million plus customers it appears seemingly that it is doing one thing proper.
Community measurement is not a service spotlight, with servers in six places solely: France, Germany, Netherlands, Singapore, UK and US. Nonetheless, we have seen free merchandise with much less.
The free service has loads of advertisements. There are animated icons begging to be clicked, full-screen video advertisements which demand you “wait 5 seconds to skip”, one other advert embedded within the Disconnect dialog – and surprising notifications in the event you’ve left the service turned off.
There isn’t any assist for torrents, and the apps warn you that any torrent use might get your account deleted. This may very well be a trouble for some, nevertheless it’s no actual shock for a free service, and at the very least it means there’s extra bandwidth left for everyone else.
Plus factors embrace on the spot entry to the community, with no signup, no usernames, and no want handy over your e-mail tackle or different private particulars.
There are not any annoying bandwidth restrictions, both. You need to use the service as a lot as you want.
If you happen to want extra, upgrading to the paid VIP service drops the advertisements and will get you entry to quicker servers and extra places (Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Russia and South Korea). Month-to-month costs are steep at $11.99 (£9.60), however select the annual plan and this plummets to $three (£2.40). There’s a wholly free seven-day trial, and you may get an additional seven days for each pal you invite to make use of the service.
Privateness
The VPN Proxy Grasp web site would not have a transparent hyperlink to its privateness coverage, however luckily it is listed on the obtain pages for each the Android and iOS purchasers.
The corporate claims it runs a ‘no log’ community, stating: “We don’t accumulate any info relating to the web sites you go to or the IP addresses assigned to you whenever you entry the VPN Grasp Personal Community, and with respect to our VPN service, we don’t accumulate any information saved on or transmitted out of your system, together with any information that purposes in your system might transmit by means of our community.”
That is basically the ‘we do not log what you are doing on-line’ assertion made by nearly each VPN, though there is a welcome further element. There isn’t any logging of outgoing IP addresses assigned whenever you connect with the service, a trick which might assist hint an web motion again to your account.
One other clause may rule out some session logging: “…any looking info or different comparable info regarding your on-line actions transmitted by you to our servers when utilizing VPN Grasp is cleared after your VPN ‘session’ is closed.”
This might imply VPN Proxy Grasp is not recording the bandwidth utilized in a session, though it is exhausting to say for positive.
There’s scope for the service to be logging your incoming IP tackle, and we would prefer to see this explicitly mentioned within the privateness coverage. However regardless of the firm may accumulate, free plan homeowners haven’t got handy over an e-mail tackle or different particulars, so there’s little to attach any motion again to you.
Efficiency
Be very, very cautious when trying to find VPN Proxy Grasp in your cell app retailer. There are a bunch of different apps which use very comparable names and logos, presumably hoping you will not discover and set up them, as a substitute. Ideally, comply with the obtain hyperlinks from the official app site, or in any other case search for an app referred to as ‘VPN Proxy Grasp- Free Safety’, with the developer listed as VPN Proxy Grasp.
As soon as you’ve got situated the precise retailer web page, all the things else is straightforward as there isn’t any must create an account or hand over any particulars. All it’s a must to do is set up and open the app as ordinary.
The interface is sort of as easy. A giant ‘Go’ button robotically connects you to the quickest server, or you may get particular and select your most popular location from a listing. Server load indicators make it easier to make the perfect choice, and also you’re additionally warned if a server is full (at the very least one of many three US servers was all the time marked as full throughout our evaluation).
The free model has loads of advertisements, together with annoying full-screen pop-up video varieties with timers to stop them being closed instantly. They largely seem whenever you’re performing some app process, although, so in the event you simply depart VPN Proxy Grasp operating within the background you are unlikely to be hassled.
VPN Proxy Grasp’s Google Play web page says it “encrypts information utilizing OpenVPN protocols (UDP/TCP)”. That sounds nice, as OpenVPN is quick and safe, and skilled customers will respect the management over how OpenVPN works – however we stumbled throughout an issue. We could not see any choice to modify protocols or see what protocol you are at present utilizing, and after we checked our system settings, the app appeared to be utilizing a daily Android connection slightly than OpenVPN.
Interested in this, we despatched the corporate a query by way of its official e-mail assist tackle. We requested: “Your Google Play web page says the app helps OpenVPN TCP and UDP, nevertheless it seems prefer it’s utilizing a daily connection. Which protocols do you really assist?” The app tagged a footer onto our e-mail making it clear that we had been utilizing an Android system within the UK.
A few days later, this reply arrived (we have not edited it in any method):
“However we don’t need to lose you as our good pal, whether it is okay, we want to let you know the next methods:
1. You could must cancel the subscription at first, and about this drawback, please contact with Apple’s official customer support, or use the hyperlink (https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT202039) to cancel it. We’ve got no proper to cancel vip for IOS customers. We apologize for the inconvenience once more.
2. If you wish to obtain our product, i want to introduce the opposite merchandise for you:
VPN Grasp https://appsto.re/us/D3Wi9.i
Turbo VPN https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/turbo-vpn-unlimited-vpn-wifi-security-proxy/id1177977195?mt=8
Sizzling VPN https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hot-vpn-proxy-unlimited-privacy-security-vpn/id1147497109?mt=8
VPN Robotic https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vpn-robot-unlimited-security-vpn-proxy/id1227702816?mt=8
Snap VPN https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snap-vpn-unlimited-security-vpn-proxy/id1123869948?mt=8
VPN Monster https://appsto.re/us/_m0Ukb.i
Grasp Professional https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vpn-master-pro-unlimited-secure-vpn-proxy/id1035355817?mt=8
However now we couldn’t present in China and with Chinese language, hope you possibly can perceive us, thanks.”
That is a really good distance from being useful, nevertheless it’s helpful as a measure of the assist you possibly can anticipate from VPN Proxy Grasp (nothing in any respect). It is also attention-grabbing to see how the reply seems to counsel all these different apps are additionally “our product”, regardless that the app pages have a number of totally different developer names: Categorical Restricted, Chen Lan, Li Chen, All Linked. How are they related, and who is de facto behind the service? Your guess is nearly as good as ours.
Throughout early testing, we observed an odd challenge with the free UK server, which our checks steered was really in Germany. That is not very useful if you could entry a UK useful resource.
Efficiency was disappointing in our assessments*, particularly for a service claiming to be the world’s quickest free VPN. Our greatest European speeds reached a suitable 16Mbps, however UK to US connections managed an unimpressive 10Mbps and Singapore peaked at 4Mbps.
The service did higher at web site unblocking, permitting us entry to Netflix, YouTube and Comedy Central. BBC iPlayer was the one service VPN Proxy Grasp would not enable us to entry, which isn’t stunning when its UK server is not really within the UK.
Would upgrading to the industrial VIP plan make any distinction? A ‘Strive Free VIP’ tab appeared promising, however tapping it simply gave us a ‘Sync VIP Data, please wait a second’ message that stayed unchanged for the following 30 minutes, and the next two instances we tried it. Ultimately we discovered a second ‘Strive’ choice within the Improve display, and that labored instantly, organising an automated subscription however not taking any cost for the primary seven days.
Eliminating the adverts was a direct aid, and the improve additionally allowed us to decide on places from the Sooner Server tab. Two of those had been conveniently labelled as ‘for Netflix’, so hopefully you will not must attempt a number of servers to seek out one which works.
Our streaming assessments ran as earlier than, with all our check websites accessible besides BBC iPlayer. There was a distinct purpose, although: the VIP server labelled as being within the UK seemed to be within the US. (Sigh).
Our efficiency checks additionally confirmed little change. The perfect European servers averaged round 15Mbps, whereas US places usually managed 10Mbps. That is usable, however nothing extra.
The evaluation ended on a optimistic observe, at the very least, as we ran by means of our privateness checks. Ipleak.web, doileak.com and different web sites did not reveal any DNS or different leaks.
Ultimate verdict
VPN Proxy Grasp is not as quick or as succesful because it pretends, particularly with the UK server which is not within the UK, however let’s be real looking – there aren’t many different free VPNs that may unblock Netflix and offer you limitless bandwidth. In that respect, it’s value a attempt for cell units.
*Our testing included evaluating normal efficiency (looking, streaming video). We additionally used speedtest.web to measure latency, add and obtain speeds, after which examined instantly once more with the VPN turned off, to test for any distinction (over a number of rounds of testing). We then in contrast these outcomes to different VPN providers we have reviewed. In fact, do observe that VPN efficiency is troublesome to measure as there are such a lot of variables.