CyberGhost VPN review Australia

While researching this virtual private network (VPN) review update, I discovered that CyberGhost is one of a trio of VPNs owned by parent company Kape Technologies. One of those is the less popular ZenMate VPN and the other is Private Internet Access VPN, which is second only to NordVPN in our current rankings. Let’s take a closer look at where CyberGhost excels and where it falls short.

CyberGhost starts off with a strong at-a-glance offering thanks to a great selection of global locations to choose from and a massive network of RAM-only servers. It also works well as an invisible background protector with military-grade encryption and great speeds. All of that comes at a premium, though. With mixed streaming results, no manual server switching and a seven-device limit, there are better VPN alternatives to consider.

When it comes to pricing, the main pro CyberGhost has going for it is it charges in Australian dollars. Outside of that, it only just scrapes into the top 10 for monthly pricing of the VPNs we’ve reviewed. There isn’t any annual pricing (but there is pricey six-month pricing), which is typically a staple of VPN providers, and CyberGhost’s two-year pricing isn’t competitive enough to get into the top five (out of the 17 VPNs we’ve reviewed).

There is a free trial of sorts, but it’s restricted to 24 hours on Windows and Mac computers, three days for Android devices and seven days for iOS gadgets. The CyberGhost monthly plan has a comparatively limited 14-day money-back guarantee, but the six-month and two-year subscriptions both offer a healthy 45-day money-back guarantee.

The majority of my time with CyberGhost VPN was on a Windows 11 PC, though I did also use it on my Google Pixel 7 Pro Android phone and appreciated how easy it was to set up on Android TV (via Nvidia Shield TV Pro). No matter which app you use, CyberGhost has a clean interface with a giant connection button.

Typically, it’ll connect to the nearest server (Sydney for me) by default, but you can also add locations to your list of favourites with a single tap. It usually takes between five and seven seconds to connect to servers around the world, and disconnection is a single tap away.

I did have some issues on Windows where double-clicking would switch locations certain times and not others. During my initial testing, one of the Australian servers had a massive impact on browsing speeds, including certain sites not loading, and Outlook received issues sending and receiving emails.

That appears to be an outlier, though, as CyberGhost is otherwise a VPN that operates so well in the background you’ll forget it’s on, working with a range of internet-reliant applications. There’s a great range of locations to choose from around the world, though Australia is restricted to just three: Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. That’s not great news for anyone who doesn’t live on the east coast, particularly for latency.

One of CyberGhost’s pros is thousands of servers which, admittedly, is a number that seems to change based on where you look. The installer said 6,500+, one webpage claimed 7,100+, while another very specifically identified 9,140. These latter two server counts put CyberGhost second only to Private Internet Access (35,000+ servers), which effectively means you can expect great uptime with CyberGhost.

CyberGhost VPN can be used on seven devices simultaneously, which is a decent entry-level count—ahead of NordVPN and ExpressVPN—though lacking in comparison to the unlimited simultaneous connections offered by Surfshark VPN, Windscribe VPN, TunnelBear VPN and IPVanish VPN. You can install CyberGhost on the following platforms:

• Windows
• Mac
• Linux
• iOS smartphones and tablets
• Android smartphones and tablets
• Android TV
• Amazon Fire TV
• Synology NAS

CyberGhost also supports smart TV and console streaming via Smart DNS service, though this feature doesn’t offer the encrypted protection of a VPN server. More advanced users can also configure CyberGhost with compatible routers and Raspberry Pi devices.

Unless your internet provider is throttling your speeds, connecting to a VPN service will impact your latency and download/upload speeds. To highlight this, the table below shows the afternoon speeds for CyberGhost with an Aussie Broadband100/40Mbps FTTC connection.

These CyberGhost speeds represent some big wins compared to our initial review a couple of years ago, most notably for upload speeds, which used to take a 90% speed hit for US and UK servers. CyberGhost ranks in the top five for minimal impact to speeds across AU download/upload speeds and latency, as well as US download and upload speeds.

Latency values for the US and UK are lagging behind other VPN providers, but that 23% impact to UK download speeds is the best of the lot. While that’s the only speed category where CyberGhost came out on top, it’s still a fast enough VPN provider that you won’t notice its impact unless you’re downloading massive files from international servers.

For those who don’t mind running the risk of having their streaming services blocked or banned, a VPN can be used to stream content from geoblocked libraries overseas. A VPN that’s great for streaming should work across popular US, UK and Australian streaming services, loading content libraries in a timely way while buffering content quickly and without errors.

In terms of the table below, buffering speeds are rated accordingly:

• Fast (1–5 seconds)
• Moderate (5–15 seconds)
• Slow (15–25 seconds)
• Extremely slow (slower than 25 seconds)

CyberGhost has decent streaming performance, which is certainly better than what it used to be when I first tested it. At a glance, CyberGhost looks like a great streaming VPN because it offers specialty streaming servers around the world. The catch is they don’t work as intended, and even some of those better results in the table above are a result of location switching to make services work.

Kayo, for instance, didn’t work on any of the Australian locations, including the ones designated for torrenting and streaming. There was a lot of switching between specialist servers to get the US streaming services working, which seemingly refuse to work on regular servers (unlike CyberGhost’s competitors).

That big-tick huge server network isn’t helpful for streaming because there isn’t a way to manually switch servers, which might otherwise help bypass geoblocks with a new IP address. As it stands, the effort it takes to get CyberGhost consistently working with streaming isn’t worth it with other great options out there from Windscribe, ExpressVPN, PureVPN and NordVPN.

The table below gives you an idea of how CyberGhost might work with your NBN connection. It uses the max potential download speeds for any given connection to showcase how the best-case 13% and 23% download speed changes for US and UK servers, respectively, might impact your overall download speed when using CyberGhost.

The three columns on the right offer the number of simultaneous streams per connection. While Netflix has a maximum of four simultaneous streams per 4K account, Hulu and BBC iPlayer have options for unlimited streams. We know these stream numbers get ridiculous for beyond-NBN 100 plans, but they’re a good indication of speed degradation.

CyberGhost gets the basics right by being a speedy enough invisible background protector. But it’s a comparatively pricey service for only seven simultaneous streams and middling streaming results. There are better alternatives out there—like NordVPN, Private Internet Access and ExpressVPN—which you should consider before checking out CyberGhost.