Windscribe VPN review Australia

When I first reviewed Windscribe in 2020, it proved to be a virtual private network (VPN) that was great in some areas but lacking in others. Fast-forward to more recent times, and while Windscribe doesn’t manage to topple the likes of NordVPN or ExpressVPN as great all-rounder VPNs, it has some impressive wins in some key areas that make it worth considering.

Windscribe is the VPN to use if you love to stream, speedily bypassing the geoblocks for all of our test services. This crowning achievement is helped along by competitive monthly pricing, fast Australian servers and a great free version to try. Annual pricing isn’t overly competitive, though, and US download speeds are particularly slow. It’s great that Windscribe has an extra layer of anonymity by not requiring an email at sign-up, but it’s headquartered in Toronto, which means there is the potential for user data sharing.

Windscribe offers monthly and annual subscriptions as well as a build-a-plan option, all charged in US dollars. The monthly plan has the third cheapest pricing of the VPNs we’re reviewed, only behind Mullvad VPN and PrivadoVPN. While that’s great, the annual pricing leaves a lot to be desired, only just squeezing into the top 10 for pricing.

While Windscribe has a terrible money-back guarantee (only three days), there is a viable free VPN version to take for a spin if you want to try before you buy. By default, it comes with 2GB per month, but you can up that to 10GB by providing an email address. Plus, there’s bonus data for tweeting, referring and other promotions.

Like every VPN, Windscribe is free to download. Unlike most VPNs, providing an email address during sign-up is optional. Granted, it has bonus-data benefits for Windscribe free users, plus it’s the only way to reset your password, so it’s worth adding this identifying credential. That said, the option to not include an email address is great news for people who want an extra level of privacy from a VPN.

The Windscribe app itself is pretty lean in its design. With the Windows software, there’s a big connect/disconnect button that’s impossible to miss. Windscribe remembers the last server connection and automatically recommends it, otherwise you can dig into the locations list. Connection times are fantastic: about two seconds to connect and almost instantaneous disconnection.

By default, the so-called Firewall is enabled, which is the term Windscribe uses for its internet kill switch. On paper, a kill switch offers extra peace of mind to ensure your connection is always connected. But there are multiple varieties, and Windscribe defaults to the strictest form, which means you need to maintain a constant server connection to even use the internet on your device. You can, however, dig into the settings and tweak it to be more lenient so it only kills your internet in the event of an unexpected VPN server disconnection (aka the better variety).

When I first reviewed Windscribe, I had a lot of issues with the Windows software. Mostly, it was slow to connect and disconnect, server connections sometimes failed and it was, generally, inconsistent to use. That’s not the case this time around. Windscribe worked with every bit of daily software I threw at it, including torrent tests, while it connects/disconnects so quickly that it doesn’t disrupt real-time internet services like music streaming.

One of the neatest Windscribe extras, which is part of what makes it a great pick for a VPN that also acts as an ad-blocker, is the R.O.B.E.R.T. tool. By default, malware, ads and trackers are toggled on within the Windscribe Windows software. But there are also toggles for the following categories that you may want to block:

• Social networks
• Porn
• Gambling
• Clickbait
• Other VPNs
• Crypto

While there are clear scenarios for almost all of those extras, particularly for parents, the addition of “Other VPNs” is on the cringe side of the cheeky scale.

Windscribe offers unlimited simultaneous connections and is supported on a great range of devices:

Unless your internet provider is throttling your speeds, you can safely a VPN service to impact your latency and download/upload speeds. To highlight this, the table below shows the midday speeds for Windscribe with an Aussie Broadband 100/40Mbps Fibre-to-the-Curb (FTTC) connection.

The first thing worth noting is I’m not getting great NBN download speeds for a 100Mbps plan (an unfortunate hang-up from my Superloop NBN days). As for Windscribe, it has excellent results for the automatically selected Sydney server (I’m also in Sydney) with a negligible impact to download, upload and latency.

Things get weirder for the Los Angeles server tests, which boast great upload and latency numbers, but a comparatively hefty impact to download speeds. To highlight the point, my tests to a Windscribe London server have faster download speeds than the Los Angeles results. That doesn’t normally happen with VPN speed tests from Australia, and it was repeated in multiple tests. Admittedly, those UK upload and latency results are decent.

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)

When I first tested Windscribe in 2020, it was the best VPN around for bypassing the geoblocks of streaming services. When re-testing for this updated review, the results are the same. Most content loads at blistering speeds, and everything I tested worked as though I was watching it from the country it’s meant for. The only disclaimer there is Kayo Sports has gotten better at sniffing out Windscribe. To get around this, I had to do some location switching with the Australian servers to get it going.

The table below gives you an idea of how Windscribe might work with your NBN connection. It uses the best-case download speeds to give you an idea of how the best-case 50% and 29% download speed changes for US and UK servers, respectively, might impact your overall download speed when using Windscribe.

The three columns on the right offer a 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.

Windscribe is a great all-rounder VPN. It has competitive monthly pricing, a viable free version and is second to none for streaming. Still, the inconsistent international speed results, bare-bolts user interface, undisclosed server count and a data-sharing headquarters hold it back from being wholly recommendable.