Surfshark vs IPVanish - Which VPN is Better? (2023 Comparison)

Originally published at: https://troypoint.com/surfshark-vs-ipvanish/

The following guide compares Surfshark vs IPVanish to determine which VPN provider is better. Without a question, Surfshark and IPVanish are two of the most popular VPN services available today. After Surfshark earned our number one VPN ranking, many have asked us to do a full comparison to IPVanish. Although IPVanish is now ranked second…

@TROYPOINT - What VPN protocol were you using on each VPN during your speed tests?

I’ve got a friend, using ip vanish, having a brutal time with speeds on his firestick 4k. On a 300mbps service, he’s getting 35-45 on Chicago and several other servers. Wireguard protocol.

Hello @mthr1 I would have been using OpenVPN TCP as that was fastest for my ISP. Please note that this is a fairly old article. These are now appearing as new because we are connecting them to the forum for discussion.

IPvanish was better a couple of years ago, but it hasn’t kept up. Surfshark has improved immensely in this time and is now far superior.

I know there have been posts before comparing IPvanish vs. Surfshark.

My IPvanish subscription is set to expire on April 9, 2024. I reached out to Surfshark to see if they could match the $2.49 per month price for a 24-month plan that IPvanish is offering me. They wrote back with only the prices posted on their website.

My question is: Should I just stay with IPvanish for $2.49 per month or what would be some reasons to pay more and switch to Surfshark?

Thanks to anyone who can assist me on this one!

If you haven’t had any problems ipv stay with it. If you had a lot of trouble with it then try surf shark. It’s pros and cons here a lot of argument about the difference. I have surfshark and I’ve had a lot of trouble with it in the past it’s gotten better though I’m still with it.

Like @AJS1 said…if you have not had any problems with IPVanish I would stay with them.

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Surfshark does offer a 30 day free trial - you could always sample it for a few weeks and determine if it’s a better performer for you.

Same it across the different apps that you use, test different servers and see if plays well with apps, especially ones that try to geolock, etc.

I wish I stayed with IPVanish, but signed up with surfshark. I have had nothing but problems and service isn’t any better, if not worse! Stay with IPVanish!

Complete opposite of you. IPVanish is a joke in my opinion. No kill switch on Fire TV or Android TV but hey you can use a separate app on Firestick for kill switch and guess what…it doesn’t work! My Surfshark speeds are 75% faster than IPVanish.

I did read that they are waiting on the Killswitch to be approved


I have Surfshark and haven’t tried any of the others (yet), but one of the features I like about SS is the ability to only use VPN on specific apps without having to toggle the VPN connection on/off. I have it assigned to Tivimate, IMPlayer, Stremio, etc., while my other apps like Youtube or Netflix stream on a normal connection. Convenient if you are someone who doesn’t want VPN running all the time.

Not sure id this belongs here but several searches could not find the “Best VPNs” sent out on September 21. I have IP Vanish and Surfshark and I am changing over to Surfshark for the main reason being download speed plus I am getting used to it. IPVanish was dropped from the recommended list as it does not have a kill switch.


From this screenshot you can see that IPVanish does indeed have a kill switch.

Hello, here is our article.

When you read the article you will see that I specifically point out the fact that they don’t have kill switch on Android TV/Google TV devices which is main streaming devices that we now recommend.

Have a great day and thanks for being a Patron!


I posted this elsewhere but I finally found a post for this topic.

But IPVanish does have a kill switch for Android/Google TV devices. I use it on my Nvidia shield tv pro and Onn Pro devices.

The only difference is that its a seperate app from the vpn app. But they work together.

See around post 28 here:

Correct…they do have one now. I tried it and it did not work. That’s just me, I may be the only one it didn’t work for. I do know that SS Killswitch does work. What I did find odd was that the monitor dot showed I was still connected but was not as you can see. The monitor dot is running through SS so it should have kicked it red

Sorry, works for me. I am guessing you are showing SS in the pic because that’s not what IPV looks like.

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The below text is from the “Installation Notes” at the bottom of this page:

“If Monitor Dot is displaying a Green dot even when the VPN is disconnected, check to see if your VPN has it’s “Kill Switch” feature enabled. If it does, then the green dot is proper because the kill switch feature is protecting you by not allowing your device to access the internet.”

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That’s correct as I no longer have Ipvanish

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