Betternet vs ZoogVPN Comparison
Awareness of how vital online protection and privacy are has been increasing over the past few years. Consequently, the VPN industry is becoming more crowded by the day, leaving us with many distinct VPN companies, each with its own unique strategy. This means users are increasingly likely to find something to perfectly fit their needs. At the same time, it’s also harder to pinpoint the ideal choice. One example is free VPN providers: everyone loves free software, and VPN software is no exception. Both Betternet and ZoogVPN know this, and have decided to offer their VPN services free of charge. Still, their strategies are distinct, so one of them will surely be more in line with your needs than the other.
Betternet
Betternet is a free VPN provider with a no-log policy where you don’t even need to create an account to use it. The service couldn’t be easier to use. Just install Betternet, open it, and click “connect” to be protected.
For the free package, Betternet offers a daily data limit of 500MB which translates into roughly 14GB a month – far superior to other VPN providers’ free plans.
However, their encryption may not be as great. Betternet’s privacy policy states that the VPN uses both 128-bit and 256-bit AES GCM data encryption, but does not explain in which situations each one is used, so the user is in the dark as to whether they’re getting 128-bit or 256-bit encryption. Moreover, Betternet uses Catapult Hydra rather than more popular protocols that could yield better speeds and reliability.
Betternet’s premium package can be had for $2.99 per month. It provides unlimited data, the option to choose between multiple servers, better connection speeds, and better protection. This account supports five devices simultaneously.
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ZoogVPN
ZoogVPN users can also opt for a free plan. But like most VPNs offering a package free of charge, it comes with various limitations. First, ZoogVPN provides a monthly data limit of only 2GB – not nearly enough to cover the average user through the month. It also offers fewer tunnel protocols, so free users can choose only between IKeV2 and OpenVPN, plus tolerate weaker security with its 128-bit encryption. Nonetheless, ZoogVPN still provides its kill switch and the option to choose among U.S., UK, and Netherlands (P2P) servers.
Although the free plan from ZoogVPN is indeed more of an unlimited trial to see whether it makes sense to upgrade to a premium account, their cheap paid plan offers a variety of helpful features. With the paid version the number of servers expands from 3 to 47 located in 26 countries. The data allotment also jumps from 2GB to unlimited – excellent for trying out all the streaming services ZoogVPN provides access to. On top of that, paid users get better security with 256-bit encryption and also a wider variety of tunneling protocols. The premium version is available for the very competitive price of $1.75 per month.
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Conclusion
Although Betternet’s free plan has some limitations, it’s still one of the best in the VPN industry. Its 500MB of data per day is a lot more than what other VPN providers offer in their free plans. And though this may not be enough for those seeking to torrent or stream Netflix, it’s still great for people who want a VPN just for basic use.
ZoogVPN offers admirable features through its free plan, but the 2GB monthly limit essentially negates them. Nevertheless, its paid version offers an excellent array of features that not only deliver reliable security but also enable you to access a vast list of foreign streaming services and a good number of P2P servers – all of this at one of the lowest prices in the market.
Daniel C.
Inês P.