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On paper, Cover.me Free boasts a powerful providing – limitless knowledge, customizable instruments, and a very free VPN that’s greater than only a trial. There are a handful of limitations – par for the course for a free VPN – however Cover.me Free’s robust core options and server array are robust counterpoints.
In the end, should you’re on the hunt for a free service that has your privateness in thoughts and can watch your again as you go about your normal shopping, Cover.me Free has the fitting options and fairly nifty apps.
Options
Cover.me Free, like its premium counterpart, will get the VPN fundamentals proper. We have been impressed when tried out the variety of VPN protocols obtainable and located IKEv2, OpenVPN, WireGuard, SSTP, and SoftEtherVPN. We additionally favored that we might choose a “fallback protocol”, which the VPN used if our first selection failed to attach – which it did not, by the way.
Nevertheless, the supply of those protocols varies trusted the platform we tried, which have been Home windows, Android and iOS.
Platform |
WireGuard |
OpenVPN |
IKEv2 |
SSTP |
SoftEther |
Home windows |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
Mac |
❌ |
✅ |
✅ |
❌ |
❌ |
Android |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
❌ |
iOS |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
❌ |
❌ |
IPv6 help
All of Cover.me Free’s apps boast full IPv6 help, which is a leg up on different free suppliers that supply a obscure checkbox characteristic claiming to forestall IPv6 leaks – in the event that they deal with it in any respect.
Cover.me Free is the one free service on our checklist that permits customers to attach utilizing IPv4, IPv6, or each. For those who’re unfamiliar with IPv6, this received’t matter that a lot, however if you’re – and in case your ISP permits you to use IPv6 – Cover.me Free will work with it proper out of the field with no danger of IPv6 leaks.
Nonetheless, that is far more management than we see even from the likes of our best VPN general, NordVPN.
Auto-connect
Cover.me Free’s auto-connect device is likely one of the finest we’ve ever examined, too. Accessible on desktop apps and Android and iOS, we enabled it with a easy toggle we might additional customise it to permit us to pick completely different actions when connecting to unsecured Wi-Fi, secured Wi-Fi, or Ethernet networks.
The choices for every are: “Join or Disconnect”, “Ask what to do”, or “Ignore Community”. It is a good array of choices. So, if safety is your main concern, you might configure the auto-connect device to ask whether or not you need Hide.me Free to routinely join everytime you be a part of an unsecure community – just like the free Wi-Fi you discover in cafes, airports, and motels – so that you don’t unintentionally be a part of a dodgy hotspot that lacks encryption or, within the worst case state of affairs, is a bogus connection monitored by a data-hungry unhealthy actor. That is particularly helpful for folk who commute to work or have a trip on the playing cards.
Every time the app made one in all these automated determination, it then added the title of the community and the choice it made to an inventory. That is higher reporting than most VPN apps, which usually anticipate you to take care of that checklist your self or manually add networks to a trusted checklist as you entry them.
Break up tunneling
We have been glad to see that Cover.me Free supplied split tunneling for Home windows, Mac, and Android, although the characteristic is presently lacking from iOS. Just like the auto-connect device, Cover.me Free’s break up tunneling is extremely customizable, permitting customers to select and select which apps or websites use the VPN tunnel and which do not.
So, utilizing the break up tunneling device, you might route visitors headed to your streaming app/website of selection by way of your common web connection, and never the encrypted Cover.me Free tunnel.
It will cut back the quantity of visitors the VPN has to take care of on its restricted knowledge funds and guarantee that you would be able to truly take pleasure in your content material with none buffering or lag.
Kill change
Cover.me Free has a dependable kill switch that we weren’t in a position to journey any time we tampered with the VPN protocol software program to trigger it to disconnect. It by no means registered any leak of our actual IP. That is a should for any credible free VPN.
The kill change is offered on all platforms, together with iOS, unusually. It’s not all the time straightforward to seek out, although – it’s named “Community Safety” within the Android settings, for instance.
Along with a easy on/off toggle, customers may also configure a script contained in the app that’ll launch at any time when the kill change is triggered (chopping your web connection) or disabled. You possibly can use this to create an alert warning you that the kill change was triggered, or forcibly shut a course of or launch an app.
Why is this convenient? Effectively, think about that you just all the time depart your VPN on at dwelling, linked to a close-by server. What occurs if that connection drops out? Normally, a VPN will show a notification to let you understand, however what should you wished one thing else to occur?
In case your VPN is linked to an area community, you would possibly wish to ship a notification to different units linked to it or, to forestall communication throughout a now unsecured connection, you would possibly wish to shut some apps and packages. Cover.me Free makes this attainable by way of scripts – a sequence of instructions that provide you with extra management over how the app responds to a kill change failure.
Different options
Cover.me Free additionally boasts obfuscation – however we discovered that it was fairly fundamental. Nonetheless, it would enable you set up a safe VPN connection should you reside in a privacy-unfriendly nation (like China or Russia) the place VPNs are routinely sniffed out and blocked. For those who’re on the lookout for probably the most dependable VPN for China, Cover.me Free in all probability shouldn’t be your first selection, however it could assist with much less intensive VPN blocking, and we’re glad that the choice is there free of charge customers.
The lock setting permits customers to lock the VPN app at any time when it’s minimized or after a specified variety of minutes has handed. It really works like a cell system App Locker: choose a PIN and relaxation assured that, with out this PIN, no one will have the ability to unlock (and intervene with) your VPN.
It would appear to be safety overkill, however it ensures that pals, household, and different nosy people can’t occur throughout your system and alter your VPN settings. You wouldn’t desire a sibling to disconnect the VPN whilst you’re torrenting, proper? Community Lock places a cease to this sort of meddling.
As talked about earlier, Cover.me Free offers customers limitless knowledge to play with – there are not any month-to-month caps and no laborious limits. Admittedly, that’s an enormous bonus meaning you received’t need to rigorously ration out your VPN utilization over the month. Cover.me Free does have its hangups, nonetheless, that largely hinge across the differences between its free and premium plans.
Lacking options and hangups
Cover.me Free customers are restricted to a single simultaneous connection. Which means just one particular person, on one system, can use the VPN at any given time. That is just about par for the course on the subject of free VPNs, though Windscribe Free is a notable exception to the rule, providing limitless connections free of charge and paid customers.
Free customers received’t discover help for port forwarding or SOCKS5 proxy, both. There’s no possibility for TOR over VPN, and multi-hop is restricted to paid customers.
On a extra technical notice, Cover.me Free additionally lacks support for downloading OpenVPN or different guide configuration information (like WireGuard keys). This makes it much more troublesome to make use of the VPN with a router. A lot of routers work with OpenVPN however, as a rule, in addition they require a configuration file that tells them precisely how one can arrange the connection and the IP deal with of the server they’re attempting to entry. With out this file, we will’t advocate Cover.me Free as a fully-fledged router VPN.
Options rating: 7/10
Server community
We have been unable to discern the full variety of VPN servers in Cover.me Free’s community however, as free customers are restricted to a small subset of places, this isn’t an enormous stumbling block.
Cover.me Free offers customers entry to servers in 7 international locations: Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK, USA. It’s value noting that Cover.me claims that free customers have 8 places to select from however, on our Home windows testing machine, we solely noticed the 7 listed above. Singapore is usually listed as a free location, however throughout our testing, we noticed it marked as Premium-only.
We took a better have a look at the free places to find out whether or not the itemizing within the app matches the probably actual location of the server. We’re blissful to say that each one 7 places are precisely listed, though the Finnish servercould be in Estonia.
As with different VPNs, Cover.me Free permits customers so as to add servers to a favorites checklist for straightforward entry and set particular servers because the default, so the VPN routinely connects to them when the massive “Join” button is clicked or tapped. It’s a pleasant time-saving measure we’re glad to see included.
One notable side of Cover.me Free’s server array is that 6 of its 7 places are primarily based in Europe, with the seventh being within the US. A lot of free VPNs have clean spots on the map, so this isn’t solely stunning, however at this time, we discover that almost all top-rated free VPNs have a minimum of one server location in Asia.
For instance, Windscribe Free has protection in Hong Kong, and Proton VPN Free has servers in Japan. Extending the vary of the server community advantages everybody, giving of us exterior of Europe entry to close by servers, bettering their general shopping expertise, and providing folks elsewhere the chance to location-hop and take a look at a brand new area of native content material.
Servers rating: 6/10
Apps
Cover.me Free is offered for Home windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Linux. It is a respectable unfold, and it’s good to see that Cover.me doesn’t neglect its Linux userbase. We have been additionally glad to see that Cover.me Free has its very personal Firefox, Chrome, and Edge browser extensions, too.
There are additionally Cover.me Free apps for Apple TV, Android TV, and Amazon Fireplace TV. We’d prefer to laud this choice, however it’s, sadly, irrelevant, because the free model isn’t fast sufficient to maintain up with HD streaming.
General, nothing main is lacking from Cover.me Free’s app providing, which is spectacular for a free service, as are the three browser extensions.
The one hiccup to notice is that the lacking entry to the OpenVPN information signifies that it isn’t going to work as a VPN in your router.
Apps rating: 8/10
Ease of use
First issues first, we have been impressed that Cover.me Free doesn’t require any registration or sign-up to make use of. We merely downloaded the app from the supplier’s web site and adopted together with an set up wizard. In truth, throughout all platforms, we didn’t run into any hassle when putting in Cover.me Free.
The extra we dug into Cover.me Free’s usability, nonetheless, the extra cracks appeared. We put in Cover.me Free on a tool that we’d beforehand used the paid version on, and it routinely logged in, presumably as a result of it didn’t take away our previous credentials when uninstalling.
The dashboard warned us that our plan had expired and that it was time to improve, and there was no apparent “use free model” button – or perhaps a trace {that a} free model existed.
Ultimately, we double-clicked a server location within the location checklist, and a brand new “Trial Expired” display screen appeared. It gave us the choice to “Downgrade to a free plan”. After we hit downgrade, we have been lastly in a position to make use of Cover.me Free.
In fact, most customers received’t be affected by this situation as they’ll be putting in the app on a tool that hasn’t used Cover.me earlier than. Nonetheless, should you’re one of many unfortunate few who has, it’s an pointless problem. Cover.me might make life manner simpler by providing a “Downgrade” button to everybody with an expired plan fairly than forcing them on a digital goose chase.
We additionally skilled an odd quirk the place, as soon as the app had put in and displayed the “Completed” web page, the app launched instantly. Most VPNs wait till you’ve closed the web page to do that, so the app appeared earlier than we’d even closed the installer. It’s odd, however it didn’t trigger any points.
As soon as the Cover.me Free Home windows app was up and working, we have been greeted by a fast tutorial that launched us to all crucial sections of the app. For those who’re an skilled VPN consumer, this received’t be all that helpful, however anybody on the hunt for a very good VPN for beginners will respect the easy-to-digest signposting.
General, we discovered Cover.me Free’s Home windows app to be fairly overcomplicated. It appears extra like an operating system desktop than a easy app. The dashboard is designed to be customizable – it may well comprise every kind of widgets that customers can edit and reposition to swimsuit their wants.
One widget shows the currently-selected location and join button, one other holds the map of Cover.me Free’s places, and a 3rd incorporates your account info. There are even widgets itemizing your favourite servers, streaming servers, account info, a “Privateness Search” button that permits you to make searches from inside the app, and an extended checklist of hyperlinks to Cover.me Free’s social media channels.
It’s an important thought in principle, and we all the time prefer to see customization, however it’s additionally virtually solely pointless. We didn’t want the dashboard to always inform us that we have been utilizing the free model, and we didn’t discover ourselves needing rapid entry to Cover.me’s X account. Plus, there’s already a hyperlink to the map view within the left-hand sidebar, rendering the one within the dashboard redundant.
We didn’t see any huge profit to the dashboard. If something, it truly makes the app look worse than the competitors as a result of the widgets have mounted sizes, which means there’s a lot of wasted white area. Evaluate that to the super-compact Windscribe Free VPN UI which takes up no extra room on desktop that it does on cell.
Nonetheless, there are many methods to keep away from the dashboard. Clicking the “Places” possibility within the sidebar takes you to a easy location checklist. From right here, you may double-click any free location to affix a server and, when you’re carried out, double-click once more to disconnect.
After we tried Cover.me Free on iOS, we discovered that the structure is way more typical, which was a plus for us. The iOS app is well-designed and works equally to premium mobile VPNs. Becoming a member of a server is as straightforward as tapping the “Join” button, and customers have the choice of choosing “Finest location” to decide on one other free location.
Whatever the platform we used, Cover.me Free did a very good job of underscoring which options can be found to free customers and which aren’t. We chosen the SmartGuard advert blocker, as an example, and the app warned us that our expertise was “restricted”.
Digging into Cover.me Free’s superior instruments, we discovered that they’re organized unusually. Virtually each different app we’ve examined places choices like auto-connect and break up tunneling in a settings menu, however Cover.me Free lists them (and different important instruments) in their very own Options menu. For those who’re used to diving into the settings to seek out these items, you would possibly miss them at first, however it’s nothing a little bit of exploration can’t repair.
Cover.me Free’s precise settings menu is sweet and simple to parse. It largely consists of easy on/off choices. The technical settings, nonetheless, are laid out a bit of otherwise throughout platforms, which may make it troublesome to seek out the particular setting you’re seeking to tweak.
Thankfully, Cover.me Free’s menus have a search field – which we discovered fairly distinctive. It’s an important addition to the combo that makes searching down instruments fast and simple, as long as you understand what you’re on the lookout for. So, should you’re trying to find a DNS setting however can’t discover it, simply sort “DNS” into the search field, and Cover.me Free will show each setting that features “DNS”.
Throughout our testing, after we went about our common shopping, we encountered a lot of CAPTCHA exams. These exams went on for a very long time, too, typically cornering us into 7 or 8 rounds of choosing the squares containing bikes or chimneys. This floor our shopping to a halt – and on condition that Cover.me Free additionally throttles speeds, it makes for a less-than-ideal on a regular basis expertise.
Extra CAPTCHAs normally signifies that the IP addresses on Cover.me’s free servers aren’t as contemporary as they may be – both by way of age or the variety of clients on these free servers utilizing them – and that is not an important signal.
Lastly, after we weren’t utilizing Cover.me Free and made a giant change to our community configuration (by connecting to a second VPN, for instance), the Cover.me Free dashboard would out of the blue seem. We hadn’t clicked on it or switched to it – it merely popped up.
We are able to solely assume that the Cover.me Free Home windows app thinks it’s solely answerable for our community settings and, if one thing adjustments, it’s the app that’ll take cost. It doesn’t matter all that a lot, nonetheless. We merely minimized the dashboard and went about our enterprise as normal. It’s one other small interface irritation, nonetheless, and it might change into severely irritating if it occurs recurrently.
Ease of use rating: 5/10
Velocity and efficiency
We put Cover.me Free’s speeds to the check utilizing our 1 Gbps connection and the WireGuard protocol. The service achieved fairly respectable outcomes, clocking in at 415 Mbps on our Home windows machine and 25 Mbps on Android.
Whereas this is not fairly as fast as Proton VPN Free and Windscribe Free, each recording 900 Mbps, it is nonetheless greater than you want for easy-breezy day-to-day shopping.
How we carry out velocity exams
We check from two completely different digital PCs, one within the UK and one within the US, utilizing a 1 Gbps connection. You will discover out extra in our VPN testing methodology.
It’s value noting that, in the course of the course of our hands-on testing, we did discover inconsistencies in Cover.me Free’s speeds. Initially, our testing machine reported that we had been throttled to a measly 1 Mbps, however subsequent testing proved extra fruitful.
It is unsure whether or not this vacillation in outcomes will repeat however, if it does, it might trigger points free of charge customers trying to make use of Cover.me Free to stream, torrent, or take a look at social media feeds – as 1 Mbps simply is not sufficient to maintain up with resource-intensive actions.
Velocity and efficiency rating: 6/10
Unblocking
As a part of our real-world exams, we tried streaming Netflix and YouTube, and have been profitable on each events. The one caveat right here is that we have been compelled to reload Netflix earlier than the web page loaded absolutely, and we did expertise some buffering when initially tuning in to content material. After about 5 minutes or so, nonetheless, the expertise settled and remained clean.
We might nonetheless advocate seeking to a paid service for probably the most dependable entry to at this time’s high streaming platforms (and smaller regional providers), however Cover.me Free impressed us by holding its personal.
Cover.me Free isn’t our first-choice torrenting VPN, both, even if all of its free servers seem to help P2P exercise. You’re higher off with PrivadoVPN or Proton VPN. Cover.me Free additionally lacks a port forwarding possibility – you’ll need to subscribe to the paid model to test it out.
Unblocking rating: 6/10
Privateness and safety
Cover.me Free makes use of AES-256 and ChaCha20 by way of WireGuard. There are plenty of protocols to select from if you open up the app, although we usually advocate WireGuard, due to its mix of velocity and safety. We’re additionally glad to see that Cover.me Free ditched much less safe choices, like L2TP, a very long time in the past.
We additionally consider that Cover.me Free is geared extra in direction of technical customers and folk who wish to study VPN know-how and cybersecurity. That is most seen within the supplier’s weblog, the place the corporate recurrently posts in-depth articles protecting essentials like encryption.
Digging into Cover.me Free’s server infrastructure, there was no actual technical element to be discovered, however the Community web page on the supplier website claims that: “Our servers are hand-picked, security-hardened and self-maintained… To guard our customers’ privateness, we management and run a self-managed VPN community with none involvement of outsiders. Each server shops delicate cryptographic keys in a short lived storage to attenuate assault floor.”
Phrases like “hand-picked” and “security-hardened” don’t increase any eyebrows. “Self-maintained” and “self-managed with none involvement of outsiders”, nonetheless, does. It appears unlikely or, worse, deceptive. Until Cover.me Free is working its personal knowledge centres, others will, a minimum of, have bodily entry to the servers.
Servers storing keys “in a short lived storage” match with them being RAM-based. We suspect that, if it’s true, Cover.me Free would merely declare as a lot. As an alternative, maybe the supplier signifies that the keys are saved in a folder of short-term information, which is all the time emptied when the server closes or begins.
Cover.me Free hasn’t applied full post-quantum encryption, however it has achieved a level of quantum resistance with its custom dynamic WireGuard configuration. At the moment, Cover.me is working to ship a better and more complete post-quantum solution.
Cover.me Free generates a random username and an internally-assigned (not public) IP deal with when customers connect with a server. Any knowledge associated to their session hyperlinks solely to that ID. The corporate says that this implies utilization knowledge stays nameless and unconnected to your actual, public IP deal with.
Like plenty of VPNs, Cover.me Free’s apps embrace crash reporting and associated telemetry options which could ship app utilization and troubleshooting info again to the corporate. This knowledge is anonymized and never linked to you personally. It helps Cover.me decide if plenty of customers are having issues connecting to a sure nation – not that you just, specifically, are.
Lastly, as a cherry on high, Cover.me had its no-logs policy efficiently audited in 2024. It is a good basis to construct on, and we’d prefer to see the service decide to annual audits of its insurance policies, apps, and servers.
Privateness and safety rating: 6/10
Monitor document
Cover.me was based over 13 years in the past and is presently primarily based in Labuan, Malaysia, and owned by a Malaysia-based IT safety firm, eVenture Ltd. The supplier additionally has a second workplace in Zagreb, Croatia, in accordance with its LinkedIn web page.
The VPN makes some spectacular claims, together with that it was the primary BSC VPN to supply IPv6 and WireGuard help, and that it was one of many first providers to implement WireGuard in a privacy-friendly way.
In mid-2024, Cover.me printed the outcomes of a privateness audit performed by Securitum. The safety consultancy inspected server configurations, interviewed Cover.me workers, reviewed deployment procedures, and extra. Cover.me didn’t publish the total report, sadly, and as an alternative printed a abstract of the outcomes. The excellent news is that the abstract nonetheless incorporates loads of element.
General, the audit was constructive with Securitum stating: “On account of the audit, it was confirmed, that declared by Cover.me no-logs coverage is certainly utilized, and the audit didn’t reveal any points on VPN container that would result in a compromise of consumer privateness.”
We’re blissful to see Cover.me put money into its transparency, however there’s extra that might be carried out. We’d prefer to see Cover.me endure extra common audits of various varieties (protecting the supplier’s apps, for instance) and publish the total report afterwards.
The one blemish on Cover.me’s document we discovered was a Mac app bug found in 2019. The bug presumably allowed a privilege escalation, a sort of exploit that malware might use to accumulate additional rights in your system, maybe infect your system, or trigger different points. That is unhealthy as safety vulnerabilities go, however it’s not unusual; NordVPN had three of these reported in 2018.
Monitor document rating: 7/10
Buyer help
A variety of free VPNs don’t supply buyer help to their consumer base. The excellent news is that Cover.me Free bucks this pattern, and clients have entry to 24/7 technical help.
There are additionally group boards. These are a helpful useful resource for folk preferring to do their very own troubleshooting, and different customers are usually blissful to share their very own experiences and concepts that you just received’t hear from buyer help. Sadly, these boards aren’t as energetic as they might be, so you could find yourself ready some time for a response.
Cover.me Free’s help website incorporates an enormous variety of detailed articles, which is nice, however there’s not plenty of materials for inexperienced persons. The FAQ web page warns that “port 25 is blocked for safety causes”, as an example, however doesn’t try to clarify what port 25 is, why it issues, or why a consumer ought to care.
Thankfully, when you’ve got any burning questions or wish to make clear your confusion, free customers get full entry to the Cover.me Free help staff. We opened a reside chat session, reached place 1 within the queue, and an agent joined us inside seconds. After we raised an e mail ticket, we obtained a useful reply in underneath half an hour, which is impressively fast – and a a lot quicker response time than we’ve seen with many paid VPNs.
Buyer help rating: 8/10
Pricing and plans
As Cover.me Free is the restricted model of the full-fat Cover.me subscription, the plan naturally comes with notable omissions which are solely obtainable to paying clients. These embrace:
- Entry to 91 server places
- 10 simultaneous connections
- Port forwarding
- SOCKS5 proxy
- SmartGuard advert, tracker, and malware blocker
- Bolt “Quick Proxy” know-how (velocity booster)
- Multi-hop
With a premium 2-year plan coming in at $2.69 per 30 days, Cover.me’s premium providing is on the extra reasonably priced aspect – and is even cheaper than NordVPN at $3.09. Nevertheless, when you think about NordVPN’s general roster of instruments, strong safety, and unbeatable streaming energy, Cover.me does not fairly stack up. Plus, Surfshark’s 2-year $1.99 deal is much more of a steal.
Pricing and plans rating: 5/10
Must you use Cover.me Free?
Cover.me Free does an honest job of holding its personal towards different free suppliers available on the market, however the fact is that you would be able to get much more for nothing elsewhere. The clunky Home windows dashboard actually lets the service down – different suppliers do it higher.
Then again, should you can deal with having a single system connection and take care of a couple of hiccups throughout setup, Cover.me Free’s customizable instruments and options are among the finest available on the market.
Having the ability to use the service with out handing over an iota of private info is a powerful plus, too. So, should you’re on the lookout for a free VPN that’ll have your again throughout your day-to-day shopping, with an audited no-logs coverage, Cover.me Free might be value investigating.
General rating: 64/100