Private Internet Access vs TunnelBear Comparison

• 1 month: Billed monthly, no discount; PIA's own pricing page states this autorenews at the same rate
• 1 year: $39.95 for the first year; PIA's own pricing page states this autorenews annually at the same $39.95 — but several independent aggregators report a jump to roughly $56-57/yr (~$4.70-4.75/mo) instead, a discrepancy this review could not independently reconcile
• 3 years + 3 months: $79 billed every 3 years (3 bonus months included in the discount); PIA's own pricing page states this also autorenews at the same $79 rate, subject to the same unresolved renewal-price discrepancy noted above

• Unlimited, 1 month: Billed monthly, no discount
• Unlimited, 1 year: $59.88 billed every 12 months; TunnelBear's own checkout authorization text states future renewal terms are charged at the same $59.88 — a confirmed flat rate, not a discounted intro price. TunnelBear does not offer a standard 30-day money-back guarantee, reviewing refund requests case by case instead
• Unlimited, 3 years: $120.00 billed once every 3 years; a one-time non-recurring charge per TunnelBear's own checkout flow, not an auto-renewing subscription — resubscribing after 3 years would be a new purchase at whatever pricing is current then, not a guaranteed renewal at this rate. Same case-by-case refund policy as the annual term

Second of two independent Deloitte audits under the ISAE 3000 (Revised) standard: the first, completed as of June 30, 2022, examined VPN server network, configuration, and management systems against PIA's stated privacy policy; the second, referenced in a blog post updated April 25, 2024 (the audit's own completion date isn't stated more precisely than that), added a review of PIA's dedicated-IP token system. Beyond the audits, PIA's no-logs claim has been tested adversarially in at least two documented US court cases (a 2016 FBI investigation and a 2018 federal hacking trial) where subpoenas produced zero user data — a different, arguably stronger kind of evidence than a commissioned audit.

8th consecutive annual independent security audit, a white-box review (full source code, configuration, and backend access) conducted over 44 working days by 8 senior Cure53 auditors, blog post announcing completion published November 24, 2025. This round found 10 vulnerabilities of medium severity or higher plus 3 low-severity issues, all acknowledged and addressed or mitigated per TunnelBear. The prior (7th) audit, published February 2024, found 7 issues of medium risk or higher (5 medium, 2 high) out of 13 total. Unlike several other frequently-audited providers reviewed on this site, TunnelBear's audits consistently surface real, non-trivial findings each year rather than clean reports — presented here as a distinct trust profile (transparent about real issues, not a spotless record) rather than smoothed over.

Operating entity TunnelBear LLC (Delaware). Data storage and operations remain under Canadian law, per TunnelBear's own privacy policy.

As of a January 2026 expansion (up from 84 countries), including all 50 US states. PIA no longer publishes an exact total server count, and some locations use virtual servers geo-located elsewhere (e.g. India/Indonesia servers physically sited in Singapore/UK).

Per TunnelBear's own homepage; exact total server count not published on the pages checked for this review.