TunnelBear

Best for: people who value a genuinely easy-to-use app and want a provider that publishes real, warts-and-all audit results every year — not for anyone who needs fast, consistent speeds, live chat support, or a fully clean jurisdictional story.

Pros

• Eight consecutive annual Cure53 audits since starting the practice — a white-box review with full source code access each time, and TunnelBear publishes the actual vulnerability counts rather than just a “no issues found” summary
• GhostBear obfuscation disguises VPN traffic as regular HTTPS for restrictive networks, on top of standard WireGuard/OpenVPN/IKEv2 protocol support
• Genuinely easy-to-use apps across platforms, with a 4.5/5 average app store rating and one of the simpler setup experiences among VPNs reviewed
• Unmetered device connections on the Unlimited plan
• Competitive long-term pricing: $4.99/mo annually (confirmed flat at renewal per TunnelBear’s own checkout terms), $3.33/mo on the 3-year term
• P2P/torrenting now allowed on all servers, a reversed and more permissive policy than TunnelBear’s earlier stance

Cons

• Genuinely hybrid, confusing jurisdiction: legally incorporated as TunnelBear LLC in Delaware, USA (a Five Eyes founding member) since a 2018 restructuring under parent company McAfee, while data storage and governing law remain Canadian (also Five Eyes) — neither a clean non-Eyes jurisdiction nor a straightforward single-country story
• Unlike several other frequently-audited providers, TunnelBear’s audits keep finding real, non-trivial issues every year (10 medium-or-higher findings in the most recent round, 7 in the one before) rather than consistently clean results
• No live chat support at all — email ticketing only, with response quality reported as inconsistent
• Independent 2026 speed tests are mixed-to-weak: one tester found nearby-server peak speeds declining across rounds and described performance as behind most competitors, with slow connection times
• No port forwarding, and Netflix/streaming results are inconsistent enough that this isn’t a VPN to buy specifically for that
• Bitcoin payment was discontinued as of August 2025 — TunnelBear now only accepts credit cards, a reduction in payment-anonymity options
• No standard money-back guarantee window — refund requests are reviewed case by case instead

No-Logs Audit & Trust

TunnelBear has published eight consecutive annual independent security audits from Cure53, each a white-box review with full access to source code, configuration, and backend systems. What sets these apart from several other frequently-audited providers reviewed on this site is that TunnelBear actually publishes the real vulnerability counts each year rather than a blanket “passed” summary: the 7th audit found 7 issues of medium risk or higher (out of 13 total), and the 8th found 10 medium-or-higher issues (plus 3 low-severity) — all reported as acknowledged and fixed or mitigated, but a genuinely bumpier track record than the largely clean results some other multi-audit providers report. Jurisdiction is a real complication: following McAfee’s 2018 acquisition, the operating entity was restructured from the Canadian TunnelBear Inc. into TunnelBear LLC, incorporated in Delaware, USA — while TunnelBear’s own privacy policy states that data storage and governing law remain Canadian, with offices still in Toronto. Both the US and Canada sit inside the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, so this doesn’t offer the clean non-Eyes jurisdiction some other reviewed providers have.

Pricing

The Unlimited plan costs $9.99/month with no discount, dropping to $4.99/month billed annually ($59.88 every 12 months) or $3.33/month billed once every three years ($120 one-time) — genuinely competitive long-term rates. The 1-year plan’s checkout authorization text explicitly discloses that renewal terms are charged the same $59.88 — a confirmed flat rate, not a discounted intro price with a hidden jump. The 3-year plan is a one-time, non-recurring charge rather than an auto-renewing subscription. There’s a free tier limited to 2GB/month. Unlike most other VPNs reviewed on this site, TunnelBear doesn’t offer a standard money-back guarantee window; refund requests are handled case by case instead, which adds real uncertainty for anyone wanting a guaranteed way out.

Security & Protocols

TunnelBear supports WireGuard, OpenVPN, and IKEv2, with VigilantBear (kill switch) and SplitBear (split tunneling) as standard features. GhostBear, its obfuscation mode, disguises OpenVPN traffic as ordinary HTTPS to get past VPN-blocking firewalls — useful on restrictive networks — though it’s only available on Windows, macOS (the older v4 app, not the current v5), and Android, not iOS. There’s no port forwarding on any server. Simultaneous device connections are unmetered on the Unlimited plan.

Servers, Speed & Streaming

TunnelBear operates in 47 countries; an exact current total server count isn’t published on the pages checked for this review. Independent 2026 speed results are genuinely mixed: one test found roughly 76%/75% download/upload retention against a 10 Mbps baseline connection, reasonable in relative terms, while a separate tester found nearby-server peak speeds actually declining between test rounds and described overall performance as behind most competitors, with connection times sometimes exceeding 10 seconds even locally. Netflix and streaming results are inconsistent — some libraries work on specific servers in some tests, while other tests find TunnelBear’s IPs blocked outright — not a service to choose specifically for streaming. P2P/torrenting is now allowed fleet-wide, though without port forwarding to help with seed speeds.

Jurisdiction & Ownership

TunnelBear was founded in Toronto in 2011 and acquired by McAfee, a US security company, in March 2018. The operating entity was subsequently restructured from the Canadian TunnelBear Inc. into TunnelBear LLC, incorporated in Delaware — while the team, offices, and (per TunnelBear’s own privacy policy) data storage and governing law remain in Canada. It’s a genuinely hybrid setup rather than a clean single-jurisdiction story, and both the US and Canada belong to the Five Eyes alliance regardless of which entity is considered controlling.

Our Rating

Rating: 7.4/10