A side-by-side on jurisdiction, audit history, kill switch and what each service is genuinely good at.
Short answers, based on our own captures and the data on this site.
We have no hands-on speed results for Mullvad in this session, so we do not claim a winner. hide.me's own numbers are in the table above and on the speed page.
We captured hide.me playing Netflix. We did not capture Mullvad in this session.
Not applicable: Mullvad was not part of the hands-on session.
The screenshots and recordings for hide.me are on its tests pages. We publish captures only for the VPN each site is about.
| hide.me | Mullvad | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | €11.99/mo billed monthly, or as low as €2.69/mo on the 24+2-month plan (€69.99 billed every 26 months) – every plan carries a “renews at the same price” guarantee | A flat €5/month regardless of plan length – no multi-year discount games |
| Jurisdiction | Malaysia – outside the 5-Eyes, 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes intelligence-sharing alliances | Sweden – notably a member of the 14-Eyes alliance, unlike hide.me's Malaysia |
| Free plan | A genuine lifetime free plan – no ads, no data-selling, no throttling, capped monthly data | No free plan |
| Simultaneous devices | Up to 10 simultaneous connections | 5 simultaneous connections |
| Server footprint | 2,600+ servers in 92+ countries, rated up to 10 Gbps each | Around 800 servers in a smaller, more curated set of countries |
| No-logs audit | Independently audited no-logs policy (Securitum, first audited 2015, re-audited yearly), a public transparency report published every year since 2013, and VPN Trust Initiative accreditation | Independently audited (Cure53, Assured AB) – and no account requires an email at all, just a randomly generated number |
| Kill switch | Stealth Guard – a per-app kill switch that automatically cuts internet if the VPN drops, plus Multihop double-VPN routing and Dynamic Port Forwarding | Always-on kill switch by default (not an optional toggle) |
The anonymous-account model is the real differentiator: no email, no name, cash and crypto accepted, an account number instead of a login. Few VPNs go this far. On jurisdiction, Mullvad is based in Sweden – notably a member of the 14-Eyes alliance, unlike hide.me's Malaysia. On audit history: independently audited (cure53, assured ab) – and no account requires an email at all, just a randomly generated number
hide.me's no-logs policy has been independently audited every year since 2015 by Securitum, it publishes a transparency report every year going back to 2013, and it holds VPN Trust Initiative accreditation – a longer, more repeated verification history than most VPN reviews can point to. Its Malaysia jurisdiction sits outside the 5-Eyes, 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes alliances, and Stealth Guard's per-app kill switch automatically cuts your connection the instant the VPN tunnel drops.
If Mullvad's specific strengths – the anonymous-account model is the real differentiator: no email, no name, cash and crypto accepted, an account number instead of a login. Few VPNs go this far – matter most to you, it's a reasonable pick. If a repeated, named third-party no-logs audit and a jurisdiction outside every major surveillance alliance are non-negotiable for your threat model, hide.me's track record is hard to match.
If you want to sign up without handing over ANY personal identifier – not even an email – Mullvad's anonymous accounts are unmatched. But its Sweden jurisdiction sits inside the 14-Eyes alliance, which is the opposite trade-off from hide.me's Malaysia base. Pick Mullvad for anonymous sign-up; pick hide.me if 14-Eyes-alliance jurisdiction is a hard requirement for your threat model.