ExpressVPN vs TunnelBear

Both of these decided that the way to win is to ask nothing of the person using them. They arrived at very different products anyway, because ExpressVPN spent its simplicity budget on making a broad product feel effortless and TunnelBear spent it on having less product.

Two simple apps, one much narrower

ExpressVPN connects without configuration, gets through networks that interfere with VPN traffic automatically, ships apps for televisions, and has a browser extension that works on its own rather than as a switch for the desktop app. Its servers hold nothing on disk and rebuild on every restart.

TunnelBear has split tunnelling, obfuscation, no cap on simultaneous devices and a kill switch that leaked under testing. That is nearly the whole list. No Linux app, nothing for a television, no multi-hop, no ad blocking, no port forwarding, and support pages that state directly that getting past regional blocks is not a thing the company pursues.

The one place TunnelBear is unambiguously ahead is device count: unlimited against ExpressVPN's ten, and that applies to its free plan as well.

What renewal does to each bill

TunnelBear's yearly plan renews at the price it charged, with nothing sold separately. ExpressVPN's introductory rate covers twenty-eight months and then renews at roughly triple. Over two terms that gap is larger than any feature difference on this page.

On evidence they are closer than either would like. TunnelBear has been assessed by Cure53 most years since 2017, but the 2024 audit was never published and exists only as a late company summary. ExpressVPN's KPMG review covered the controls on a single day rather than over a period, its apps are closed and have not been examined since 2024, and Kape Technologies owns it alongside two rival VPNs.

TunnelBear has been owned by McAfee since 2018 and contracts through a Delaware company despite running from Toronto, with Canada inside the five-country intelligence agreement. The British Virgin Islands, where ExpressVPN sits, is outside every one.

Which should you choose?

Choose TunnelBear if you want a bill that never changes and a device count that never binds, and the feature list as it stands is genuinely enough. Choose ExpressVPN if you want speed, a Linux client, television apps or a jurisdiction outside the agreements, and you will handle the renewal.

If the renewal is the sticking point and TunnelBear is too thin, Windscribe sits between them: unlimited devices, a stable price, and a much longer feature list than TunnelBear's.