Surfshark vs Mullvad

This is a genuine trade rather than a better and a worse. Surfshark covers everything you own at a low rate that does not stay low. Mullvad covers five devices at a rate that does not change. Count your devices and most of the argument resolves itself.

Every device you own, against five

Surfshark places no cap on simultaneous connections. Mullvad allows five and the limit cannot be raised, which for one person is irrelevant and for a family of four with phones, laptops and a television is disqualifying. Mullvad also has no app for televisions at all, so a set-top device has to be covered at the router or not covered.

If your answer is comfortably under five, this section does not apply to you and the rest of the page decides it.

The price in year three

Surfshark's advertised rate covers twenty-seven months and then roughly doubles. Mullvad charges five euros a month at every term with no promotional period, and does not auto-renew — you top the account up when it runs down.

The wider difference is what each company knows. Mullvad asks for no email address, sets no password, accepts cash, and had its servers searched by police in 2023 without anything being taken. Surfshark holds a normal account and runs its fleet from memory with nothing on disk.

Then there is the kill switch. Surfshark's allowed traffic through after a restart under testing, and it does not support IPv6 — the guidance is to disable IPv6 on your network. Mullvad's kill switch holds, its clients are open source, and it blocks ads. Surfshark answers with multi-hop, which Mullvad also has, and obfuscation, which both have.

Which should you choose?

Choose Mullvad if five devices covers you, because on price, on what the company holds and on the features behaving as labelled it is ahead on every count. Choose Surfshark if you have more devices than five and covering all of them matters more than the caveats — which is a defensible trade, provided you make it knowingly.

If you need unlimited devices without Surfshark's kill switch problem, that combination is worth searching this directory for directly rather than settling here.