Surfshark vs TunnelBear

Both of these let you connect as many devices as you like, which is the reason households compare them. Both also failed the same independent test, which is the reason this comparison is less comfortable than it looks.

Neither one charges per device

Surfshark places no cap on simultaneous connections and neither does TunnelBear, including on TunnelBear's free plan. For covering a family that removes the usual constraint from both sides, and the decision moves to what each one does once connected.

Surfshark does considerably more: multi-hop, ad blocking, obfuscation, and a fleet running from memory with nothing written to disk. TunnelBear has obfuscation, split tunnelling and a kill switch that leaked under testing, and then stops. There is no multi-hop, no ad blocking, no port forwarding, no Linux app and nothing for a television, and its support pages state that regional blocks are not something it works at.

Surfshark has apps for televisions. TunnelBear does not, which for a household covering screens is a concrete gap rather than a philosophical one.

Which protective features actually hold

Under independent testing, Surfshark's kill switch allowed traffic through after a restart. TunnelBear's was found to leak after a reboot and after a crash. Two products, the same failure, and it is the failure you cannot see happening — the exposure lands in the seconds after a reconnection you did not notice.

If that rules both out, it should, and the rest of this page is academic. Windscribe and Proton VPN both pass the test these two failed and both cover the same ground.

Surfshark also does not support IPv6, and its guidance is to disable IPv6 on your network rather than have the VPN handle it. TunnelBear does not claim IPv6 protection either.

On evidence TunnelBear has the longer history — Cure53 most years since 2017 — but its 2024 audit was never published. Surfshark's servers were assessed by Deloitte in June 2025 with a separate network test that December, which is more current. Both sit inside intelligence-sharing agreements: the Netherlands in the fourteen-country one, Canada in the five, and TunnelBear has been owned by McAfee since 2018.

Which should you choose?

Choose Surfshark if you want the broader product and a recent audit, and you will verify the kill switch yourself after a reboot. Choose TunnelBear if simplicity and a stable renewal price outweigh a feature list this short.

Choose neither if a kill switch that holds is non-negotiable, which is a defensible place to land here.