Windscribe review

The short answer

Windscribe is a Canadian VPN known for its free plan, which gives 10 GB of data a month. Its strongest piece of evidence is a court case. Greek prosecutors charged its CEO personally over traffic from one of its servers, and the case was dismissed in 2025. Windscribe says it had no logs to hand over. Its apps are largely open source, and it says its servers run from RAM only. The weak spots are a thin public audit record and a refund policy with tight limits.

Nobody at Tunnelcheck has tested Windscribe. This review is based on Windscribe's own pages and blog posts, listed under Sources. Our methodology page explains what a research review covers.

Who owns Windscribe and where is it based?

Windscribe is run by Windscribe Limited, which its terms describe as registered in the province of Ontario, Canada. Disputes go to the courts in Toronto. Its timeline gives April 20, 2016 as the founding date. The founders listed on its about page are Yegor Sak (CEO), Alex Paguis (CTO) and Mark Ulicki (CIO).

Windscribe says it is self-funded and has no venture capital or outside funding. We found no parent company. Canada is part of the Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing alliance with the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand. For a VPN that keeps no logs, the country matters less than what the servers record, but some readers weigh it. See our VPN ownership page for other providers.

Does Windscribe keep logs? What the audits say

Windscribe says it does not keep records of your connections, IP address timestamps or session logs. Its transparency report covers copyright (DMCA) notices and law-enforcement data requests. For both, it says exactly zero requests were complied with because it had no relevant data.

The independent evidence is thinner. Windscribe's timeline lists one third-party security audit, from May 2024, covering its FreshScribe server stack and published without redactions. The timeline doesn't name the auditor, and we couldn't confirm the auditor from Windscribe's pages. A 2023 Windscribe blog post links code audit reports for its desktop and mobile apps without naming an auditor or year. We found no no-logs assurance report from an outside firm. Our audit tracker explains why those differences matter.

Security features and protocols

Windscribe offers WireGuard, IKEv2, OpenVPN over UDP and TCP, and two disguise options, Stealth and WStunnel, which wrap VPN traffic to look like ordinary web traffic on networks that block VPNs. It added WireGuard in July 2020. See WireGuard vs OpenVPN.

• Firewall, Windscribe's name for a kill switch. It blocks all connections outside the VPN tunnel. See our kill switch guide.
• RAM-only servers since August 2022. Windscribe says a seized server holds nothing, because nothing is written to disk.
• R.O.B.E.R.T., a blocker for ads, trackers and domains you choose.
• Decoy traffic, launched on Android in May 2022, which adds fake background traffic to make traffic analysis harder.
• Windscribe's homepage lists servers in more than 69 countries and 135 cities.

Windscribe's track record: the Greek court case

Windscribe published its account on April 24, 2025. Greek authorities, working with INTERPOL, traced the breach of a Greek server to an IP address belonging to a Windscribe server in Finland. Because the hosting account was in CEO Yegor Sak's name, prosecutors charged him personally with illegal access to an information system. On April 11, 2025, after nearly two years, the case was dismissed and Sak was found not guilty.

Windscribe says the case shows its no-logs policy in practice: there was nothing to link the server address to a user. This is Windscribe's own telling, and we couldn't find an independent court record. It still shows the company stood behind its policy under real legal pressure.

Streaming and torrenting with Windscribe

Windscribe's streaming page claims you can stream from anywhere. Watching another country's catalog usually breaks the streaming service's terms, and services block VPN addresses, so results change. Don't buy any VPN on a streaming promise. See why streaming services block VPNs.

Windscribe's terms don't mention P2P or torrenting by name. They do say Windscribe may restrict accounts for data transfers far beyond typical individual use. In an unusual clause, they forbid using the service to help copyright enforcement through data collection. Windscribe offers port forwarding, which lets a torrent client accept incoming connections. Pro accounts get one temporary port at a time, lasting seven days, and permanent ports need a separately bought static IP. Free users don't get it.

A VPN hides torrent traffic from your internet provider. It does not make copyright infringement legal. See is torrenting illegal? and legal torrent sources.

Apps and devices

Windscribe says it has no device or connection limit. It publishes the source code for its desktop apps (Windows, macOS, Linux), Android app and browser extension on GitHub, and says it has done so since 2021. Its changelogs also list apps for Android TV, Apple TV, Fire TV, Chrome, Edge and Firefox.

What you get on the free plan

Windscribe's homepage says you get 10 GB of data every month once you sign up and confirm your email. A 2022 Windscribe blog post said free users could reach servers in 11 countries. Windscribe also sells a Build A Plan option: $1 per location per month, minimum $3, with each location adding 10 GB of data. Free VPNs vary a lot. Our guide to whether free VPNs are safe explains what to check, and best free VPNs compares the options.

Price and refund

On 2026-11-13, Windscribe's upgrade page showed Pro at $9.00 a month on the monthly plan or $69 a year, which works out to $5.75 a month. The yearly plan has no separate introductory price shown. Check the official pricing page before you buy.

The refund rules are strict. You must ask within 7 business days of the first payment, and your usage must be under 10 GB. Renewals aren't refundable, and Windscribe expects a technical problem it couldn't fix. If you want to try it first, the free plan is the safer route. Our VPN prices page compares refund terms.

What we couldn't verify about Windscribe

• Who ran the 2024 audit. Windscribe's timeline describes a third-party audit of its server stack without naming the firm, and we didn't find the report on the pages we read.
• The court record. Our account of the Greek case comes from Windscribe's own blog. We didn't find the Greek court's decision or independent press coverage.
• Current free-plan locations. The 11-country figure comes from a 2022 blog post. The homepage confirms the 10 GB allowance but not the current location count.
• Server hosting. Windscribe says its servers run from RAM, but the pages we read don't say which hosting companies it uses or whether it owns any hardware.

These gaps are why Windscribe sits one step below the providers with several named audits. Our VPN audits page shows the comparison.

Who Windscribe suits, and who should look elsewhere

• Suits: people who want a free plan with a usable data allowance and a company that has defended its no-logs claim in court.
• Suits: households with many devices, since there's no device cap.
• Look elsewhere: if you want several independent audits with named auditors. Proton VPN and Mullvad have longer records.
• Look elsewhere: if you want a generous refund window.