A side-by-side on jurisdiction, audit history, kill switch and what each service is genuinely good at.
| 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.