CyberGhost vs. NordVPN

There’s no shortage of cheap VPNs on the market. CyberGhost and NordVPN are two of the best-priced, with two-year plans coming in at under $4 a month with extra months thrown in for free. CyberGhost is the cheaper VPN, but we think NordVPN is the better one.

We learned this after putting CyberGhost and NordVPN through rigorous testing over three months. It involved multiple speed tests, several DNS leak assessments, and watching all our favorite movies on U.K. Netflix. NordVPN worked flawlessly every time, while CyberGhost struggled in a few areas. Let’s get into more detail on why NordVPN is our preferred pick.

The Similarities and Differences

After a quick scan of NordVPN’s and CyberGhost’s features, you’ll notice many similarities, such as their encryption technology and no-logs policies. However, there are also some significant differences that separate them.

CyberGhost vs. NordVPN In A Nutshell

If you’re in a hurry, here’s an overview of the key points of comparison between CyberGhost and NordVPN. This should give you a general idea of which VPN would work better for you, but as always, we encourage you to read our CyberGhost review and NordVPN review before pulling the trigger.

Their Key Similarities

As we dove further into the details of CyberGhost and NordVPN, these were the biggest similarities we found:

• Jurisdiction: CyberGhost is based in Romania, while NordVPN’s headquarters is in Panama. Both sit outside the jurisdiction of the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes alliance, which is a good thing because countries that are part of the alliance can force companies under their jurisdiction to hand over user data.
• Kill Switch: If your internet has a habit of dropping out, a kill switch can protect you by disabling all internet activity to stop anything from leaking out. NordVPN and CyberGhost include kill switches in all their plans.

• Netflix and Torrenting: CyberGhost and NordVPN gave us access to both Netflix and torrenting. That’s expected, as 30 percent of those who use VPNs do so to access better entertainment content.1 There were limitations though. With NordVPN, not all torrent clients worked well. We’ve had the best luck using uTorrent. With CyberGhost, not all locations had P2P servers, so trying to download torrent involved a bit of trial-and-error.
• Encryption: In its very essence, a VPN encrypts users’ online traffic. To do that, CyberGhost and NordVPN used AES-256 encryption, which is the industry standard and by far the hardest to crack using current technologies.2 We also had the option to switch to ChaCha20 (exclusive to the WireGuard/NordLynx protocol), which is faster and about as secure as AES.
• Split Tunneling: Split tunneling lets you run some connections through the VPN and the rest via your existing network. CyberGhost and NordVPN allow you to use this feature, but only on Windows and Android devices.
• DNS and WebRTC Leaks: We tested both VPNs for DNS and WebRTC leaks that could compromise our privacy. Both showed no signs of leaks.

• Customer Support: Lastly, CyberGhost and NordVPN both had 24/7 customer support via live chat and email as expected given that they have customers all over the world, although we wished there was phone support as well.

Their Key Differences

As we said earlier, there are some significant differences between CyberGhost and NordVPN. Here are the ones we think deserve your attention.

• Monthly Rates: Both VPNs made our list of the best cheap VPNs, but the length of our subscriptions ultimately decided which cost less. CyberGhost’s 24-month subscription had a lower monthly rate. However, NordVPN has a 12-month plan that’s cheaper than CyberGhost’s six-month subscription.

• Speed: During our tests, we measured how each VPN affected our normal upload speed, download speed, and ping. NordVPN made a smaller impact, as show in the table below. It was fast enough that we were able to upload videos to our YouTube channel3 without much delay, as if we were not using a VPN.

• Multi-hop: NordVPN can also offer more privacy using double VPN a.k.a. multi-hop. We had the option to encrypt our web traffic twice through two different VPN tunnels, a luxury CyberGhost didn’t give us.
• Simultaneous Connections: Both VPNs imposed a limit on the number of devices we could connect to their servers at any given time. With NordVPN, the limit was 10; with CyberGhost, it was seven.

• Logging Policy: Although many VPNs claim to have a “no-logging” policy, only a handful can live up to their claims. We found that CyberGhost and NordVPN in fact collected some of our data. While connected to the VPN, NordVPN also logged crash reports, in-app events, statistical data, and non-identifying device information. As for CyberGhost, they collected our VPN usage data like the version of the VPN we were running and the number of connection requests and successful connections. What matters, however, is that neither of them logged visited websites, downloaded files, and our IP addresses.

Who Won, CyberGhost or NordVPN?

CyberGhost and NordVPN both performed well in our tests, but all things considered, our final recommendation goes to NordVPN. It provided better privacy thanks to features like the double VPN and kill switch. Plus, it was more stable and reliable when we conducted our tests.

We should also mention that NordVPN offers additional features, either as freebies or add-on services. For free, NordVPN scanned our downloads for malware and blocked malicious websites. And as add-ons, we had the option to buy access to the NordPass password manager, NordLocker encrypted cloud drive, and NordProtect identity theft protection for a few dollars more per month.

That’s not to say that CyberGhost isn’t good. It’s a great VPN that’s listed in our 2024 list of the best VPNs. It’s secure and fast, and the apps were user-friendly. But since you’re here to find out which is better, our answer is NordVPN.