Auto Hide IP v5.4.5.2

hide.me is best known for its free plan, but there’s more to this VPN than that. It’s a whole tapestry of interesting choices, not all of which work. Our full hide.me VPN review has everything you need to know before you decide whether to drop money on this service.

Hide.me Review

hide.me is best known for its free plan, but there’s more to this VPN than that. It’s a whole tapestry of interesting choices, not all of which work. Our full hide.me VPN review has everything you need to know before you decide whether to drop money on this service.

This year, hide.me is celebrating its 10th anniversary. In the virtual private network industry, where services come and go like petals on the breeze, 10 years is a major achievement. We thought it was the perfect time for an in-depth, clear-eyed hide.me VPN review.

Key Takeaways:

• hide.me has a feature set to rival many more expensive VPNs, including a kill switch and split tunnels. However, some of the best features are limited to certain platforms.
• hide.me offers great speeds and low latency on nearby servers. However, speeds are a lot less consistent the farther you get from home.
• The hide.me free plan offers 10GB of data per month and limits server access and simultaneous connections.

hide.me may be best known for its free version, which protects 10 gigabytes of traffic per month at no cost whatsoever — you don’t even have to provide a payment method. The free version limits certain features of the VPN, but the core security measures are all there.

Of course, free stuff is always nice (check out some other great free VPN services), but do you get what you pay for with hide.me? Are its paid subscriptions worth forking out for? And does this VPN service actually do the one thing every VPN service must — keep you safe from prying eyes and let you experience the internet on your own terms? Our 2022 hide.me review has all the answers.

05/20/2021 Facts checked
08/15/2022 Facts checked
07/06/2023 Facts checked

• Is hide.me VPN Trusted?

hide.me VPN has never been caught leaking customer information. However, its home base in Malaysia is cause for concern.

hide.me is a well-priced VPN service provider with secure DNS leak protection, but it’s not worth it for everybody. Windows users get the most for their money, enjoying access to beta features.

hide.me is based in Malaysia, a country with a history of strict internet censorship laws.

hide.me is a virtual private network used for concealing your IP address online, encrypting internet communications and spoofing locations for shopping or viewing content.

Alternatives for hide.me VPN

• : PayPal, Credit card
• : Unlimited
• :
• :
• :
• :

Average speed
Download Speed 94 Mbps
Upload Speed 9 Mbps
Latency 3 ms
$5.75 / month (save 36%) (All Plans)
Windscribe

• : PayPal, Credit card, Bitcoin, PaymentWall
• : 5
• :
• :
• :
• :

Average speed
Download Speed 91 Mbps
Upload Speed 9 Mbps
Latency 5 ms
$6.66 / month (save 48%) (All Plans)
ExpressVPN

• : PayPal, Credit card, Google Pay, AmazonPay, ACH Transfer, Cash
• : 6
• :
• :
• :
• :

Average speed
Download Speed 94 Mbps
Upload Speed 9 Mbps
Latency 4 ms
$3.59 / month (save 72%) (All Plans)

• : PayPal, Credit card, bitcoin, Amazon Pay
• : 7
• :
• :
• :
• :

Average speed
Download Speed 73 Mbps
Upload Speed 9 Mbps
Latency 45 ms
$2.37 / month (save 81%) (All Plans)
Cyberghost
$3.21 / month (All Plans)

Strengths & Weaknesses

• Includes a kill switch
• Good speeds close to home
• Fairly extensive free version
• Double-hop servers

• Can’t unblock Netflix & Hulu
• Uneven speeds farther away
• Potentially weak protocols

Features

90 % – Excellent

hide.me is rich with VPN features, but access to them is inconsistent. You’ll find basic features like auto connect, a kill switch and split tunneling, plus more advanced options like a fixed IP address and dynamic port forwarding. Unfortunately, some of the most interesting features are limited to Windows app users, and others are too vague to pin down.

If you’re looking for an all-around free VPN you can be more certain about, our Windscribe review or ProtonVPN review are good places to start.

Since the free version is such a big part of hide.me’s appeal, we’ll start with the features available to free subscribers, then move on to the ones you have to pay for.

hide.me VPN Free Version Features

Free users get access to the majority of hide.me’s important features. The free plan is mainly limited in capacity, not options.

Users can program hide.me to launch immediately upon system startup. There’s a kill switch available, which shuts down your internet connection if your VPN connection drops for any reason, keeping you from accidentally broadcasting unprotected information.

Auto connect is surprisingly deep. You can have hide.me automatically connect as soon as the app opens (so if you have “launch on system startup” enabled, you won’t have to click a thing). However, you can also program it to automatically enable or disable the VPN on certain types of networks, or ask you what to do when it encounters those networks.

Then there’s split tunneling, which lets you decide which apps on your computer use the VPN tunnel. This is useful if you want to protect certain downloads while maintaining speed or access on others — say, downloading a large file through μTorrent while watching a streaming service hide.me can’t unblock.

The split tunnel option on hide.me lets you choose between a blocklist (apps on the list never use the VPN) and an allowlist (only apps on the list use the VPN). You can keep apps on both lists and toggle between them as needed.

Stealth Guard is a somewhat unique feature that takes the typical VPN kill switch to the next level. With Stealth Guard active, either some or all of your internet-capable apps will not work unless hide.me is also running. It’s useful if you sometimes forget to connect to your VPN before opening your browser or torrenting client. It can also help you limit background data usage.

Most of these features are basic, but they’re easy to use and work well. Some other features trek a bit further into the unknown.

hide.me Lab Features

Lab features are experimental features that hide.me isn’t yet ready to roll out to all users. For now, these are only available on the latest client apps for Windows, macOS, iOS and Android. There are several lab features — hide.me regularly tests new ones — but the two most prominent are multi-hop and Bolt.

Multi-hop grants users extra protection by routing your connection through two VPN servers rather than just one. Unlike most VPN providers, which have prescribed sets of multi-hop servers, hide.me lets you choose any two locations for your double hop. It’s a great idea, and we hope it’s available to all users soon.

The Bolt lab feature focuses on speed. According to hide.me, Bolt responds to two problems: ISP throttling and poor support for VPN clients on Windows operating systems (in this one case, it makes sense to restrict a feature to Windows).

If it really can reduce throttling, Bolt should be able to improve speeds even beyond your unprotected rates. Our tests told a different story. Bolt managed to improve latency somewhat, but download and upload speeds both fell. Keep in mind that Bolt is still in beta testing, and may get more consistent over time.

SmartGuard

Hide.me also comes with a security feature known as “SmartGuard.” If enabled, SmartGuard blocks ads, trackers and any malicious websites that might be trying to collect or steal your user data.

In addition to the automatic filtering, you can block or allow websites manually in the Hide.me application. Parents can also use the feature to set parental controls, blocking websites or apps that they don’t want their children to access.

hide.me Paid Features

Finally, let’s go over the features restricted to paid hide.me VPN subscribers. Premium users get 10 simultaneous connections (free users just get one), access to the full server network and unlimited data every month (as opposed to the free 10GB).

Premium plans include three other perks. There’s “streaming support,” a feature we couldn’t find anywhere else on the website, but which may refer to the tab on the server locations list that reports on each server’s suitability for streaming. The other two are luckily a bit clearer: dynamic forwarding and a fixed IP address.

A static IP address means your IP address will be the same every time you connect to hide.me. It’s useful for users who want to host their own web servers and protect them with hide.me, or if you want to be able to give a single fixed address to a trusted website.

Dynamic forwarding takes a bit more explanation. Port forwarding is the method by which local devices and web servers connect to exchange information. It can be used to create secure passages through a firewall, but using the same ports every time (static port forwarding) is a security risk.

With dynamic forwarding, you can connect securely to trusted servers through the hide.me VPN firewall, giving you another option for an extra layer of defense.

To recap: hide.me has a lot of great features, a few that don’t make much sense (especially Bolt) and a few more good ones that only some users can access. It’s a strong VPN, but we wish it wasn’t so patchy, especially with far stabler services like ExpressVPN on the market (find our ExpressVPN review here).

Hide.me Features Overview

Pricing

90 % – Excellent

hide.me is best known for its free plan, but its paid plans are worthwhile and affordable. Prices have dropped since we reviewed it last, so if you’re interested in this VPN, now might be a good time to make a move.

Premium subscribers get unlimited data, access to all servers and 10 simultaneous connections. That’s a great deal, eclipsed only by services like Surfshark that offer unlimited simultaneous connections (see our Surfshark review).

All hide.me premium plans are on the cheaper side, and offer good value for what you pay. Each comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

If you go with the 24-month deal, you’ll also get 2TB of encrypted cloud storage through hide.me’s partnership with Internxt. It’s a fairly middling zero-knowledge cloud storage service, but has a much higher value as a free perk.

Several payment methods are available, including credit and debit cards, PayPal and bitcoin. One glaring omission: an anonymous payment method other than cryptocurrency.

Is hide.me an Unlimited Free VPN?

No. Free users of hide.me face several limitations. You can only use 10GB of data per month — a decent amount, but disappointing when services like ProtonVPN offer free plans with no data caps. You’re also limited to five servers, all in North America or Western Europe. Lastly, free users can only use hide.me on one device at a time.

Auto Hide IP v5.4.5.2

Auto Hide IP allows you to hide your real IP to protect your privacy automatically on the Internet. Auto Hide IP enables you to surf anonymously and automatically change your IP address every few minutes. With it, you are able to conceal your identity online by showing them a fake IP, preventing identity theft and hacker intrusions, all with the click of a button. You can also select fake IP from different countries via Choose IP Country option and can Check IP directly.

Screenshots:

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Keywords:
auto hide ip ip-address select show anonymous

License type Shareware 1
Author’s homepage Visit the author’s site
Date added 19 Aug 2014
Downloads 62,793
File size 2.33 MB (
Operating systems Vista / Win2k / Win7 / WinXP 1

1 License and operating system information is based on latest version of the software.

Auto Hide IP 5.6.5.8

Software Informer

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Exposing our IP address to every site you visit when surfing the Web is not always a good idea. Not only hackers can do wonders with that sensitive information, it can also become a barrier when trying to access sites that impose restrictions to IPs established in certain countries. Auto Hide IP will let you surf the entire Web anonymously, granting you full access to any site without revealing your true identity.

Auto Hide IP comes in a simple yet effective interface that can launch at startup if so desired, a useful feature that guarantees that your identity is protected at all times. All you have to do then is open your browser and start surfing the Web without revealing your real IP to prying eyes. As an extra protection measure, you can also set the program to change your fake IP automatically every X number of minutes. The country where your fake IP comes from is also customizable – Auto Hide IP offers you a wide range of servers and countries from all around the globe.

Browsing the Web with a fake IP not only protects your sensitive information from hackers and other identity thieves, but it also allows you to send e-mails anonymously by inserting your fake IP in your messages’ headers instead.

Auto Hide IP is not free from slowdowns, but then again no program that puts an extra layer between you and the Web is. This may be a major drawback for large downloads or when loading heavy pages, but in most cases, it won’t prevent you from enjoying your Internet experience as you did before. The only thing that will prevent you from using Auto Hide IP is your browser. Regrettably, this useful tool is only good for less than 20 % of all Internet users, i.e., those who use Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Opera. The remaining 80 %, consisting of users whose default or favorite browser is Chrome, will have to look for another solution instead. So, if you happen to be among the lucky 20 %, Auto Hide IP can be an excellent and hassle-free way of protecting your identity to the outside world.