Tuxler VPN

Tuxler is primarily a free VPN service (with a premium option if you want it) that offers access to over 70,000 constantly rotating IP locations. The service lets you protect your private information online and access content that would otherwise be unavailable in your actual location.

According to the provider, its user base has so far made over 400,000,000 connections from all over the world.

Price

The vendor offers a forever-free service with unlimited bandwidth, secure connections, 70,000+ new IPs every month and 10 location changes.

However, it also has a Premium version that it claims is 4x faster, with 100 daily location changes and access to all locations (whereas the Free version offers “limited access to locations”). It also allows you to pick a specific city you want to appear in, while the Free version only lets you choose a country. The Premium version is charged monthly at $7.99/month.

There is no money-back guarantee on the table and the provider states that there’s no need for one since the Free version offers all features and can be used for as long as you like as a trial. However, we’d argue that this is not entirely true, since the Premium version is supposed to be 4 times faster, but the user has no way to verifying this without paying.

(Image credit: Future)

Alternatives

As a free VPN, it's inevitable that Tuxler has disadvantages that make it far inferior to some of the industry’s major players, such as ExpressVPN, NordVPN, Surfshark, or CyberGhost.

Unlike the alternatives, it has no mobile apps, its money-back guarantee is non-existent and it lacks information about data logging practices. However, it does have one important advantage over all of them: it’s completely free.

Streaming

Thanks to its ability to hide its presence from domains, Tuxler can more easily unblock the content that is normally not available in some parts of the world, which is especially important to users who want to access localized content on services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, BBC iPlayer, and others.

However, its free speeds are so low that we’re not so sure you’ll be able to stream this content, especially in HD. We tried streaming some BBC iPlayer content and it was painfully slow. That said, Tuxler promises its speeds are four times better on the Premium tier.

About the company

The company running this VPN is called Tuxler Privacy Technologies, Inc. and is located in the picturesque city of Walnut Creek, California. It offers access to more than 300,000 IPs from over 182 different Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in 92 countries. These proxies constantly refresh themselves, which guarantees they will remain unblockable.

Privacy and encryption

There’s no information about what kind of encryption or transfer protocols it uses, other than some general details about what transfer protocols exist. After quite a long waiting period, we were told by the customer support that it uses RSA2048 with AES-256 encryption and torrenting is supported.

Tuxler’s Privacy Policy lists all the private information it collects from you when you use its website, but doesn’t say anything about data logged when using its apps and extensions. According to customer support, it logs source and destination IP addresses.

(Image credit: Future)

Support

Tuxler currently only works on Windows and Mac devices, for which it has simple and user-friendly apps, and there’s also a Chrome extension and Firefox add-on. Apps for iOS and Android are in the works, but otherwise that’s as far as its platform support goes as there are no manual installation options available.

At the time of writing, the Chrome extension had been downloaded by more than 70,000 users, and is rated 4.3 stars (out of 5). To work, the extension requires the Tuxler app to be installed on your device.

The Firefox add-on had 3.4 stars, as rated by 49 users, and has been installed 1,2500 times.

If you require any help using the VPN, you can try its FAQ section and blog, but since these may not be as helpful as you might hope, you can try the direct route - via email or contact form. 

Upon trying the email method, we got our response almost immediately, but it took some time before we got the actual answers we were looking for.

Speed and experience

We took this service and checked its download speeds on a 39.37Mbps testing connection and were left unimpressed by its performance.

The first server we connected to was in Germany and it delivered a measly 1.97Mbps. We then followed up with a server in the UK and got equally disappointing results: only 1.52Mbps. Interestingly, the download speeds picked up when we connected to servers in the US and India, which delivered 2.10Mbps and 2.15Mbps respectively.

In addition to heavily throttling download speeds, we noticed that uploads were also extraordinarily slow in comparison to the testing connection.

That said, the apps and browser extensions are exceptionally easy to use. The only options are switching locations, turning on/off the IP changing, choosing a country, city, and whether you want to use residential locations.

Verdict

Tuxler’s advantages include the fact that it’s a free service that uses real residential IPs, allowing you access to virtually any type of content and reducing the chance of someone discovering you’re using a VPN in the first place. 

However, these are overshadowed by its poor speeds (at least for the free version), the lack of any sort of a refund policy if you actually want to test its premium speeds, missing information on data collection and the absence of mobile apps. 

Tuxler comes nowhere near the industry giant, but is a good option if you’re looking for an always-free VPN for simple web browsing.