Which is better CyberGhost or NordVPN? [Test Results 2022]
There are a lot of online threats out there, from hackers trying to break into your devices and steal your data to trackers and surveillance agencies spying on the sites you visit and the files you download. Getting a VPN is one of the best ways to defend yourself against these different threats and enjoy your online activities with freedom and ease, but which one to choose?
Well, CyberGhost and NordVPN are two of the names you tend to hear a lot when talking about the best VPNs in the business, and they both rank highly in terms of speeds, security, performance, and customer support. They have many things in common and there are plenty of reasons to recommend them, but there are a few key differences to keep in mind.
Our side-by-side comparison guide to CyberGhost and NordVPN will cover all those big differences, as well as highlighting some of the top similarities between these brands and helping you come to a conclusion regarding which is best-suited to meet your needs. We’ll cover everything, from price and performance to unique features and capabilities, so let’s get started.
In this NordVPN vs CyberGhost comparison report, we will cover the following areas:
• Top selling points
• Speed tests
• Prices
• Features
• Security and Encryption
• Privacy
• Simultaneous Connections
• Customer Support
Now let’s dive into the details of our comparison report.
Top Selling Points – Let’s get to know them
Further down the page, we’ll take a look at how CyberGhost and NordVPN compare when it comes to individual aspects and areas like pricing, value for money, features, and security standards. But to start off our comparison guide, let’s first simply look at what each brand brings to the table and highlight the key selling points for both providers.
We’ll begin with CyberGhost. Based out of Romania, this leading VPN is known for its affordability and general value for money. It’s one of the best VPNs to choose for budget-conscious shoppers who don’t want to make any compromises on quality or performance, and the team behind CyberGhost goes to great lengths to offer excellent user experiences.
As the name implies, a big part of the CyberGhost experience is focused on helping users feel like ghosts online, allowing them to enjoy total privacy and absolute anonymity as they browse websites, download files. So, you can expect maximum privacy protection when you choose this brand.
When it comes to NordVPN, this is one of the most established and trusted brands in the VPN industry today. Ranking highly in every expert list of the best VPNs around, NordVPN is used by countless people around the world and is held in particularly high esteem for its security and privacy standards.
With no logs policies, strong security protocols, and dozens of advanced features like double VPN, Onion over VPN, obfuscated servers, kill switches, dedicated IP addresses, and more, NordVPN is one of the most reliable VPNs you can choose if you really care about security, but it also performs well for speed, and casual usage, too.
Speed Tests
One of the key factors that many people take into consideration when looking at which VPN to choose and trying to decide which VPN is the best for them is speed. VPNs can affect your internet speeds in a variety of ways; some of them may slow you down, others won’t really cause any changes, and some can even speed up your connections.
So how do CyberGhost and NordVPN compare in this category? Well, in order to find out the answer to that question, we put both of them to the test. We set up both VPNs and tried connecting to different servers around the world in popular locations like Los Angeles, New York, London, and Paris, then tested out our upload and download speeds, along with ping times.
The results were conclusive: NordVPN is able to offer better speeds overall than CyberGhost, almost anywhere in the world. CyberGhost still offers decent speeds in the vast majority of situations, but NordVPN outperforms it more often than not. So, if you want to get a VPN that will provide you with the fastest possible connections, NordVPN is the one to choose.
Prices
When you’re signing up for any kind of subscription or service, you need to take the cost into consideration and work out what kind of value for money you’re getting from the company in question. Prices of VPNs can vary quite a lot, with some providers doing a much better job than others of keeping their costs low and affordable for all, so how about NordVPN and CyberGhost?
CyberGhost offers four different subscription plans in total: monthly, yearly, two-year, and three-year. If you subscribe to one of the longer plans, you’ll get way cheaper prices per month. For instance, the base monthly price is $12.99, but if you choose the three-year plan with CyberGhost, you’ll be paying under $3/month instead.
In terms of money-back guarantees, you’ll get a 45-day trial period with CyberGhost and can cancel your subscription at any time during those 45 days for a full refund if you’re not happy. The company also offers some great sales and discounts throughout the year and lets new users pay via various methods, like PayPal and Bitcoin.
NordVPN, meanwhile, offers three plans to choose form: monthly, yearly, and two-year. As with CyberGhost, you’ll pay less for the longer plans. The base monthly cost is $11.95, which is cheaper than CyberGhost, and the minimum price is a little under $4 if you opt for the two-year offering, and you can save even more by signing up during promos and sales events.
With NordVPN, you get a 30-day money-back guarantee period and you can choose between a range of payment methods including cards, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, cryptocurrencies, and PayPal. You can also opt to pay a little more for email protection if you want it.
Overall, the cheapest possible plan is the three-year offering from CyberGhost, so if you want to save the most money on a VPN, CyberGhost is the one for you, but the prices aren’t too different between each provider.
Features
As long as you choose a trustworthy VPN from a reliable provider, you’ll be able to use it to encrypt your connections across a range of devices and platforms. VPNs help you stay safe online, access geo-blocked content, and browse the internet more freely. However, many of the top VPNs also come with an array of additional features for users to enjoy as well.
When it comes to features, CyberGhost has quite a lot to offer. You can use it for split tunneling, set up your own dedicated IP address for a small extra fee, enjoy ad-blocking and malicious site scanning, and benefit from a kill switch to help protect your identity even if the VPN connection gets interrupted for any reason.
NordVPN goes even further with its features and is well-regarded throughout the VPN community for its wide array of extras and options. It comes with double VPN encryption, a kill switch, P2P servers, Onion over VPN, obfuscated servers, CyberSec for ad blocking, and more. You can also pay extra for the NordPass password manager and secure cloud storage, if desired.
Overall, both of these VPN providers perform admirably in the features department, giving users a lot of different functions and tools to play around with. Security enthusiasts and advanced users might be more enamored by NordVPN’s offerings, but CyberGhost still does more than enough to please most people.
Security and Encryption
Of course, one of the main uses of a VPN is for security purposes, and this is usually one of the primary concerns for people when trying to find the right VPN for them. Typically, the best VPNs are able to offer the strongest levels of encryption to strongly secure each connection, along with other advanced security features.
CyberGhost is pretty impressive once again in this area, making use of 256-bit encryption and some of the best security protocols, like OpenVPN and IKEv2. It doesn’t use WireGuard, which is something that is lacking from the CyberGhost package for now, and it doesn’t offer double VPN protection either, but it has a kill switch and works wonderfully for securing connections.
NordVPN more than matches CyberGhost in this category. In fact, it’s usually regarded as the very best VPN in the industry from a security standpoint. It uses a 256-bit cipher encryption, OpenVPN and IKEv2 protocols, and WireGuard, in addition to extra security features mentioned earlier like kill switches and double VPN protection.
Overall, both CyberGhost and NordVPN share similar technology and features for security, but the former has a couple of minor gaps in its arsenal, while the latter covers pretty much all of the big bases. For these reasons, NordVPN is slightly stronger, security-wise.
Want to learn more about security? read our ultimate guide for VPN security
Privacy
As well as considering the security advantages of each of these providers, we also have to look at how they fare from a privacy point of view, as some VPNs tend to be a lot more protective towards user data, while others can store or even share that data with other companies and agencies.
One of the best ways to find out about the privacy policies of VPN providers is to look at their locations. CyberGhost is based out of Romania in Europe. It’s a decent location from a privacy perspective, not tied in with any of the big surveillance networks like Five Eyes or Nine Eyes and not bound by other rules or regulations that could put users at risk. CyberGhost also has a no logs policy, promising not to store or use user data in any way.
NordVPN, meanwhile, has its headquarters in the nation of Panama, which is also one of the best locations for VPN privacy. It’s not under the jurisdiction of EU or US authorities, nor is it a part of any of the major surveillance alliances across the globe. NordVPN also has a no logs policy in place, which has been independently audited, and it really respects user data, according to reviews and reports.
These two providers are something of an even match when it comes to privacy. They’re both based in strong countries that respect users’ rights, and they both have strong no logs policies, so you shouldn’t need to worry about any privacy issues, no matter which one you choose.
Simultaneous Connections
Usually, when it comes to VPNs, you don’t just want to use them on a single device. Most people want to be able to get the same protections and benefits on their computer, phone, laptop, tablet, and so on, making use of simultaneous connections to share their protections with family and roommates.
If you choose CyberGhost, you’ll be able to use a single subscription across seven devices at the same time, which is pretty impressive, especially when we consider that most other big brands in the VPN industry cap their simultaneous connections at about four or five.
With NordVPN, meanwhile, you’ll get a maximum of six simultaneous connections at any one time, which is still a respectable total and more than enough for most users, but it’s clear to see that, as CyberGhost offers a higher number of connections, it’s the winner in this particular category.
Customer Support
Many of the best VPN providers also put in the time and effort to set up dependable, reliable customer support departments with live chat systems and detailed tutorials to help answer your questions and guide you through the usage and features of your chosen VPN.
Once more, CyberGhost impresses us here with its customer support. It runs a live chat system on its official site, so you can head on over to the site at any time and speak to a customer service representative in a matter of minutes. The site also has FAQs and tutorial articles too, so you should be able to get the assistance you need without too much hassle.
NordVPN offers a very similar service. It has a live chat window, available for all users throughout the week, as well as an email address you can contact with less pressing demands. There’s also a Help Center section with tutorials, guides, and step-by-step instructions for setting up your VPN and making the most of its features.
There’s no clear winner here, as both companies have put a lot of effort into their customer support and both of them aim to help their users as much as possible.
CyberGhost vs NordVPN – Which One’s Better?
Overall, this comparison of CyberGhost and NordVPN shows that both of these brands are easy to recommend. They both excel nicely in all the areas that matter the most like speed, security, privacy, and performance too. They’re well-matched in most areas, with no clear winner in a lot of the categories listed above.
With that said, we still have to select a winner, and in this case, that winner has to be NordVPN. CyberGhost is still a super service and is more affordable too, but NordVPN is just a little bit faster, stronger, and more private when all is said and done.
