SkyVPN Review

Here’s a table showing all the information that SkyVPN logs:

As you can see in the table above, SkyVPN logs a lot of identifying user data, including your IP address and VPN server IP address. The statement in its privacy policy that it’s a “no-log network” is completely false.

It also claims to be different to other free VPNs that track you, saying “SkyVPN never does like that [sic],” but it actually logs a lot of unnecessary information that can easily be used to track a users’ online activity.

We’re extremely disappointed to see how vague SkyVPN’s privacy policy is. In the list of data it collects, we found it also saves “other technical data” and “certain information”, which could include anything.

SkyVPN is also quite open about how: “Ads appearing on SkyVPN Software or any of our websites may be delivered to users by advertising partners, who may set cookies.”

SkyVPN also states that it will hand over your data to whichever court asks for it.

Worrying Ties to Chinese Companies

SkyVPN, Inc. is based in Hong Kong. Its corporate address is registered at Rm 2103 Futura Plaza 111 How Ming St, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong.

Our free VPN ownership research revealed that SkyVPN Inc. is owned by Tengzhan Hongkong Limited (騰展香港有限公司), which refers to itself as SkyVPN Inc, Secure Sentry Communications, and Dingtone, depending on where you look.

The Tengzhan Group acquired Dingtone in 2015, according to this Chinese language disclosure document. There is no other reference in English language media. 

Tengzhen Hong Kong Ltd incorporated in December of that year, with You Xiumie (游秀妹) as director and sole shareholder.

None of this information is easily available to find. There is nothing on SkyVPN’s website that alludes to its ownership or corporate history anywhere.

You can’t trust SkyVPN. By law, the Chinese government could potentially demand logs and information on any of its users whenever it pleased, and SkyVPN would have to cooperate.

Similar to other low-tier free VPNs such as SuperVPN, SkyVPN reveals hardly any details about security on its website or app. We are extremely concerned about the lack of information about the app’s security.

SkyVPN’s website claims that the VPN uses AES-256 encryption. However, when we used Wireshark to test whether SkyVPN encrypted our traffic, we found that our traffic while connected to SkyVPN was left unencrypted.

As you can see in the screenshot of our test above, Wireshark was able to detect that we visited our test website, even when SkyVPN was active.

Essentially, SkyVPN fails to perform the basic function of a VPN service. Anyone intercepting your connection — including your ISP — will be able to see the web pages you visit and any other information you transmit online.

There’s also no public information regarding SkyVPN’s chosen VPN protocol, so we have no idea whether it’s OpenVPN, IKEv2, or possibly something far less secure, such as PPTP.

Combined, this lack of transparency and the total absence of functional encryption makes SkyVPN one of the most unsafe VPNs we’ve ever tested. For these reasons, we strongly suggest staying away from this appalling VPN service.

Kill Switch Stops IP Address Leaks on Windows

In our tests, SkyVPN successfully prevented our IP address from leaking when our connection dropped and when we switched between server locations.

We’re glad to see SkyVPN’s kill switch works on Windows, but it isn’t available on any other platform. In comparison, Proton VPN Free offers a functioning kill switch on desktop and mobile, so your IP address will be protected on all of your devices.

No IPv4, IPv6, or WebRTC Leaks

In our VPN leaks test, we found no major red flags. We are slightly concerned that SkyVPN uses Google DNS servers, but this isn’t unusual for lower-tier or medium-tier VPNs.

The majority of VPNs that own first-party DNS servers are top-tier VPN services like ExpressVPN.

SkyVPN didn’t leak our IP address, geolocation, or WebRTC details, but we still don’t recommend using the VPN. While it might work to hide your IP address temporarily, it doesn’t encrypt your data, and it logs a lot of other personally identifying information.

IP Leak Protection & Split Tunneling Available

SkyVPN does offer some other basic features on Windows, like IP leak protection and split tunneling (called Smart VPN). However, the majority of the time its 600MB data cap makes the app so unusable that these features aren’t worth it.

It’s worth noting that these are the bare minimum when it comes to advanced features in VPN services. There are simply much better free VPNs available with fully-featured apps.

Security Features We’d Like to See

SkyVPN is an unsafe VPN and needs to add a lot more features to its security suite. Here’s some absent features we’d like to see added to its apps:

Here’s a table showing SkyVPN’s speed test results on a 100Mbps baseline internet connection:

As the data above shows, SkyVPN couldn’t even reach 15Mbps on a local or international connection in our tests.

These speeds are absolutely awful and don’t even come close to matching reputable free VPNs like Windscribe Free. A 90% drop in download speeds is simply unforgivable.

The fact that the VPN performs similarly on lots of different servers suggests that SkyVPN might be throttling its download speeds, too.

Overall, we simply don’t recommend SkyVPN to anyone who’s going to browse the internet, stream video, or try online gaming. Its speeds are not fit for purpose.

The only upside to SkyVPN’s speeds are the decent local ping times (5ms), but even then the service is too slow for online games (or even downloading them).

To put its awful speeds into context, you can see how SkyVPN’s performance compares to other VPNs in the chart below:

SkyVPN unblocks the following streaming services:

SkyVPN Free fails to unblock any of Netflix’s global libraries. This means you can’t access the US, UK, or Japanese Netflix collections from overseas.

You might be able to access Netflix’s own content library of originals, but the VPN will disconnect after a couple hours due to its 600MB daily data allowance.

We also tested SkyVPN’s single UK server to see if it could bypass geo-restrictions on BBC iPlayer. We found it doesn’t unblock the streaming service at all.

If you want to use a VPN for Netflix or BBC iPlayer, you shouldn’t waste your time with SkyVPN. That’s especially the case with SkyVPN’s one-server mobile app. It has no UK server and the single US one doesn’t unblock Netflix.

Great alternatives to SkyVPN for streaming include PrivadoVPN Free, which can access US Netflix, and Windscribe Free, which can unblock 6 global Netflix libraries.

SkyVPN’s Streaming Performance Compared to Other Free VPNs

Here’s a quick summary of how SkyVPN performed in our torrenting tests:

Torrenting Attribute	Results
Average Download Bitrate	0.8MiB/s
Dedicated P2P Servers	0
Logging Policy	Intrusive Logging
Kill Switch	Yes
Port Forwarding	No

P2P file-sharing is permitted on some of SkyVPN’s servers. However, it explicitly states in its Terms of Service that P2P activity is not permitted on some servers, including Canada, France, the UK, and the US.

We tried torrenting on a UK SkyVPN server and our traffic was completely blocked. SkyVPN’s 600MB daily data cap means the VPN will likely disconnect before you finish downloading a file anyway, risking exposure of your true IP address.

We strongly suggest avoiding SkyVPN for torrenting because it also logs your original IP address and server IP address, which could reveal your torrenting activity.

Overall, SkyVPN is virtually unusable for torrenting purposes. Its restrictive daily data cap, slow speeds, and intrusive logging policy make it a bad choice and one of the worst VPNs for torrenting.

SkyVPN has no obfuscation features to hide the fact that you’re using a VPN, and we don’t even know what security protocol it uses — because it won’t tell us.

We tried testing SkyVPN on our Shanghai remote server. But when we installed and opened the app in China, we got a notification stating that the service is no longer available due to local regulations, and the app quit automatically.

You shouldn’t use SkyVPN in China or other highly-censored regions. If you need a free VPN to combat internet restrictions, we recommend using Windscribe Free instead.

It has sophisticated obfuscation protocols and a 85% success rate in the past year in China. It also has a much more generous data cap of 10GB per month.

Here’s an overview of the customer support options SkyVPN offers:

SkyVPN’s customer support needs serious improvement. It comes with an extremely limited FAQ section on its website and an email address for support. Not only are its resources sparse, they’re not actually that helpful.

While inspecting SkyVPN’s FAQs, we found it has outdated information on SkyVPN Free’s data allowance. It claims to have unlimited data but actually has a 600MB data cap, which was confirmed in our tests, as well as in its Terms of Service.

We contacted SkyVPN’s support email address multiple times over a period of several weeks to test how quick and helpful it was, but received no response to multiple emails.

The VPN service is missing some important customer support features that would make it easier to fix any problems with its app. This is very disappointing because we had serious issues with the app’s daily data allowance and couldn’t fix the problem.