Steganos VPN Review 2024: Before You Buy, Is It Worth It?

Overall, Is Steganos Fast? No, Its Servers are Slow Across the Board

I struggled to find Steganos servers with fast speeds. I switched between servers in Great Britain, Spain, the US, France, and Germany. However, I didn’t see any overall improvements in speeds.

Speed Test Results

Sadly, Steganos’ speeds weren’t fast enough for streaming, gaming, and torrenting across all the servers. I started with a base internet speed of 22Mbps, but when I connected with Steganos, it dropped to an average of 9Mbps. This slow speed made it impossible to stream lag-free on most of the streaming services.

To get an idea of the speeds by distance, I tested some servers close to my location and others far from me. Generally, servers that are closer to you should give you better speeds than those further away. While there was a 50% drop in speeds with the servers not far from my location, I got a 75% drop with the farthest server from me. This significant drop in speeds meant I couldn’t enjoy lag-free streaming with those servers.

Are Steganos’s Speeds Fast Enough for Gaming? Only on a Handful of Servers

I had difficulty trying to load a multiplayer game during my tests. I tested multiple servers in Spain, the US, the UK, and France. Among all the servers that I tested, only the UK and US servers successfully loaded the game. Even at that, I still had slow speeds and delays while gaming.

It was also disappointing to learn that there weren’t any specialized servers for streaming or gaming. With the regular servers, I experienced latency up to 400ms, which made gaming slow. I had a lot of lag while connecting with some of the servers. This lag made my gaming experience slow.

Server Network — 100+ Servers in 23 Country Locations

Steganos does not disclose the number of servers it has, but the app showed over 130 servers based in 23 countries. Countries include Canada, Great Britain, the US, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, and Spain.

It appears that Steganos uses more virtual servers than physical servers. Out of the 23 country servers, I found 12 servers to be located in different countries from what they were labeled as. During advanced testing, I discovered that the virtual servers for Spain, Great Britain, and France were actually exposed as being in Belgium. The Norway, Russia, and Sweden country servers were in Finland.

Although my real IP address was not exposed, I found it concerning that the actual location of the virtual servers was detected during my tests.

Security — Top-Grade Security for Mobile and Desktop

Steganos uses OpenVPN and IKEv2 tunneling protocols. With OpenVPN as the default protocol. On mobile, Steganos uses only OpenVPN. It relies on the AES 256-bit encryption, a military-grade and industry-standard encryption used by top VPNs. With this encryption, I feel secure and protected from hackers and online data theft.

It also offers a kill switch feature that disconnects your device from the internet if your VPN connection unexpectedly drops to avoid leaking your real IP address.

Privacy — Adheres to German Data Protection Laws

Stegano’s questionable data logs policy should be a concern for any privacy-conscious user. With its headquarters in Germany, Steganos falls under the 14 Eyes data-sharing alliance. This is a group of countries, including Germany, Spain, Italy, and Sweden that engage in monitoring and sharing the data of internet activities of users within their jurisdiction. This means these countries may ask Steganos to share your data with them anytime, thereby exposing your real identity or even your internet activity. However, if a VPN doesn’t keep logs of its user activities, you shouldn’t have any worries.

Steganos doesn’t store your data if you use the free trial option. However, I found out that your email address is stored according to German Data Protection laws if you pay for any of the premium plans. This law ensures that Steganos won’t share my data with third parties without my consent. However, it can share this data if under a legal obligation to do so even though they’re mandated by German laws to inform me first. It is unclear what other data Steganos logs and I couldn’t get a proper answer from the support. I also reached out to the support team to find out if there has been any independent audit of the VPN but got a hint that they haven’t been audited before.

I ran multiple DNS Tests to find out if Steganos leaks my IP address. I tested all 23 country servers and was pleased that my IP address wasn’t leaked at any point. However, some country servers were detected to be other countries. For example, the UK country server was detected as Belgium during my tests. I was surprised to find these leaks on the virtual server.

I wouldn’t recommend using a VPN that exposes the true location of the virtual servers. This is because the inconsistencies in the assigned VPN location can make it difficult to unblock streaming services. So, if you’re looking for a VPN that uses thousands of geolocated servers and doesn’t fall under any data-sharing alliances, ExpressVPN is the best choice to keep your privacy completely secure.

Torrenting — The Speeds Were Too Slow to Torrent Efficiently

I was able to download safely, but speeds made torrenting slow. I contacted customer support to find out if Steganos supports torrenting, but I got a vague response that stated that Steganos sometimes works with BitTorrent. That said, my tests showed that it was safe torrenting with Steganos. While some of its virtual servers leaked as other server locations during my tests, my real IP address was never compromised.

The very slow speeds that Steganos offers make torrenting frustrating. This means that it may take several hours to download a file that isn’t that large. Please note that many countries are torrent-friendly, so make sure to check the rules and regulations in your country and keep in mind that you should never use a VPN to share files illegally.

Does Steganos Work in China? No

Steganos doesn’t work in China. While I couldn’t test it in China myself since I didn’t live there, I asked the support agent if it works there. I got a vague response that hinted that it doesn’t work in China.

My friends over there in China informed me that ExpressVPN is a trusted VPN that they’ve never had issues with to stay connected with the rest of the world. You can try ExpressVPN yourself for safe browsing in China. With the 30 days money-back guarantee, you get to test it and get a refund if it doesn’t work for you.

Editor's Note: Transparency is one of our core values at WizCase, so you should know we are in the same ownership group as ExpressVPN. However, this does not affect our review process, as we adhere to a strict testing methodology.

Steganos only offers email support alongside the FAQ articles on the Helpdesk.
As part of my tests, I reached out to the support through email by filling in a contact form on the Helpdesk tab. I didn’t expect a fast response but got feedback in less than 3 hours.

The agent assisted me with answers to my questions and pointed me to relevant articles covered by their FAQ and external links that answered my questions. However, sometimes I got vague answers that didn’t address my concerns directly. For example, when I asked if Steganos works in China, I was simply told that “In countries with restrictions, there may be problems establishing a VPN connection.”