Both of these land at $2.19 a month on their longest terms, which makes this an unusually clean comparison — the price is identical, so the decision comes down entirely to what you get.
Surfshark is faster
Surfshark measured 874 Mbps nearby against CyberGhost's 812 Mbps — an 8% gap. Long-haul the difference widens considerably: 668 Mbps against 578 Mbps, or 16%. CyberGhost's speed falls away over distance more than any provider in our top five, and independent testers report the same pattern.
CyberGhost unblocks more
CyberGhost cleared all six streaming platforms; Surfshark cleared five, failing on DAZN. More importantly, CyberGhost was the most consistent unblocker of the whole cycle: Netflix played on 34 of the 36 servers we sampled, rather than only on a handful of specially labelled endpoints.
The two features that will decide it for you
- Surfshark: unlimited simultaneous devices. CyberGhost caps you at seven.
- CyberGhost: a 45-day refund window, the longest anyone offers. Surfshark gives 30 days.
A 45-day guarantee is more useful than it sounds for a streaming-focused VPN, because it gives you a full billing cycle plus change to confirm the platforms you care about still work before you are committed.
Jurisdiction and ownership
CyberGhost operates from Romania, outside the Five, Nine and Fourteen Eyes agreements, with independent Deloitte audits in 2022 and 2023. Surfshark is in the Netherlands, inside the Nine Eyes. Against that, CyberGhost sits under Kape Technologies, a parent company some privacy advocates flag — it has no bearing on our test results but serious reviews raise it and you should know before buying.
Same price, different products. Surfshark is a fast all-rounder for a household. CyberGhost is a streaming appliance with a long return window.
The verdict
Surfshark for most people — it is faster, covers unlimited devices and finishes higher in our overall ranking. Choose CyberGhost if streaming is specifically why you want a VPN, if you need DAZN, or if you want the longest possible window to test before committing.
The speed difference in practice
An 8% nearby gap and a 16% long-haul gap sound significant, and for most uses they are not. 4K streaming needs around 25 Mbps; CyberGhost's worst measured result was 578 Mbps. You would need to be running very large sustained transfers before the difference showed up in anything you could feel.
Where it does matter is if you regularly connect across continents — someone in Europe routinely using US or Asian servers, for example. There, Surfshark's flatter curve is a real advantage over a working day.
Server organisation is the hidden difference
CyberGhost labels servers by task: this one for Netflix US, this one for torrenting, this one for BBC iPlayer. Surfshark gives you a country list. For anyone who does not want to think about which endpoint to pick, that difference is worth more day to day than eight percentage points of throughput.
Same price, opposite philosophies. One optimises the number; the other optimises the decision.
If you are still undecided
Buy CyberGhost and use the 45-day window. It is the longest guarantee in the category and it costs you nothing to find out whether the streaming performance matters more to you than the speed. If it does not, switch to Surfshark inside the window and you have lost nothing but an afternoon.
