SkyVPN: Not Private, Not Fast, Not Worth It

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

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

We’re extremely disappointed by how vague SkyVPN’s privacy policy is. In its list of collected data, it also mentions “other technical data” and “certain information,” which could include almost anything.

SkyVPN is also 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 any court that asks for it.

Worrying Ties to Chinese Companies

SkyVPN, Inc. is based in Hong Kong. Its corporate address is 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 the context.

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

Tengzhan Hong Kong Ltd (騰展香港有限公司)  incorporated in December of that year, with You Xiumie (游秀妹) as director and sole shareholder.

None of this information is easy to find. There is nothing on SkyVPN’s website that explains its ownership or corporate history.

You can’t trust SkyVPN. Under Chinese law, the government could demand logs and information on any of its users at any time, and SkyVPN would have to comply.

Like other low-tier free VPNs such as SuperVPN, SkyVPN reveals almost nothing about its security on its website or in the app. We are extremely concerned by this lack of information.

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

As the screenshot of our test shows, Wireshark detected our visit to a test website even with SkyVPN active.

Essentially, SkyVPN fails at the most basic VPN function. Anyone intercepting your connection—including your ISP—can see the web pages you visit and any other information you transmit online.

There’s also no public information about SkyVPN’s VPN protocol, so we don’t know whether it uses OpenVPN, IKEv2, or something far less secure, like PPTP.

Together, this lack of transparency and the absence of functional encryption make SkyVPN one of the most unsafe VPNs we’ve tested. For these reasons, we strongly suggest avoiding this service.

Kill Switch Stops IP Address Leaks on Windows

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

We’re glad SkyVPN’s kill switch works on Windows, but it isn’t available on other platforms. By comparison, Proton VPN Free offers a functioning kill switch on both desktop and mobile, so your IP address is protected on all your devices.

No IPv4, IPv6, or WebRTC Leaks

In our VPN leak tests, 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 mid-tier VPNs.

Most VPNs that own first-party DNS servers are top-tier services like ExpressVPN.

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

SkyVPN has one US server for the ‘Basic’ version on mobile, including both iOS and Android.

Its desktop app is much better, with a reasonable spread of 13 server locations, two of which are in the US.

For a free VPN, this is a surprisingly diverse list, with choices in South America, Asia, North America, and Europe. We’re disappointed SkyVPN removed its single Middle East server in Turkey.

Without city-level server choices, you’re stuck with a single server to cover large countries like Canada, Australia, and the US. The app doesn’t tell you exactly where the servers are located, either.

We checked and found SkyVPN’s Canada server is in Toronto, its US server is in New Jersey, and its Australia server is in Brisbane. If you’re not near these locations and want a local connection, your speeds will likely be even worse than ours.

SkyVPN’s mobile apps are simple, with a standard Connect button in the middle of the screen and the server list above it. This is standard, but it’s so basic that it lacks anything useful.

In our tests, we couldn’t download SkyVPN onto our MacBook Pro or iMac from the App Store. It didn’t work using the official website’s macOS download link either.

Windows & macOS

While using SkyVPN on Windows, we ran into numerous bugs and software issues. First, the app doesn’t always give you 600MB of data per day (as specified in the Terms of Service). Instead, we often only got 500MB.

Windscribe Free gives you 10GB per month, while Proton VPN Free is completely unlimited.

Other times, the data limit didn’t decrease while we were connected and testing the service. This made it hard to judge how long we could use the VPN.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to test SkyVPN on macOS. The latest version requires a Mac with Apple Silicon, which we currently don’t have in our testing suite.

It’s extremely unusual for a free VPN to require the latest devices to run.

None of the top-tier VPNs we use reduce their macOS user base with an Apple Silicon requirement.

Android & iOS

SkyVPN’s mobile apps are simple, but we encountered many pop-up ads and notifications. SkyVPN offers more “premium traffic” to users who agree to watch video ads, which makes for an annoying experience.

SkyVPN’s premium traffic is supposedly faster and increases the daily data cap, but in reality it’s just as slow as the basic option.

We’re disappointed that SkyVPN doesn’t offer any technical features on mobile. There’s no kill switch, data leak prevention, or split tunneling on either iOS or Android.

As on Windows, you can’t switch between protocols or encryption on mobile.

IP Leak Protection & Split Tunneling Available

SkyVPN offers a few basic features on Windows, like IP leak protection and split tunneling (called Smart VPN). However, its 600MB data cap usually makes the app so limited that these features aren’t worth much.

These are the bare minimum when it comes to advanced VPN features. There are simply much better free VPNs with fully featured apps.

Security Features We’d Like to See

SkyVPN is unsafe and needs to add many features to its security suite. Here are some missing features we’d like to see added: