10 Best VPNs to Use in Taiwan

In Taiwan like in any other country, people long for absolute freedom on the Internet. And just like in other countries, there are certain hindrances that prevent them from achieving that goal. A VPN service is arguably the best way to turn things to the better, but which one to choose?

It is indeed a difficult question. It’s not always easy to select the kind of coffee you’re going to drink on your lunch break, much less so a service that has to protect your security and privacy online.

And believe it or not, but just like coffee, not all brands of virtual private networks are created equal.

Maintaining such a service - especially one that is good - requires a colossal investment of resources. Moreover, it is not a one-time payment but one has to pour huge sums of money into it all the time.

Paying for the servers, paying to the engineers, paying to the support team, paying for promotion - these are just a few expenditure lines that come naturally with a VPN service. A well-balanced provider knows it needs to spend generously on all those aspects and then some.

However, not every provider in business wants to be, well, well-balanced. For some, it’s much easier to just spend copious amounts of money on endlessly promoting their service even though it deserves no promotion based on its technical capabilities.

Very unfortunately, this is done to prey on unsuspecting people rather than out of negligence. If a person doesn’t know what to look in a VPN, it’s quite often easy to convince them with big banners and huge promises that one particular service is the very thing they need - even though it may be completely useless or even harmful to its clients.

There have been examples of people joining a VPN service only to later discover their IPs being used in an online crime. Don’t get us wrong, it is not an everyday occurrence, but still, it has happened before and can happen again.

Therefore, it is very important to get a good and reliable VPN to actually be protected online. Is it a hard task? Well, it takes a lot of time and other resources to test all the VPNs for a particular country like Taiwan.

To help the Taiwanese people out, we have conducted a 5-month test of several dozen VPNs. Today, we are ready to present our findings to you in the form of two lists of best services: one composed of 5 best VPNs for Taiwan and the other of 5 passable free VPNs.

5 best VPNs for Taiwan

1. ExpressVPN: best provider for Taiwan offering 256-bit encryption and 24/7 customer support.
2. NordVPN: great VPN for Taiwan with a 30-day money-back guarantee and unlimited bandwidth.
3. Surfshark: fast VPN for Taiwan with a 30-day money-back guarantee and unlimited bandwidth.
4. CyberGhost VPN: good VPN for Taiwan offering 7 devices simultaneously and 10200 servers worldwide.
5. Private Internet Access: great VPN service with lightning speeds and a 7-day money-back guarantee.

5 free VPNs for Taiwan

1. ProtonVPN: very secure and doesn’t limit your traffic.
2. Windscribe: 10 Gb of traffic per month.
3. Hide.me: 2 Gb per month, good speeds for a free service.
4. HotspotShield: 500 Mb per day, popular among freedom fighters.
5. TunnelBear: 500-1500 Mb per month, allows torrenting.

Internet in Taiwan

The Internet is wide-spread throughout the country. Nevertheless, such availability affects Taiwanese residents negatively. Thus, as for 2016, Taiwan took the 3^rd position in the rating of the countries with the highest rate of malware affected computers.

As mobile networks become more popular in the country year by year, the adversaries make attempts to infect portable gadgets as well. The factor that helps fraudsters to hack portable gadgets is the availability of free Wi-Fi. As for January 2015, Taiwan was among top 3 countries with the best Wi-Fi quality in hotels.

In such a way, a safety need becomes vital for modern Internet users. Having decided to visit this country as a tourist or living in Taiwan, VPN service is definitely the thing one is to use.

Is censorship policy severe in Taiwan?

It is commonly thought that Asian countries are very limited in the access to the Internet. This opinion may be deceptive in some cases.

But why do so many people tend to believe that all Asian countries are strictly censored?

The answer is quite simple: China is the most populous country in the world and censorship policy of China is more than strict. A lot of topics are forbidden to cover. Thousands of services and websites are blocked. There are even some VPNs that cannot be used by Chinese residents.

But in contrast to China, Taiwanese people are less restricted in their online activities.

Nowadays the population of this tiny country is about 24 mil people.

At the same time about 86% of people in Taiwan have access to the Internet and use it regularly.

According to the constitution, people and mass media are free to express their thoughts without any restrictions. There are not any official constraints to the Internet access in the country.

What is more, it was not fixed that the government or any other inspection body would control emails, chats or any other services on the Internet.

Unlike China, it is not forbidden to discuss any political or social issues. For example, the fact of Taiwan’s independence is strictly censored in China. Furthermore, one will find it almost impossible to find any information about the period of the Taiwanese state formation.

As the censorship policy is not strict in the country, people may access almost any website.

On the one hand, it is good, as people are not restricted in their access to the services and may read about all events happening in the world. But on the other hand, it may become negative for Taiwanese residents, as malicious websites are available as well.In such a way, people need protection of VPN services.

5 Best VPNs for Taiwan

Like for many other countries, the best VPN service for Taiwan is ExpressVPN.

It’s hardly surprising: this provider really adheres to the highest standards of security and seeks to give its customers the best experience possible.

The other four services are also all good and powerful. We tried to include those that have certain unique advantages on this list.

Best VPNs for Taiwan: Main characteristics comparison

1. ExpressVPN

Protect your online life with a 35% discount

Overview

ExpressVPN is the most powerful VPN service for Taiwan. It allows you to reliably bypass any geo-restrictions and other limitations.

Not once in its history has ExpressVPN betrayed its clients’ trust. There have been cases when it was subpoenaed to surrender its customers’ data to the authorities - and every such case ended in nothing because there was nothing to surrender.

Of course, this shouldn’t encourage anyone to commit crimes using ExpressVPN but it tells you that your data is always secure with it.

Conclusion

• Stability
• Security
• Slightly pricier than its competitors

Read the review of ExpressVPN

2. NordVPN

NordVPN’s limited offer

Overview

NordVPN is a service known for its strong encryption and useful features that few other VPNs have.

For example, it provides the Double VPN function. Using it, you choose two servers instead of one and connect to both of them. Luckily, for Taiwan, it is a bit of an overkill but if you’re going abroad to a stricter country in terms of censorship, this feature will come in handy.

Conclusion

• 5900+ servers in 60 countries
• Affordable price on the longest plan
• Superb security

Read the review of NordVPN

3. Surfshark

Save money on a VPN

Overview

Surfshark is the best choice for anyone who wants to get all the benefits of a good VPN without having to pay too much.

Being the cheapest service on our list doesn’t make Surfshark poor, though. Its quality is essentially the same as that of the leaders. Sure, it has fewer servers and may not possess some of the cutting-edge features ExpressVPN and NordVPN have, but it’s still a very strong VPN.

Conclusion

• The best price
• Adequate security

Read the full review of Surfshark

4. CyberGhost VPN

Visit CyberGhost VPN

Overview

CyberGhost gives you access to more than 10200 servers in 100 countries. This way, you can always find a location that will suit your needs the most.

Many of these servers are also dedicated to a specific service like Hulu, Netflix, or the like. Using them, you can ease the streaming or torrenting processes.

Conclusion

• Convenient for any purpose
• Not too expensive

Read the review of CyberGhost VPN

5. Private Internet Access

Visit Private Internet Access

Overview

We value PIA for its immense set of features each of which can be fine-tuned to one’s heart’s desire.

It allows you to do almost everything you can imagine: even turn off the encryption to give yourself a speed boost. Most other VPNs are far more rigid in their settings.

Conclusion

• Technologically advanced
• Somewhat questionable proprietor (read the full review to learn more)
• Inoffensive price

Five okay free VPNs for Taiwan

Given that not everybody has an opportunity to pay for a VPN, here are 5 services that are available in Taiwan for free.

Note that free VPNs always come with certain restrictions. They can limit your speed, traffic, etc. Therefore, they can be suitable for people seeking to unblock a site once in a while but probably for few other categories of customers.

1. ProtonVPN. As it doesn’t limit your traffic, ProtonVPN is clearly the best and the most convenient free VPN.
2. Windscribe. With a 10-Gb monthly traffic restriction, Windscribe can be used somewhat extensively.
3. Hide.me. Going down the traffic limit criterion, hide.me gives you only 2 Gb per month. However, it’s slightly speedier than the last two.
4. Hotspot Shield. Hotspot Shield has a 500-Mb per day limit. Not too bad, but there’s a chance you’ll end up on an expensive subscription just because you sign up for the free version.
5. TunnelBear. TunnelBear has the smallest amount of traffic among our top 5: just 500 Mb per month.

FAQs