TunnelBear vs. Private Internet Access vs. HMA: Speed, Security, Servers & Price Compared 2024

What are the best VPNs in Five Eyes?

Although when choosing a VPN, many people recommend that you stay away from providers from Five Eyes countries, as they may be required by the government to provide some identifying information about their users in exceptional circumstances.

The Five Eyes countries refer to the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

However, people in these Five Eyes countries love VPNs very much, because they can use it to escape IPS throttling, bypass geographic restrictions, watch foreign audio and video, enjoy foreign game resources, and more.

Fortunately, some VPNs in Five Eyes also have strict no-logs policies like the top VPNs, so they are widely used among people. Among the most popular and recommended VPNs are the following three:

• Private Internet Access(PIA)

• TunnelBear

•  HideMyAss(HMA)

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TunnelBear vs. PIA vs. HMA: Which one should I choose?

Here are the test categories we looked at for this TunnelBear vs. PIA vs. HMA comparison:

• Price 

• Speed 

• Servres

• Security & Privacy

• Features

• Streaming & Torrenting

• Compatibility and connections

• Ease of use and support

So now let’s examine the results, starting with plans.

1. Pricing and discounts: TunnelBear vs. PIA vs. HMA

PIA

The duration of PIA varies slightly. If you spread these costs monthly, the price would be $11.95, $3.33/month for one year, and $2.03/month for three years. Of all plans, PIA is cheaper than TunnelBear and HMA.

Compared to other VPNs on the market, PIA is a cheap VPN that offers great value for money and is one of the best cheap VPNs currently available. PIA offers 10 simultaneously connected devices in this price range.

PIA also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee program. But they are laying out some fines to watch out for. They will not refund you the full amount directly and may also terminate your account for some reason.

HMA

HMA VPN's price of $2.99 per month is one of the absolute lowest prices on the market - but you'll only pay it if you're ready to commit to three years.

You can also subscribe to HMA VPN for $4.99 per month if you purchase the 12-month plan. A one-month subscription costs up to $11.99. Not worth it.

What's really interesting is that US users of HMA VPN don't get the free 7-day trial offered to users in the UK and several other countries.

Trials aren't a whim, however—you'll still need to enter your payment details and cancel your subscription quickly enough before the VPN bills you for a full year after the trial ends.

Speaking of cancellations, the VPN offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all of its plans, so you'll have plenty of time to make sure the service fits your needs.

It's also worth mentioning that HMA VPN allows five simultaneous connections. This is below the market average.

TunnelBear Free

TunnelBear pricing plans come in 3 main species: Free, Unlimited, and Teams. Naturally, if you're looking for a budget-friendly option, the Free plan is for you. If you need a standard subscription, you should go with Unlimited, whereas the Teams plan is reserved for business users. 

Although the version is truly free, it comes with pretty significant restrictions. Yes, you may choose from 26 countries and connect to any of them. The problem is that you're given a 500 MB monthly cap. I used up all the data in about 5 minutes running through a few VPN speed tests.

Within the TunnelBear VPN app, it shows you the data that’s remaining in the bottom-right corner. While the 500 MB may help some to get a feel for TunnelBear, it is really inadequate compared to some other free trial VPN services.

If you want more data for the TunnelBear free plan, you can do promotional tweets of TunnelBear for an extra 1 GB. 

When you run out of data, you will be alerted in the app and all connections will be blocked.

One of the things that are also worth mentioning is that TunnelBear doesn't officially have a money-back guarantee. 

TunnelBear Unlimited

Their unlimited plan removes the monthly data cap and adds five simultaneous device connections. This means you can set up TunnelBear on five separate devices and use them all at the same time. This should be enough for families or small groups of friends.

You can also choose between different subscription terms and enjoy greater discounts on longer terms. TunnelBear costs $9.99 a month, which is on the high side and comes with no discount due to its short duration.

To get the discount, you must choose at least one annual plan, which costs $59.88 or $4.99 per year if you spread it over 12 months. They claim their 3-year product is the best deal. It costs $120.00 for three years, which translates to a monthly price of $3.33. Remember, this will get you three years to use this service. If after a year you realize you'll be switching to a different service provider, you won't get a refund for months you haven't used.

TunnelBear Teams

One of the features of the Teams version is that you can try it for free for 7 days. Unlike the unlimited plan, this option has a separate account management dashboard. In it, you can add users, view invoices, and even delete unused users to get credit for the remaining subscription time.

Pricing is flexible. If you only have three users (minimum), the price is $207.00 per year (or $17.25 per month). This is the minimum amount. However, if you have 200 or more users, the price can quickly climb to $13,731.00 per year (or around $6 per user per month). Prices are expensive.

Winner: PIA

2. Speed and performance:TunnelBear vs. PIA vs. HMA

PIA

Private Internet Access's speed test results showed that it was the fastest of the three VPNs.

It uses the latest and fastest WireGuard protocol in the industry and performs well.

But it's not the fastest VPN out there, as the well-known NordVPN or Surfshark perform better.

Still, it's something to be proud of if you compare it to the other two in this article.

HMA

Now, when it comes to tunneling protocols, HMA's options seem a bit lacking, as it only offers one protocol per application: OpenVPN or IPsec. This is a bit unusual since most of the time VPN apps support at least two or three tunneling protocols.

Open VPN TCP. This is the more stable protocol, however, it is considered the slower of the two.

OpenVPN UDP. At times, OpenVPN UDP is less stable than the TCP variant, which offers significantly better speeds.

IPsec. A reliable protocol only available on HMA's macOS and iOS apps.

By default, HMA VPN uses OpenVPN UDP. So, I tested the speed of OpenVPN UDP. The average download speed was 80 Mbps, not too fast.

Also, the speed of HideMyAss VPN is not very stable, sometimes very fast, sometimes very slow, varying between 230 Mbps and 50 Mbps.

Overall, the results are decent, but not exciting. I hope to witness faster speeds in the future - hopefully through the implementation of WireGuard.

TunnelBear 

TunnelBear's speeds aren't great. When using OpenVPN (TCP), you may experience quite severe slowdowns. Baseline download speeds can be reduced by up to 80% when connecting to other European countries, 90% when connecting to the Americas, and 99% when connecting to the farthest Asian countries.

TCP is generally slower, and better with other tunneling protocols. That being said, TunnelBear does not differentiate between OpenVPN (UDP) and IKEv2. You will be automatically assigned one or the other. You won't know which one it is unless you are running a port scan to verify which tunneling protocol you are using.

Winner: PIA

3. Servers:TunnelBear vs. PIA vs. HMA

PIA

I haven't seen a VPN with more servers than Private Internet Access VPN. That's because of its wide selection: currently, it offers more than 30,000 VPN and proxy servers in 78 countries.

The servers are located in Europe, South America, North America, Africa, Asia, and Australia and Oceania. However, a small percentage of the servers are virtual as it is not possible to have a physical server in some countries due to some regulatory reasons. For example, the Russian server is actually located in Estonia.

Virtual servers still behave as if you are in the country of your choice, but they may be prone to more signs that you are using a VPN server.

Choosing which server to connect to is also very simple. After opening the app, you need to select "VPN Servers" and connect to any of them.

HMA

As of today, HMA offers 290 countries and 1100 servers.

Most of HMA's servers are virtual. However, when choosing your server location of choice, I like how the HMA displays a list with servers grouped by world region.

Additionally, you can connect to servers dedicated to P2P file sharing or streaming, however, these servers may have a wider selection.

TunnelBear

TunnelBear has around 1800 servers in 26 countries. Let's compare this to other VPN service providers, like ExpressVPN that has 3000 in 94 countries, or CyberGhost, with 6400 servers in 88 countries. TunnelBear seems on the low side and regions outside of America and Western Europe have less coverage.

Still, it's worth mentioning that during last year they almost doubled their server locations. If they continue to move in this direction, they can catch up with market leaders. 

Winner: PIA

4. Security and Privacy: TunnelBear vs. PIA vs. HMA

PIA

Private Internet Access is located in the United States. This is generally considered a poor privacy jurisdiction because it is part of the Five Eyes alliance.

But it's been around since 2010, swears by its no-logs policy, and regularly delivers new updates and features.

The better, more reassuring news is that PIA has proven its no-logs policy many times in court.

PIA also supports the WireGuard protocol, but this protocol is not a modified version.

HMA

Hide My Ass is a UK VPN service and must comply with all UK laws and regulations. Although owned by Czech Republic-based cybersecurity firm Avast, HMA VPN continues to operate within UK jurisdiction.

Not long ago, HMA VPN officially transformed into a no-logs VPN service. Before this change, HideMyAss was notorious for logging user data and making it available to authorities.

Today, however, HMA claims to be a no-logs VPN service. It was also audited by Versprite to verify the no-logs claim.

TunnelBear

TunnelBear does not monitor or log your activity. It's a privacy-friendly approach, but for true anonymity, you should pay in cryptocurrency and take other precautions. TunnelBear is also based in Canada, a country that is a member of Five Eyes, a coalition known for its mass surveillance efforts and powerful intelligence agencies. For the average user, this probably shouldn't be a deal breaker, but others may want to take note.

TunnelBear has submitted their app for an independent security audit three years in a row. Compared to other VPN service providers, TunnelBear has passed more audits in a few years than some competitors in a decade.

Winner: TunnelBear

4. Features: TunnelBear vs. PIA vs. HMA

IP Addresses	Dynamic	Static	Static
Kill switch	Yes	Yes	Yes
Split tunneling	Android Only	Yes	Yes
Web filters	MACE		TunnelBear Blocker
Dedicated IP
Double VPN
Onion over VPN
Dark Web Monitoring
	Port forwarding	Port forwarding	Port forwarding
	IPv6 leak protection	IPv6 leak protection	IPv6 leak protection
		IP Shuffle
			obfuscated GhostBear servers
	SOCKS5 proxy

HMA's IP Shuffle feature enables changing your IP address without reconnecting. It's a simple way to reduce the chance of others tracking what you're doing, and might also help you get into a site if you're blocked while using the first IP address HMA allocated to you.

PIA Extras range from the simple and straightforward (built-in blocking of ads, trackers and known malicious websites) to the more low-level and technical: a SOCKS5 proxy for extra speed, port forwarding support, the ability to select your preferred encryption, authentication and handshaking methods, and more.

PIA has introduced a Smart DNS option, a handy tool which provides a quick and easy way of unblocking some websites. This isn't as powerful as a VPN – there's no encryption, it doesn't change your IP address – but you use it on devices like Smart TVs, games consoles, and many others which don't support running PIA's apps.

PIA's desktop apps now have enhanced obfuscation features to help you bypass VPN detection (and avoid being blocked) in not-so-privacy-friendly countries.

The Android app has been certified by the ioXt Alliance, verifying that it complies with standards in areas like cryptography, software verification and updates.

Private Internet Access managed to protect all of our data from DNS leakage in the tests we performed.

There's also a kill switch to disable your internet access if the VPN drops. 

PIA's MACE feature blocks access to domains used by ads, trackers and malware, further limiting the ways companies can follow you around the web.

Optional extras include dedicated IPs. Sign up for this for an extra $5 billed monthly ($4.75 on the six-month plan, $4 if you sign up for two years) and you'll get the same IP address, unique to you, every time you log on to the service.

PIA can now provide dedicated IPs in five locations: Australia, Canada, Germany, UK and US. 

IPVanish offers a kill switch, DNS and even IPv6 leak protection to reduce the chance that your traffic or identity might be exposed online.

Winner: PIA

6. Streaming and Torrenting:TunnelBear vs. PIA vs. HMA

Private Internet Access is also worthy of recognition when it comes to unblocking streaming media. It provides access to US Netflix content, Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer and Disney Plus.

Private Internet Access supports P2P, and we don't just mean on a couple of specialist servers hidden away somewhere. You can use torrents from any location, with no bandwidth or other limits to restrict your activities.

There's an unusual bonus in Private Internet Access' support for port forwarding. This enables redirecting incoming connections to bypass a NAT firewall, and in some cases, may help improve P2P download speeds.

Winner: PIA

7. Compatibility and Connections:TunnelBear vs. PIA vs. HMA

PIA supports connecting up to 10 devices simultaneously. That's twice the allowance you'll get with many VPNs, although Windscribe and Surfshark have no limits at all.

You're able to access this VPN network via apps for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and Linux, browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Opera, and there are detailed setup tutorials for routers and many other device types. 

Winner: PIA

8. Ease of use and Support: TunnelBear vs. PIA vs. HMA

Support:	Knowledge base, FAQs, email, 24/7 live chat	Knowledge base, FAQs, email, chatbot, 24/7 live chat	Live Chat, Email, installation guide, billing info, blogs but not dedicated help
Payment Options	PayPal, Credit card	PayPal, Credit card, Google Pay, Bitcoins	PayPal, Credit card, Google Pay, Bitcoins

All three VPN services have easy-to-use applications.

Which is the best VPN?

Private Internet Access is the best VPN, and despite being based in the US, has been proving its privacy and security so far.

Second, it outperforms TunnelBear and HMA in terms of speed, VPN protocol, features, price, and more.

There are also some top VPNs on the market with money-back guarantees, so why not try something like Surfshark? This is one of the best value for money in our many VPN buying guides!

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