I tried Australia's favorite VPN for 24 hours — and it's only a few improvements away from being a superb free VPN

VPN — Super Unlimited Proxy has seen an unexpected rise in popularity in the wake of new Australian age verification measures.

The provider rose to second in the iOS App Store rankings within a matter of hours, and has seen considerable visibility on Android also.

To see if you should download it for yourself, I took it for a 24-hour test drive. While it’s not awful at first glance, it’s left me more frustrated compared to many of the best VPNs I’ve used. Here’s everything I found.

The good stuff

The free VPN offers split tunneling, insecure Wi-Fi notifications, and a secure browser.

While that isn’t much, it’s more than you get from some trustworthy free VPNs. What’s more, the app is nice to look at, and you’re not stuck with 30-second ads like you are with EventVPN.

From the homescreen, you can quickly access its support hub, IKEv2 and OpenVPN protocol settings, and an impressive list of free server locations.

15 locations are available, spread across North and South America, Europe and Asia. While there’s little chance these locations are run from physical servers, it’s among the largest number of locations you’d find available with a free VPN, including top options like Proton VPN Free.

There are six server locations across the US, plus the ability to individually choose the server you use and see each server’s current latency. This makes the provider more customizable than most free VPNs, including Proton and PrivadoVPN Free.

So what’s wrong with it?

The problems aren’t immediately visible after downloading the app. However, after some quick research, we found several privacy concerns that raised alarm bells.

First off, depending on whether you use iOS or Android, the app claims to have different developers. While this might make you think they’re different apps, both use the same privacy policy and link to the same ownership.

While the service claims a ‘no-logs’ policy regarding VPN activity, its privacy policy contains several irregular disclosures for a privacy-focused product. The company admits to the sale of personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), specifically that it has shared IP addresses, geolocation data, and device identifiers in the past 12 months.

This type of language is extremely uncommon among legitimate VPNs and seems at odds with a general privacy-preserving approach.

A deeper analysis of its Android app didn’t ease my concerns. We found it requests around double the number of permissions you’d expect from a trustworthy VPN and almost 30 trackers. Meanwhile, the best VPNs often use fewer than 10.

None of this definitively proves that VPN Super Unlimited Proxy is doing anything problematic with your data. However, it does suggest that it hasn’t been optimized for minimal possible data collection.

The bottom line

The biggest issue is, however, the VPN’s performance. Not only does the app take a long time to load, but attempting to establish a stable connection is near-impossible.

I tried connecting to several different servers, but could only achieve a minute of connectivity before being disconnected without warning or notification. This meant I couldn’t even connect for long enough to get a proper speed test result.

What frustrates me most is that VPN — Super Unlimited Proxy App has real potential.

It’s one of the few VPNs I’ve seen to offer a weekly plan should you need it for a single sporting event, it explains its features well and offers a free trial if you’re thinking of upgrading. What’s more, it’s simple to look at, offers trustworthy protocols, and has a respectable number of features and locations.

Because of the significant drawbacks, however, you’re better off with PrivadoVPN Free and Windscribe Free. They offer far superior, more trustworthy VPN experiences. Plus, paid VPNs such as Surfshark and Proton VPN are more secure and cheaper than VPN — Super Unlimited Proxy App on long-term plans.

In short, if you’re serious about protecting your data in Australia, it's probably best to look elsewhere.