With no PayPal, either, it’s now strictly card-only. TunnelBear used to support Bitcoin payments for its annual plan, but no more. Not quite as friendly as the cuddly cartoon bears suggest, then. The small print says: 'While all amounts paid are non-refundable, certain refund requests for subscriptions may be considered by TunnelBear on a case-by-case basis.' Presumably, you might get a refund if you've had really bad service, but it's entirely up to the company to decide. If you do sign up for TunnelBear, keep in mind that there's no money-back guarantee. Private Internet Access asks $2.03 a month on the first term of its three-year plan, and opting for Ivacy's five-year plan cuts the cost to a supercheap $1.19. These are competitive prices which beat most providers, although there are a few with cheaper deals.

The price drops to an effective $4.85 a month on the annual plan, or $3.33 if you sign up for three years. Its monthly plan (opens in new tab) gives you unlimited data for a reasonable $9.99 a month, though. But it's a simple way to check out the interface and make sure you can connect.

TunnelBear's free account (opens in new tab) provides a horribly limited 500MB of traffic a month, barely enough to run even a single basic speed test. Just wait until you see what that does for its performance.

TunnelBear has introduced one major improvement since our last review, though: the apps finally support the ultra-speedy WireGuard protocol, as well as OpenVPN and IKEv2.

Tunnelbear mac app