BTGuard
Overall User Rating – (Jump to user reviews)
Website: www.btguard.com
Price: $9.95 / Month
Our Rating: – 65%
Protection: 4/5
Software / GUI: 3/5
Features: 3/5
Speed: 2.5/5
Ease of Use: 5/5
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Service Overview and Reviews
Service: BTGuard comes in two flavors (and prices):-
As a Bittorrent Proxy – BTGuard’s paid proxy service ($6.95 / Month), through which you pass your download traffic, hides the IP-addresses of its users from the public and any tracking will see the BTGuard IP address rather than your own and therefore your identity effectively stays hidden from view.
As a VPN Service – BTGuard’s VPN service ($9.95 / Month), operates much like any other VPN, securing your internet connection and rendering your web browsing and other net services anonymous. The server network is limited to Canada, Netherlands(EU) and Singapore so pick the nearest server to your location, P2P downloads should then be at least reliable and secure.
Privacy: BTGuard does not log customer IP addresses or customer usage. See their Policy/Terms/FAQ
Our Thoughts: We tested the VPN service (not the proxy service) and it’s a basic, no frills affair. Set-up is easy and BTGuard works via the standard OpenVPN GUI. However, we found connecting via PPTP instead slightly increased the server speeds. We also found the Canada server very overloaded and slow at times and experienced more consistent results connecting via the EU server.
If only occasional/light P2P file sharing is your thing the EU server should work ok. However, if you are looking for more, you may find the limited server network restricting (For example, it’s no good for US or UK online TV network streaming).
See our Best VPN for Torrents
Disclaimer: Know the laws in your country and locality. BestVPNForYou.com do not suggest, condone, or practice the violation of national or international copyright law. That being said, we do support fundamental reforms of copyright laws as proposed by the Pirate Party political and activist organizations around the world.
BTGuard User Reviews
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Please rate BTGuard from your own experience via the form at the bottom of this page.
BTGuard Speed Test Results
BTGuard Speed Test
Below you can see our testing results for BTGuard. For more details of how we conduct our speed tests go to VPN Speed Tests.
Test PC #1 – United States – OS (Mac OSX) – ISP (Cox)
SpeedTest.net (Chromium) | Location | Ping | Download | Upload |
Not Using VPN | United States | 24 | 22.53 | 7.2 |
PPTP | EU | 166 | 4.14 | 2.99 |
PPTP | Canada | 101 | 1.24 | 1.33 |
Download Test (Curl) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
Not Using VPN | United States | 620M | 1841K | 05:44 |
PPTP | EU | 620M | 520K | 20:19 |
P2P Test (Transmission) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
Not Using VPN | United States | 729.1Mb | 1.58Mb | 07:41 |
PPTP | EU | 729.1Mb | 0.73Mb | 16:20 |
PPTP | Canada | 729.1Mb | 0.27Mb | 45:09 |
Test PC #2 – United Kingdom – OS (Win 7) – ISP (Sky)
SpeedTest.net (Firefox) | Location | Ping | Download | Upload |
Not Using VPN | United Kingdom | 32 | 10.56 | 0.94 |
OpenVPN | EU | 41 | 9.94 | 0.84 |
Download Test (Curl) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
Not Using VPN | United Kingdom | 620M | 1241k | 09:00 |
OpenVPN | EU | 620M | 1174k | 12:01 |
P2P Test (uTorrent) | Location | File Size | Av. Speed/sec | Time/mins |
Not Using VPN | United Kingdom | 695Mb | 1.1Mb | 10:22 |
OpenVPN | EU | 695Mb | 1.0Mb | 11:05 |
Tips: If you’re having trouble with connecting, but not actually seeing your IP address change, try checking the option in your VPN settings to “use the VPN for all traffic” (or similar wording). That isn’t specified in some of the instructions and we had this trouble in a couple instances with PPTP connections. Checking that solved the problem.
The Canada server seems to be under heavy load and a bit slow.
PPTP via their EU server seems to have the best and most consistent speeds, especially from the US. We found that OpenVPN seems to sacrifice performance quite a bit when connecting from the US. In Europe though, OpenVPN still seems to provide great speeds when connecting to the EU server.
Note: The handshake protocol (MSCHAP_V2) used by many PPTP connections has been cracked and therefore PPTP could now be considered unencrypted. For maximum security use OpenVPN or L2TP.
Very slow from US. I’d love to seed but I cant until I take the proxy off.
I have been using BTGuard for about 6 months. I have never received a letter. It disconnects often so i use VPN Watch. I am looking for other options. It is often very slow. I am out of the United States. I get speeds usually between 2kb/s….average 50kb/s and max out at 300kb/s.
Works just fine and torrents run at max speed. Tech support could be better organised on the web site. Encryption module (if used) causes failure of udp trackers, but this is not necessary unless ISP throttling is an issue.
Thanks for the note on forced encryption causing udp trackers to fail. I didn’t know that was the issue. Cheers!
Quick and easy setup, speeds is good so good i can max out my bandwidth and it’s cheap.
You must be on a 56K america online connection…
I can torrent through TOR faster than with btguard. I’m still waiting for my refund btw!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Same also setup VPN and configured all and opened fw and port settings . Still slower than all getout , lucky to get 50 kb/s and just pulling up google is faster on my android w/ 3g . NOT RENEWING
BTGuard is totally BS, at least in North America. Incredibly slow speed and deceptive billing. You must subscribe, you cannot buy a single month to test. You have been warned – stay away!
I decided to try out BTGuard after seeing it mentioned on Torrent Freak. What a waste of $7!
This program doesn’t support anonymously downloading torrents that require UDP Protocols and DHT, which are pretty much ALL of the torrents on The Pirate Bay. What is the point of it? The speed is quite disappointing and their customer support isn’t the most helpful out. Not recommended.
Have used them for a while, speed is great, i did not need any support yet as instructions are very clear. I use both PPTP and OpenVPN and both work like a charm. No IP or logs are kept by the vendor…
Support is 0!!! No answer for repeated emails. Costumer support big 0!!!
Speeds are terrible, I’m lucky enough to get a 100 kb/s + speed on anything. When I connect to this VPN it feels like i’m on dial up it’s so slow.
Would not recommend to anyone.