CyberGhost review for crypto users
Last reviewed 2026-08-26
Ownership disclosure
CyberGhost's case rests on jurisdiction and a repeated audit, and its complication is the company that owns it.
Deloitte Audit Romania has examined the no-logs setup three times, in 2022, 2024 and again in 2025, each engagement run under ISAE 3000 (Revised). The scope is broader than most: the server network and its configuration, change-management and incident-response controls, and the token-based dedicated IP system designed so that even a fixed address cannot be tied back to an account. All three are documented on CyberGhost's own privacy hub rather than summarised second-hand.
Romania is outside the Five, Nine and Fourteen Eyes alliances and has twice rejected EU data retention rules at constitutional level, which is a stronger legal position than most European bases offer.
The ownership disclosure is the same one that attaches to ExpressVPN and Private Internet Access: Kape Technologies owns all three, and also owns the review sites vpnMentor and Wizcase. Kape was formerly named Crossrider, a company with an adware history it has since left behind. CyberGhost also absorbed ZenMate, another Kape brand, which no longer operates as a separate service.
Bitcoin runs through BitPay and an email address is still required. The refund window is unusual and worth reading before you pick a plan: forty-five days on subscriptions of six months or longer, but only fourteen days on the monthly plan.
- Owned by
- Kape Technologies
- Jurisdiction
- Romania
- Eyes alliance
- Outside the Five, Nine and Fourteen Eyes alliances
- Price
- About $12.99 per month billed monthly, dropping to roughly $2.19 to $2.49 per month on the longest term, which renews at a higher annual rate.
- Money-back
- 45 days (Forty-five days applies only to plans of six months or longer; the monthly plan gets fourteen days.)
- Free tier
- None
- Protocols
- WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2
- Servers
- Vendor states thousands of servers across around 100 countries, running in ephemeral RAM-only containers
- Pay with crypto
- bitcoin
The evidence for the no-logs claim
A no-logs policy is a sentence on a website until someone checks. This is what has actually been checked for CyberGhost, dated, with the primary source for each item.
Independent audits
- 2025
Deloitte Audit Romania: third assurance engagement under ISAE 3000 (Revised), covering the server network, configuration and change management, incident response and the dedicated IP token system. source
- 2024
Deloitte Audit Romania: second assurance engagement on the no-logs policy. source
- 2022
Deloitte Audit Romania: first assurance engagement, inspecting the VPN server network and management systems against the stated no-logs policy. source
Paying with bitcoin
Coins accepted
bitcoin
Processor
BitPay
Anonymous signup
No
An email address is required to create the account even when paying through BitPay, so a crypto purchase is not anonymous.
The refund sentence that governs a crypto purchase, from CyberGhost's own policy:
“Subscription of 6 months and more: Money Back guarantee (full refund) in case of termination within 45 days. Subscription of 1 month: Money Back guarantee (full refund) in case of termination within 14 days.” refund policy
What it does for a bitcoin user
- Three Deloitte Audit Romania engagements, in 2022, 2024 and 2025
- Romania sits outside the Five, Nine and Fourteen Eyes alliances
- Servers run in ephemeral RAM-only containers wiped on reboot
- Owned by Kape Technologies alongside ExpressVPN and Private Internet Access
What it will not do: bypass KYC, hide on-chain activity, or make a geo-blocked exchange usable. Presenting a false location to an exchange breaches its terms of service and is how accounts get frozen with the balance inside. Details in the VPN guide.
Pros and cons
What works
- A sustained audit cadence with unusually broad scope, including incident response
- Romanian jurisdiction with a record of rejecting EU data retention rules
- Forty-five day refund window on longer plans, above the usual thirty
- Publishes its audit reports rather than only describing them
What to watch
- The third Kape-owned service reviewed here, so it diversifies nothing against the other two
- Kape also owns the review sites vpnMentor and Wizcase, which rate VPNs including its own
- The monthly plan gets only fourteen days to claim a refund
- An email address is required even when paying in bitcoin
Frequently asked questions
How many independent audits has CyberGhost passed?
Three, all by Deloitte Audit Romania under the ISAE 3000 (Revised) standard, in 2022, 2024 and 2025. Each is documented on CyberGhost's own privacy hub.
Is CyberGhost owned by the same company as ExpressVPN?
Yes. Kape Technologies owns CyberGhost, ExpressVPN and Private Internet Access, all three reviewed here, plus the VPN review sites vpnMentor and Wizcase.
How long do I have to claim a refund?
Forty-five days on subscriptions of six months or more, but only fourteen days if you buy the monthly plan, so the cheapest way in also carries the shortest window.
What happened to ZenMate?
ZenMate was another Kape-owned VPN and was folded into CyberGhost; it no longer operates as a separate service, though the name still appears in older ownership write-ups.