TorGuard — short for Torrent Guard, not related to the Tor anonymity network — is operated by VPNetworks LLC out of Orlando, Florida. Founded by Benjamin Van Pelt, it is one of the few remaining bootstrapped, independent VPN providers with no outside investors or corporate acquisitions. The US jurisdiction places it within Five Eyes territory, and unlike PIA which has court-proven no-logs claims, TorGuard has never undergone an independent security audit. The closest real-world validation came when Van Pelt was personally prosecuted in Greece after an anonymous user committed credit card fraud through a TorGuard server — he was acquitted because Greek authorities could not link the activity to any specific user.
The feature set targets power users. Encryption is user-configurable between AES-128, AES-256, and Blowfish-CBC. Protocol support includes OpenVPN, WireGuard, and IKEv2, plus Stunnel-based stealth obfuscation that reliably penetrates the Great Firewall — a claim few VPNs can back up. Port forwarding and SOCKS5 proxy support make it strong for P2P file sharing, and dedicated IP options (residential and streaming) are available as paid add-ons.
However, the interface consistently receives poor marks. Multiple reviewers describe the desktop and mobile apps as clunky, confusing, and unintuitive. Server switching requires a full disconnect. The kill switch works on desktop but is absent on iOS and Android. Split tunneling is limited to Android only. There is no multi-hop or double VPN feature. WireGuard, while supported, has shown unreliable performance in 2025-2026 testing — CyberInsider recorded speeds as low as 9 Mbps on Los Angeles servers against a 500 Mbps baseline.
The 2022 piracy settlement fundamentally changed TorGuard's value proposition. Twenty-five film studios sued after documenting 97,640 unforwarded DMCA notices and 250,000 confirmed instances of infringement. The settlement required TorGuard to permanently block all BitTorrent traffic on US servers via firewall. For a service named Torrent Guard, this is a defining irony. Non-US servers still support P2P fully, but the restriction removes the primary use case for many of its original user base.
TorGuard's history includes a 2017 server breach at a third-party datacenter, disclosed publicly only in 2019 when stolen keys appeared online alongside NordVPN breach data. A Squid proxy certificate and OpenVPN configuration files were compromised. TorGuard maintains the stolen TLS certificate was already expired and the main CA key was not affected. The two-year disclosure gap mirrors NordVPN's handling of its own breach and raises the same transparency questions.
The NordVPN lawsuit adds further context. In 2019, TorGuard sued NordVPN alleging orchestrated DDoS attacks and blackmail — claiming NordVPN threatened to release damaging security information unless negative YouTube reviews from Tom Spark Reviews were removed. NordVPN countered that it discovered TorGuard's server configuration files publicly accessible online and disclosed the vulnerability without conditions. The case was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds without reaching the merits.
Pricing is complicated. The Standard plan at $4.27-$10.99/month covers basic VPN without streaming access. The Pro plan ($7.64-$14.29/month) adds a dedicated IP and streaming support with 12 simultaneous connections. Streaming on the Standard plan requires a $7.99/month add-on, making the effective cost comparable to or higher than competitors that bundle streaming. The 7-day money-back guarantee is the shortest in the industry. Cryptocurrency payments including Monero are accepted.
Speed performance varies significantly across tests. vpnMentor measured only 9% slowdown on nearby servers, while CyberInsider found speeds dropping to under 50 Mbps on a 500 Mbps connection. ProPrivacy averaged 22.6 Mbps with bursts up to 303.8 Mbps. The inconsistency suggests server quality varies by location.
The server network spans 3,000+ servers across 50+ countries — smaller than NordVPN, ExpressVPN, or Surfshark but adequate for most use cases. TorGuard uses proprietary DNS resolvers with optional Cloudflare, Google, Quad9, or OpenDNS alternatives. RAM-only servers are claimed but unverified without an independent audit.