Surfshark Starter is advertised at $2.49 a month. That's the two-year plan, paid upfront, with three extra months on top — $67.23 for 27 months. From Serbia the checkout adds 20% VAT, so the actual charge is $80.68, or $2.99 a month.
That's a good price. Unfortunately, it's also the only time you'll get it.
The second bill
Under the total, the checkout says the plan will renew every 12 months at the then-applicable renewal price. The number itself isn't on that page. It's one link away, in the terms: $79.00 a year before taxes, and the two-year plan comes back as a one-year one.
Surfshark checkout — the renewal price is a link, not a number
With VAT that's $94.80 — $7.90 a month for what used to be $2.99. One year at the renewal price costs more than the first 27 months did.
The discount badge has the same problem from the other direction. It says 86% off an old price of $471.15, which is the monthly plan — $17.45 — multiplied by 27. Nobody pays the monthly rate 27 times in a row. The discount is from a price almost nobody is charged.
Nord is worse
NordVPN Basic runs the same play with bigger numbers, shown in euros from here: €3.49 a month, €94.23 for the first 27 months, then €139.08 a year — all before VAT. That's €11.59 a month, 3.3 times the intro price against Surfshark's 2.6.
To Nord's credit, the renewal price is printed right under the offer on the pricing page and again at checkout. And its 69% badge is honest almost by accident: it's measured against the renewal price. The discount is the size of the jump.
NordVPN checkout — same paragraph, with the number in it
The two also share a parent company. Nord Security and Surfshark announced a merger in February 2022 and kept running as separate brands.
Not a scam
None of this is hidden. The renewal price is in the terms, Surfshark says it emails 30 days before charging and cancelling is a setting in the account. And I don't expect a VPN company to run at a loss the way AI companies do — servers in 100 countries, bandwidth and audits all cost money, and somebody has to pay for them.
But $7.90 isn't what it costs either. The same company sells the same service to a stranger for $2.99 on the same day. The gap between those two prices isn't infrastructure. It looks like a bet that I won't read the email.
I once wrote that Insomnia isn't a scammy app, it just feels like one. Same thing here.
Leaving pays
The model has one lesson for the customer: leave. Cancel before the renewal, come back as a new customer or move to the other brand under the same roof and collect the intro price there. Staying is the only thing on the invoice that costs extra.
Mullvad VPN charges €5 a month (about $5.70). One month or ten years, the rate is the same and its pricing page says it never runs sales. That's more than Surfshark's intro price and less than its renewal, which is about where a price lands when nobody is paying for someone else's discount. And for the record, it's the pricing model I like, not the product. For things like streaming, Mullvad is a considerably weaker service than either of the other two.
I just want a price I can get twice.