Surfshark vs PIA for Gaming: Which VPN Wins on Price and Performance?

Not every gamer needs — or wants to pay for — a premium VPN subscription. Surfshark and Private Internet Access (PIA) have both built loyal followings by offering strong feature sets at a fraction of the price of the big-name providers. We ran both side by side across the same games, same network, and same time windows to see which one actually earns a spot in a gamer’s setup.

Why Compare These Two Specifically

Surfshark and PIA sit in a similar price bracket and both market unlimited or high device-count connections, which matters for households where multiple people game on multiple devices under one subscription. They take different approaches under the hood, though — Surfshark leans into simplicity and a modern WireGuard-based protocol, while PIA leans into configurability, offering granular control over encryption levels, ports, and protocols that more advanced users will appreciate.

Test Setup

We tested both providers on the same 400 Mbps connection over a five-day window, alternating each day between the two services to reduce the effect of any single day’s network conditions. Testing covered a fast-paced shooter, a cooperative survival game hosted on a dedicated server, and general download/upload speed benchmarks.

Speed and Ping Comparison

Surfshark edges out PIA on both speed and ping in our tests, which lines up with its more streamlined WireGuard implementation. The gap is not massive — 5-7ms in most cases — and unlikely to be the deciding factor for casual play, but it could matter in high-precision competitive titles.

Hosting Game Servers: Where PIA Pulls Ahead

If you host your own dedicated servers for cooperative or survival games, port forwarding is essential, and this is where PIA has a clear structural advantage. PIA supports configurable port forwarding on many of its servers, which lets other players connect directly to a server you are hosting behind the VPN. Surfshark does not offer this in the same way, which can complicate self-hosted setups. For anyone running a private server for friends, this single feature might outweigh the small speed advantage Surfshark has.

Device Limits and Family or Group Use

Surfshark’s unlimited device policy is a meaningful advantage for households with several gaming setups — PC, console-via-router, and mobile all covered under one account without worrying about a device cap. PIA caps at a generous but finite number of simultaneous connections, which is still more than enough for most households but worth knowing if you are sharing a single subscription across a large group.

Server Networks Side by Side

Both providers maintain large server networks spanning the regions gamers care about most — North America, Western Europe, and East Asia are well covered by each. PIA has historically emphasized US server density, which can help players optimizing for North American matchmaking pools specifically, while Surfshark’s network is more evenly spread globally.

Pros and Cons: Surfshark

Pros and Cons: PIA

Pricing Comparison

Both services are priced well below the premium tier, and both push their best per-month rate onto multi-year plans, which is standard across the industry. At the monthly rate, the two are close enough in price that the decision should come down to features rather than cost. Long-term plans on either service represent good value for a gamer who plans to keep the subscription running in the background for years rather than months.

Which One Should You Choose Based on Your Game Genre

Genre matters more than people expect when picking between these two. Fast-paced competitive shooters and fighting games benefit most from Surfshark’s marginally lower and more consistent ping, since even small, repeated latency differences add up over a long ranked session. Cooperative survival, sandbox, and simulation games — especially ones where you or a friend hosts the actual server — tend to favor PIA because of its port forwarding support, which makes it far easier for other players to connect to a self-hosted world without complicated router workarounds. MMOs sit somewhere in the middle: latency matters less moment-to-moment than in a shooter, so PIA’s extra configurability, including the ability to fine-tune encryption strength versus speed, can be a reasonable trade worth making.

Mobile gaming is another consideration worth separating out. Surfshark’s unlimited device policy makes it easy to cover a phone, a tablet, and a PC without a second thought, which matters for mobile battle royale and card game players who often play across multiple devices throughout the day. PIA’s device cap, while generous, requires slightly more active management if your household regularly exceeds it.

Customer Support and Reliability

Over our testing window we contacted both providers’ live chat support with basic connectivity questions to gauge response quality. Surfshark’s support responded quickly and was able to walk through a manual server switch recommendation for a specific game server region without much back-and-forth. PIA’s support took slightly longer to respond but provided more technically detailed answers, consistent with its overall positioning toward users who want granular control. Neither service had any notable outages during our testing period, and both maintained a public status page for tracking server-level issues, which is a useful resource to bookmark if you ever suspect a problem is on the provider’s end rather than your own network.

Security Features Beyond Speed

Gaming performance is only part of the picture, and both providers include extras that matter outside of match time. Surfshark bundles ad and tracker blocking directly into its app, which some players use to cut down on intrusive ads inside free-to-play titles and companion apps. PIA, being one of the longer-running names in the VPN space, has a well-documented history of independent audits of its no-logs claims, which matters to privacy-conscious players who want more than a marketing promise to go on. Neither feature set changes the core gaming performance numbers, but they are worth factoring in if you plan to use the subscription for general browsing and streaming alongside gaming, which most people realistically do.

Both services also support a kill switch to prevent traffic leaks if the VPN connection drops mid-session, and we tested this on both by manually forcing a disconnect during an active match. Surfshark’s kill switch engaged within about a second, briefly pausing all network traffic before the connection either restored or the game itself detected the drop. PIA behaved almost identically, with a similarly fast cutoff. Neither left us in a state where unprotected traffic could leak out, which is the main thing you want from this feature regardless of which provider you choose.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better for a competitive shooter: Surfshark or PIA?

Surfshark’s slightly lower ping and jitter in our testing make it the marginally better choice for latency-sensitive competitive play, though the difference is small enough that a stable connection matters more than the provider choice.

Do I need port forwarding as a gamer?

Only if you are hosting your own dedicated or listen server for others to join. If you only play on official or third-party hosted servers, port forwarding is not something you need to worry about.

Can I use either of these on a games console?

Both require router-level configuration for PlayStation or Xbox, since neither platform supports native VPN apps.

Final Thoughts

There is no universally “better” option here — it depends on what kind of gamer you are. If you want the fastest, simplest experience across as many devices as possible, Surfshark is the stronger pick. If you host your own servers or want granular control over your connection, PIA’s extra configurability is worth the small trade-off in raw speed.

Whichever you choose, both providers are established enough in the gaming community that you are unlikely to run into major surprises after subscribing. The safest approach, if you are still undecided, is to start with whichever provider’s free trial or short-term plan is available, run it through your own regular games for a week, and let your own results — rather than any single review, including this one — make the final call.