Bulgaria is a breath of fresh air in terms of internet freedom. While surrounding countries tighten their grips on online content, Bulgaria remains an advocate of a free internet. Not only does the Bulgarian leadership support this liberated flow of content, they maintain favorable conditions for certain branches of online business as well. Fortunately this friendliness extends to VPN services as well. Numerous VPN companies place their headquarters in Bulgaria, as they are less bothered by the government and can act more freely. Therefore, in this spirit prone to allowance, we hope to inform you about the general state of the country’s internet, and recommend you three VPN services that best fit connecting to the Bulgarian internet with.
Best VPN Services for Bulgaria of 2024
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Using a Bulgarian IP
Given its geographical location, Bulgaria is a great gateway country for those who are interested in finding out more about the Mediterranean, for example. Any country north of Bulgaria and West European states can be benefactors of the internet of the country. Bulgaria also hosts a good number of VoIP providers. Longa and VMobile are prominent examples of this, but Voiper or histol are also active participants in this area of service. Bulgaria, despite heavy protests from both inhabitants and ISPs, was signed into ACTA until the EU opted out of the agreement. This is perhaps a sign of a positive attitude towards internet freedom not only by the government, but Internet Service Providers as well.
Bulgarian Online Privacy Laws
Some types of online activities are criminalized in Bulgaria. If someone commits an act of hate speech on the internet, the person can be subject of up to four years in prison. According to the U.S. Department of State “…there are no reports that the government attempts to collect personally identifiable information in connection with a person's peaceful expression of political, religious, or ideological opinions or beliefs.” Of course, the “lack of reports” does not disclose the possibility of surveillance or data mining for any country. Bulgaria though at least seems to be clean of such activities.
Internet Censorship in Bulgaria
There is some censorship or other form of content restriction present in Bulgaria. As mentioned before, hate speech is not welcome at all in the country. This is partially a response to a rise in political extremism in Bulgaria that brought similarly extremist displays of opinions online. Furthermore, we would like to agree with the U.S. Department of State in that it is a problem that the Bulgarian government can “prosecute service to request private data directly from the service providers without court authorization”. This means that ISPs can potentially come under tighter government control. This is not true however for VPN providers and therefore we suggest using them to access the Bulgarian internet.
Streaming Services in Bulgaria
Bulgaria has fairly extensive streaming availability. From the side of music, some bigger names are present in the country. Both Apple Music and Google Play Music conduct business in Bulgaria, but Spotify remains a popular service as well. Beatport or Deezer can also be found here, as well as free streamers SoundCloud and Bandcamp. For film and other moving pictures, the situation is a bit direr. The availability of Netflix is typically mostly limited to the western European countries, and this means that Bulgaria is excluded, with no future plans to introduce the service in the country in sight. For independent cinema, try accessing universciné or Filmmit. Otherwise, if you are for some reason interested in the Hollywood style of films, we recommend employing the services of a VPN provider.
Free Bulgarian VPN Trials
So there are few restrictions in Bulgaria, but there is a slight aftertaste of a need for safety in the country. In light of this and the above, we can recommend three VPN providers that we think are best suitable for the country. First, we would like to advise you to read a bit about VPNArea. This is a company that is based in both Bulgaria and Switzerland with plenty of server power housed in these two nations. Their benefits include five simultaneous connections, a very user friendly environment, access to over 50 different countries next to Bulgaria and a seven day money back guarantee policy. However, they do not offer a free trial.
Secondly, we would like to mention VyprVPN. This Swiss company excels at providing additional safety solutions next to their already secure, highly encrypted VPN network. Their services come with an NAT Firewall that is usable with your other similar software. Furthermore, you can also employ the provider’s own SmartDNS proxy, called VyprDNS.
Lastly, why not take a look at Hong Kong’s PureVPN? A network spanning across the globe, with over 141 countries to visit online is an impressive number by itself. Next to this, you are also equipped with a kill switch in your client or application that will cut off all of your connections to the internet if you encounter trouble. The company also provides SSL support and extensive device support as well that also favors video game consoles. Despite these, prices remain low, and therefore PureVPN is definitely worth taking a look at.