6 Best VPNs for Indonesia in 2021 – Avoid Online Censorship

Most of you wouldn’t know, but the Indonesian government has banned independent news websites, sports broadcasts, dating apps, and any website that criticizes government actions.

Indonesia has a 270 Million (2019) population, which is 8 times higher than Malaysia’s 31.95 Million (2019). With an internet penetration of 53.7%, it still has limitations on social media websites, restricting online freedom.

The only safe way to access blocked websites is through a Virtual Private Network. In this guide, I have compiled a list of the best VPN for Indonesia to best suit your needs.

Let’s have an overview of these Indonesia VPNs before we get into details…

• ExpressVPN – Overall best VPN in the industry for streamers with 3000+ servers worldwide
• Surfshark – The cheapest VPN in the industry with unlimited device connections
• NordVPN – 5,400+ servers worldwide, including 11 servers in Indonesia
• PureVPN – Budget VPN with 6 servers in Jakarta, Indonesia
• CyberGhost – A super reliable VPN with 12 servers in Indonesia
• PIA VPN – Secure VPN service with 29,000+ servers in 77 locations

Criteria for choosing a good VPN in Indonesia

There are easily enough VPN providers in the market for you to select the wrong one. To find the best VPN for Indonesia for you, we have made sure the providers meet the following criteria:

• A big network of servers, including servers in Indonesia 
• Capable of accessing geo-restricted streaming services
• Fast, reliable servers with the lowest downtime
• Military-grade encryption tools with a strict no-logs policy
• Providers more than a single connection
• Offers customer support service

6 Best VPNs for Indonesia in 2021

I have compiled a list of VPN providers and their most important features and pricing for users’ ease. Here is a list of top VPNs you can use when residing in or traveling to Indonesia.

1. ExpressVPN – Best Overall Indonesia VPN

ExpressVPN VPN offers 3,000+ servers covering 94 countries which also includes Indonesia. These servers deliver consistent speed and performance, allowing Indonesian users to unblock all types of international websites and streaming content such as Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, ESPN+, and many others.

With its servers in Indonesia, the users living abroad can access multiple different local TV channels such as TVRI, RCTI, MNCTV, GTV, and iNews. It also offers 5 devices simultaneous connection, which means you can set up ExpressVPN on multiple devices at a single time. These devices include macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, Firestick, Linux, Android TV, and Router.

It is headquartered in the British Virgin Islands. Following the laws of the country, the provider strictly abides by its no-logging policy. This is a great advantage for Indonesian users as their online activities and privacy will be completely secure and encrypted.

This VPN is also known for offering efficient performance and reliability. You can connect to any server immediately to receive privacy protection to hide your identity from government agencies’ view in Indonesia. 

Features-wise, ExpressVPN includes some interesting features such as MediaStreamer – a Smart DNS feature, Internet Kill Switch, Split-Tunneling, and a 30-day money-back guarantee not satisfied with the performance.

ExpressVPN also ranks first in our top VPNs for the Philippines guide.

To read further about this VPN service, refer to our ExpressVPN review.

2. Surfshark – Fastest VPN for Indonesia

Surfshark is the fastest VPN yet affordable VPN service for Indonesia ( $2.49/mo ).

You get 3,200+ servers in 65 countries with this provider. Accessing international geo-restricted content such as Hotstar, Voot, Hulu, Channel4, ITV, NBC Live, and Youtube TV US will never be a problem for any Indonesian with Surfshark. It also has a server in Indonesia, which will help the Indonesians abroad to keep up with their local shows on local TV channels regularly. These TV channels include SCTV, Indosiar, ANTV, tvOne, and Metro TV.

Like ExpressVPN, Surfshark operates from the British Virgin Islands, meaning no data retention laws to follow. It also offers some excellent privacy-boosting features such as CleanWeb and MultiHop. These features are suited for people who need that extra ounce of privacy against agencies and cybercriminals with an eye for your data.

Costing $2.49/mo with a 30-day money-back guarantee and unlimited simultaneous connections, Surfshark is an excellent choice for anyone residing in Indonesia.

Please refer to our Surfshark review if you want additional details about this provider.

3. NordVPN – Best for geo-unblocking

NordVPN is not new to the VPN industry. In fact, they’ve been in the industry forever now. NordVPN offers far better than any other VPN  in the industry because of its encryption and security tools. At the moment, they offer some 5,400+ servers all over the world, including 11 servers just in Indonesia.

With its global network, you can access different content, geo-restricted at this point in Indonesia. These content include Voot, Hotstar, Yupp TV, NINE, ESPN+, and Fox Sports. While our readers, who are sitting abroad and craving for some local Indonesian shows, can utilize its servers in Indonesia to access Trans7, Trans TV, Kompas TV, RTV, MYTV, and many more.

NordVPN is quite affordable. Starting from just $3.71/mo , NordVPN comes equipped with extraordinary features like Internet Kill Switch, Split-Tunneling, Onion over VPN, CyberSec, and Double VPN to strengthen your online privacy from cybercriminals or anyone that may be stalking about to obtain your private information.

It offers 6 simultaneous connections, which means you can set up NordVPN on your macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, Firestick, and Android TV simultaneously.

Please refer to our NordVPN in-depth review if you want additional details about this provider.

4.  PureVPN – Budget VPN for Indonesia

PureVPN is an awesome VPN service. It is a budget-friendly VPN with 6,500+ servers, capable of delivering great speeds for streaming purposes. To access local content for Indonesian nationals living outside their country, you will need to connect to PureVPN’s 6 servers physically located in Indonesia, and you can keep up with your shows on DAAI TV, Indonesia Network, O Channel, JTV, and BBS TV.

Our Indonesian friends can also use this VPN and its huge network of over 6,500 servers to access streaming content and other websites from abroad. Top international content with this VPN includes Spotify, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix UK, Netflix AU, Hotstar, HBO NOW, CBS, NBC Live, and many others. It has compatibility with many the device including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Firestick, Roku, Kodi, etc.

PureVPN comes packed with different features, including Split-Tunneling, Ad-blocker, and Kill-Switch, to offer perfect privacy to users who want to stay invisible from government surveillance in Indonesia.

PureVPN is one of few VPN services available at a budget-friendly VPN price of $3.33/mo . It also offers 10 simultaneous connections with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Please read our PureVPN review for more information.

5. CyberGhost – Secure VPN for Indonesia

CyberGhost is truly a VPN solution for people living in and outside of Indonesia. With over 6,500 servers and availability in 90 countries, it will benefit you like any other best VPN for Indonesia. It will help you unblock Netflix US, NHK, CCTV, France TV, BT-Sports, YouTube TV US, and Astro TV while sitting in Indonesia.

With 12 servers in Indonesia, you can stream multiple Indonesian TV channels that are blocked overseas. These channels include TVRI Kanal 3, TVRI Sport HD, tvMu, Inspira TV, Nusantara TV, Magna Channel, and Mentari TV. It costs $2.25/mo  for its 3-year plan. With 7 simultaneous connections, you can configure Cyberghost on all of your devices simultaneously, including Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Android TV, Linux, Roku, and Firestick device.

CyberGhost headquarter is located in Romania, and it also honors a complete no-log policy. This means your internet activity will never be recorded on their servers; hence there is no chance of anyone hacking or intercepting your personal data or information while you are connected with their network.

For more information on this provider, please refer to our CyberGhost review.

6. PIA VPN – Best for Torrenting in Indonesia

Private Internet Access (PIA) probably has the largest VPN server network globally, with 29,000+ servers in around 77 countries. Even though it doesn’t have a server in Indonesia, there are no international streaming content or websites that you can not unblock in Indonesia with its available network of servers. You can access some popular websites with PIA, including Netflix, Hulu, DAZN, Euro-Sports, Foxtel, Sling TV, and Vudu.

PIA’s big disadvantage is that it operates from the USA, a part of the five-eye alliance. However, it offers a no-log policy to its users that helps you secure yourself in case of any privacy violation. Similarly, PIA provides many privacy features such as Kill Switch, Split-Tunneling, Port Forwarding, and DNS leak protection to protect your online whereabouts.

You can purchase PIA at the cost of $2.69/mo along with other benefits like 30 days money-back guarantee and 10 multi-logins, by which you can protect your macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, Firestick, Android TV, Linux, Play Station, Xbox, and Roku simultaneously.

To read more about this VPN service, visit our PIA VPN review.

VPN gratis Indonesia that unblocks geo-restricted sites

The only free VPN I found that works exceptionally well in Indonesia is ProtonVPN.  There are many factors that I checked while making this decision. Some of these include bandwidth limit, number of servers, and speed.

ProtonVPN emphasizes user privacy and guarantees zero-logging of user traffic flowing through its servers.

Using ProtonVPN, users in Indonesia can easily evade the censorship issue and consume social media content without fearing government surveillance. Therefore, ProtonVPN is easily the best free VPN in Indonesia.

Why you need a VPN in Indonesia

Indonesia might have the fourth largest population globally (270 Million) or for its renowned biodiversity. Still, people who live there are aware of all the annoying geo-restrictions and censorship. Here are some of the reasons why there’s increasing use of a VPN in Indonesia:

1. AI-Based Crawler: In 2018, Indonesia’s ministry of communication and information technology (MCIT) launched a custom web crawler known as Cyber Drone 9 that filtered ‘negative content’ and have them blocked people from accessing it.
2. Government Surveillance: Under the Information and Electronic Transaction Law (ITE Law), the government and the ISP have the authority to block websites that are not in favor of the government or their vision. This sort of surveillance is not uncommon nowadays, and many advanced countries such as China, Japan, and South Korea are already doing mass surveillance of their population. The only way to protect your online anonymity and privacy by using the best VPNs for South Korea, Japan, and China.
3. Activists’ arrest: The Indonesian government has arrested many activists for using internet service for religious matters, defamation, or spreading fake news. If you don’t want to be seen online, you’ve got to use a VPN.
4. VPNs are Legal in Indonesia: Even though countries like Russia and China have banned VPNs, not Indonesia. Using a VPN in Indonesia is completely safe and legal.
5. Blocked Streaming Services: The availability of streaming services is far from perfect in Indonesia. You cannot access Spotify or Google Play to stream music in Indonesia. With a VPN, you can access these websites.

Can a free VPN protect online privacy in Indonesia?

You can certainly use a free VPN in Indonesia, but it will not do you any good in online privacy. There are tons of reasons for which you should avoid a free VPN overall. We have listed down few reasons to help you understand why using a free VPN to protect your online privacy in Indonesia is a bad idea?

Bandwidth – Every free VPN provider offers a limited bandwidth on their accounts. To secure your online activities and carry out tasks such as streaming and torrenting, which usually requires unlimited bandwidth, a free VPN provider is certainly not a good option.

Speed – As the number of servers offered by free VPN providers is very less compared to the number of users using those same servers simultaneously, you will likely face server slow speed issues. Sometimes these speeds are insufficient even to load a single page of a website.

Server Locations – As we have already told you, the free VPN providers offer a meager number of server locations. It is impossible to determine whether the VPN will fulfill your purpose or not with such a low number of servers available.

Security & Privacy – Due to no periodic revenue generation, they hardly invest in the advanced security and encryption infrastructure for their network. This makes them very vulnerable to multiple data leaks and a prime target for hacking. Most free VPN providers are also known for selling user confidential data and other information to third parties authorities. This reason alone is sufficient to compel you to use a premium VPN provider in many countries such as Singapore, you can be fined or sent to jail if you are caught downloading torrents or speaking ill of the government. Thanks to the VPNs with Singaporean servers, the internet users in Singapore are protecting their online activities and identities while enjoying complete internet freedom.

Online censorship and privacy laws in Indonesia

About 76.84% population has access to the internet in Indonesia, according to a study by Google. The presidential elections held in 2014 are thought to be dominated by social media as thousands of people were using different apps for live election updates. Despite such active cyberspace, the Indonesian government is focused on regulating the content published, discussed, and distributed on the internet.

In 2014, the Ministry of Communication and Information decided to allow different internet service providers to block “negative” content at their own will. Due to this, many websites such as Imgur, Reddit, and Vimeo were blocked nationwide. Earlier this year, around 800,000 websites were blocked by the government for a reason given as pornography and gambling.

Accordingly to Article 27 of The Electronic Information and Transaction 2008 act – “anyone distribution and/or transmitting and/or creating access to defamatory electronic documents and/or information with or without any intention” will be considered criminal in the eyes of the law. This law has been termed poorly worded and opaque by different rights activities, privacy advocates, journalists, and others in civil society.

Whether anyone has been arrested under this law or not, it is always better to be safe than sorry – by using a VPN.

Indonesia uses Artificial Intelligence for content violations

In 2018, the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (Kominfo) launched Cyber ​​Drone 9. A web crawler designed with two goals – to locate anything the government finds “negative content” and block it.

Though the parameters used by this crawler need to be identified and refined, so far, it seems any content that covers the area of “pornography, gambling, depictions of violence, radicalism, and discrimination based on race and religion” is getting banned by this AI.

The situation gets worse by ISPs randomly blocking out websites for explained reasons. In 2016, Indonesian users reported that they couldn’t access Netflix when using Telkomsel IP address, even though Netflix is not on the prohibited list. In 2017, when Netflix signed an agreement with the country’s largest telecommunications company, it was allowed access again.

Government information & electronic transactions law

Several institutions within the government can regulate online content under the label of Information & Electronic Transactions Law ( UU ITE ). This law has been changed several times to increase the powers held in it.

Due to the amendment allowing the authorities to give mandates to ISPs, the number of agencies with authority to filter has increased.

Unpredictable government censorship on privacy

Accordingly to the constitution, Indonesians are supposed to have the right to freedom. Although there seems to be no law in place to help enforce this right. Online privacy is really in question, provided that the government has given the authority to store user data.

In many cases, it was found that providers were handing over user data to law enforcement agencies when requested. This is one of the key elements of a VPN – the protection of user privacy. Most top-tier VPN providers guarantee a no-log policy, meaning no log of user activity will be stored. As soon as user disconnects from the network, anything related to their activity will be deleted.

If we look at the past, we will notice that the government is trying not only to gain the right to freedom of user data access but also to do so easily. By looking at the timeline below, we can see a group of scenarios planned for dominance over the right.

• 2000 – The government mandates the retention period for telecommunications activities of three months
• 2012 – Providers of electronic systems offer public services to build data centers.
• 2016 – Kominfo forces OTT providers to join forces locally to facilitate confidentiality laws.

While Indonesian law doesn’t govern anonymity, it takes steps required for government agencies‘ right and ability to remove anonymity layers.

Maximize your online privacy with a VPN in Indonesia

There are always a bonus feature that can help you maximize your online privacy. We have listed a few of them down for you, and if your VPN provider offers anyone of them, then do not forget to enable them.

• Connection scrambling  – Disguises your VPN connection to look like a normal connection.
• Server obfuscating – Specialized VPN servers that hide the fact that you’re using a VPN to reroute your traffic
• Auto-reconnect – Automatic reconnection of the VPN connection, in case of any disconnection
• Internet Kill Switch – Kills your whole internet connection during any VPN disconnection to prevent your real IP leak.

Accessing banned social media websites through a VPN

Social media faces heavy censorship in Indonesia. Websites like Facebook, Imgur, YouTube, Reddit, and Vimeo are frequently found to be inaccessible from Indonesia.

This leaves Indonesians deprived of participating in social media like the rest of the world. The Indonesian government has a history of disagreements with Google, as evidenced by blocking its services in the past.

For Indonesians, it can be difficult to stay in touch with their friends and the rest of the world through social media.

This is why it has become important to use the best VPN for the Indonesian service and unblock social media.

Follow these instructions to unblock website in Indonesia:

• Subscribed to a VPN (We recommend ExpressVPN)
• Download and install the ExpressVPN application
• Enter into the application using ExpressVPN account details
• Connect to any server location from the server list (Should be any server location except Indonesia)
• Now that you are connected with a VPN, you should be able to access social media website on a browser

FAQs – Best VPN For Indonesia

Conclusion

ExpressVPN is the ultimate choice as the best VPN for Indonesia to grant you unlimited access to streaming content from all around the globe, protect your online identity and information for government and private organizations, and give you complete freedom when navigating cyberspace.

With 3,000+ servers in 94 countries and all equipped with military-grade AES, 256 Bit encryption, you can never be wrong with this provider. It will always have your back with its powerful no-log policy, meaning even if someone tried to get access to any personal data from its network, they would not find anything, to begin with.

ExpressVPN is a great choice for Indonesian if they wish to hide from government and private sector surveillance. If you hurry up, you can avail of ExpressVPN amazing limited time offer of “12 Months + 3 Months Free” with a 30-day money-back guarantee program.

VPNs for Other Countries

For your convenience, we have created blogs on VPN services that work best in numerous countries. The list includes:

• Dubai VPN
• Oman VPN
• Malaysia VPN
• Thailand VPN
• Vietnam VPN