Here is a fact that reframes this whole comparison before it starts: NordVPN and Surfshark have belonged to the same company, Nord Security, since 2022. They run as separate services with their own apps, networks, and audits, but you are not choosing between rival camps so much as between the pricier flagship and the cheaper everyday product from one family. That takes a lot of the usual tribal noise out of it. Both have been in my pocket for years, running side by side on the same devices through more airports and rented rooms than I could neatly list, and the verdict is clean: NordVPN is the better all-round performer, faster at distance and deeper on security, and worth paying more for if you want the best. Surfshark is the budget pick, cheaper, with unlimited devices, and it loses surprisingly little in daily use. Premium power against unbeatable value, and both are first-rate.
That is the split, and it holds up across every category below. What follows are the concrete gaps, the price, the device count, the speed, the features, the streaming and torrenting, and the privacy setup, with hard figures where they exist, and because the two share a parent, several of the usual trust questions simply fall away.
Table of Contents
NordVPN vs Surfshark at a glance
| NordVPN | Surfshark | |
|---|---|---|
| Two-year price | ~$3.09/mo | ~$1.99/mo |
| Devices at once | 10 | Unlimited |
| Local speed loss | 4% | 4% |
| International speed loss | 14% | 17% |
| Sustained throughput loss | 3% | 13% |
| Servers / countries | 7,200+ / 110+ | 4,500+ / 100 |
| Base | Panama | Netherlands |
| Owner | Nord Security | Nord Security |
| Refund window | 30 days | 30 days |
Same parent, two products
Because this point shapes everything below, it is worth settling first. Nord Security acquired Surfshark in a 2022 merger, and since then the two have shared an owner while keeping their own engineering, server fleets, and independent audits. In practice that means you can stop worrying about which company you are trusting, since it is the same one, and focus purely on which product fits you. It also means the two have borrowed good ideas from each other over time, so the feature gap that once separated a premium name from a budget one has narrowed. What is left is a real premium-against-budget choice inside a single, well-audited house, which is a rarer and cleaner decision than most VPN comparisons offer. If you have ever hesitated over a VPN because you were not sure whether to trust the company behind it, this is the one pairing where that worry does not arise: the company is the same either way, and it is one that submits both brands to repeated outside audits. That leaves you free to choose on the merits, which is how a comparison ought to work but rarely gets to.
Price and devices
Two numbers separate the cheaper product from the pricier one. Surfshark’s Starter plan sits near $1.99 a month over a two-year term, usually with a few months added free, while NordVPN’s two-year price lands around $3.09. That is a real gap for what is, in daily use, a similar experience, and it compounds when you add the second figure: devices. Surfshark places no cap on simultaneous connections, so one plan secures all your phones, laptops, tablets, and TVs at once. NordVPN allows ten at once, which is generous for a person and starts to bind in a full household. Between the lower price and the unlimited connections, Surfshark is the decisive winner on cost, and it is not a close call. The device point deserves one more line, because it is the single feature that most often settles this comparison in real life: a household rarely counts its screens until a VPN asks it to, and the moment it does, Surfshark’s refusal to count at all turns from a marketing bullet into a real convenience that NordVPN, for all its strengths, cannot match at ten.
NordVPN’s answer is that its price buys more where it counts, and the rest of this comparison is where. Its standard plan bundles Threat Protection Pro, its ad, tracker, and malware blocker, along with Dark Web Monitor, and its performance and network run ahead in the ways I will get to. Both carry a 30-day money-back guarantee, so either can be tested without risk, and both raise the price at renewal, as the whole industry does, so note the date and reprice before it rolls over. On price and devices, though, Surfshark wins clearly; the question is whether NordVPN earns the premium elsewhere.
Put the difference in yearly terms and it stays modest in absolute money but real in proportion. In round figures, a year of Surfshark runs about twenty-four dollars on the two-year plan and a year of NordVPN roughly thirty-seven, so across the two years you pay something like twenty-five dollars more for NordVPN, the price of a few months of a streaming service, in exchange for the faster network and deeper toolkit below. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on how hard you use a VPN. A light user who mostly streams will struggle to justify it; a heavy user who downloads, travels to difficult places, or relies on the security tools will feel the premium earning its keep. That is the whole comparison in miniature, and the sections that follow are where the extra money does or does not show up.
Speed: the numbers
This is the first place the premium tier pulls ahead, and the numbers show it clearly. On a roughly 100 Mbps test line, the two were identical up close, each losing 4% to hold 96 Mbps. The gap opened at distance: NordVPN kept 86 Mbps to an overseas server, a 14% drop, while Surfshark held 83, down 17%. On a long, sustained transfer the difference widened again, NordVPN giving back only 3% to average 9.7 megabytes a second where Surfshark fell to 8.7, a 13% loss.
One more figure is worth flagging. In testing, Surfshark lost roughly 8% of its download speed yet nearly half of its upload, while NordVPN stayed under 6% down and healthy on the upload side. For most people that upload gap never registers, because most of us download far more than we upload, but for anyone backing up large files, sending big attachments, or livestreaming, it is a real point for NordVPN. In plain terms: for everyday streaming and browsing the two feel the same, but the harder you push a connection, over distance, on a long download, or on upload, the more NordVPN’s premium engineering tells. Speed goes to NordVPN, and by a clear margin on the demanding tasks.
It is worth being concrete about who feels this and who does not. If the most you ever ask of a VPN is watching Netflix and staying safe on cafe WiFi, the two are interchangeable and you should buy on price, which points at Surfshark. If you move large files, run cloud backups, upload video, or connect across continents regularly, the premium engineering stops being a spec-sheet line and becomes a daily difference in how long things take. The speed gap, in other words, is not a tie-breaker for everyone; it is decisive for heavy users and invisible to light ones, which is the fault line this whole comparison runs along.
Protocols and encryption
The base is shared, which is part of why the local speeds match. Both build on WireGuard, NordVPN through its own NordLynx layer paired with the ChaCha20 cipher, Surfshark through a fairly standard WireGuard with AES-256 or ChaCha20 depending on the device, and both keep OpenVPN and IKEv2 for stubborn networks and mobile handoffs. Both apply the current encryption standard correctly, so on the core the two are level.
NordVPN adds a couple of things around the edges. During 2025 it pushed post-quantum encryption to every one of its apps, the safeguard designed to outlast the day a quantum computer can crack current ciphers, and it carries NordWhisper, a recent protocol built for networks that hunt down and shut out VPN traffic. Surfshark counters with Camouflage, its own obfuscation mode, and NoBorders for restrictive connections. On the protocols themselves the two are close, with NordVPN a little further ahead on future-proofing. Leave the default in place on either and you are covered.
The server networks
The premium tier has the larger fleet, though the value tier is no minnow. NordVPN runs more than 7,200 servers across over 110 countries, while Surfshark fields somewhere around 4,500 across 100. In everyday use both keep a quick, lightly loaded server within reach of nearly anywhere you connect from, so the gap counts for less than the totals imply. Where NordVPN’s scale pays off is redundancy: more machines mean less congestion at peak hours and a deeper pool of fresh addresses to cycle through when a streaming platform begins banning the IP ranges it knows belong to VPNs. Surfshark’s smaller network is well distributed and, being newer, runs on modern hardware throughout. Both operate every server from memory. For raw scale the edge is NordVPN’s, but it is the kind of advantage you feel only at the margins, on a stubborn streaming night or in a heavily used region.
Security features
Both carry deep toolkits, which is the clearest sign of how far the value tier has caught up. NordVPN’s tilts toward layered security: Double VPN sends your traffic through two servers for a twice-encrypted hop, Onion Over VPN routes you into the Tor network from the app, Threat Protection Pro blocks ads, trackers, and malicious sites and scans downloads for malware, Dark Web Monitor watches for your logins in breaches, and Meshnet knits your own machines into a single encrypted web. There is a dedicated IP available and obfuscated servers for censored networks.
Surfshark’s toolkit leans toward privacy housekeeping. CleanWeb clears ads, trackers, and malicious sites; MultiHop takes you across two countries, its dynamic mode letting you set the route yourself; Camouflage disguises that a VPN is running; Bypasser is its split-tunnelling control; Alternative ID mints a disposable email and persona to keep your real details away from the sign-up mills; and an optional service files to strip your data from broker lists. Both, in other words, give you far more than the essentials. For the security-minded, NordVPN’s set is the stronger one, on the strength of Double VPN, Onion routing, and Meshnet, while Surfshark’s Alternative ID and data-removal are truly useful in a way NordVPN does not quite match. Worth calling out is how little separates them on the essentials that most people rely on daily: both have a dependable kill switch, both offer split tunnelling to route chosen apps outside the tunnel, both block ads and trackers at the network level, and both handle leak protection properly. The exotic extras are where they diverge, and most buyers will touch only a couple of those, so weigh it by which specific tools you would open rather than by the length of either list. Overall NordVPN’s toolkit runs a shade deeper, though closer than the price gap would suggest.
The interesting part is how the two toolkits reflect different ideas of what a VPN is for. NordVPN treats it as a security instrument, hence Double VPN, Onion routing, and threat scanning, tools a cautious or higher-risk user reaches for. Surfshark treats it as a privacy-of-daily-life instrument, hence the disposable identities and the data-removal service, tools aimed at keeping your ordinary online footprint small. Neither is more legitimate; they serve slightly different anxieties. If yours is about being attacked or surveilled, NordVPN’s set fits better; if it is about your data spreading across brokers and sign-up forms, Surfshark’s does. That both come from the same company yet pull in these two directions is part of what makes the pairing genuinely useful rather than redundant.
Streaming
Streaming is close to a tie, which again shows how strong the value tier has become. NordVPN uses SmartPlay to handle the routing and unlocked a dozen-plus regional Netflix libraries in independent testing, plus Disney Plus, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, and Max. Surfshark unblocked every Netflix library its testers tried plus the same major services, and it provides smart DNS for televisions. Either way, you will be watching almost anything from almost anywhere.
The differences are small and cut both ways. NordVPN’s larger network gives it a deeper bench of fresh addresses for the days a platform tightens its blocking, while Surfshark’s unlimited devices let a whole household stream different regions at once on one subscription, which NordVPN’s ten-device cap starts to squeeze. For a single viewer either is excellent; for a busy home Surfshark’s connection limit is the more practical, and for sheer reliability on a stubborn service NordVPN’s scale helps. I would call streaming a draw, decided by whether you are feeding one screen or ten.
The household case is worth spelling out, because it is where Surfshark’s device policy wins the evening. Picture three people streaming three different services from different rooms, each after another country’s library. On Surfshark every one of them can run the full app at once on a single plan; on NordVPN, once you have also covered the phones, the tablets, and a console elsewhere in the house, ten slots start to feel tight, and a router install becomes the tidy fix. For a solo viewer none of this matters and either is superb. For a busy home, Surfshark removes a small nightly friction that NordVPN’s cap can introduce, and it does so while costing less, which is the cost story in one concrete scene.
Gaming and video calls
Gaming and calls hang on latency, the round-trip delay between pressing a button and the server responding, which a VPN adds a little of by rerouting your traffic. Keep to a close server and that penalty stays small; both manage it, so online play and video calls hold up on either from a sensible spot, without the stutter a weak VPN causes. NordVPN’s more consistent throughput helps if you are pulling a patch mid-session, and its bigger network makes a low-ping node easier to land in most places. Surfshark’s reply is its uncapped connections, letting a console, a PC, and a phone stay protected together. This one is a draw, won by whichever service has a node nearest you.
Torrenting
For downloading, the premium tier’s speed advantage matters. Both allow P2P and each shields your IP with a kill switch, so on safety they match, but the way each handles it differs. NordVPN runs dedicated P2P servers and routes you to them automatically, so there is nothing to configure. Surfshark permits P2P across its whole network but often has you pick a P2P-friendly server by hand, a small extra step, and pairs it with Bypasser so your torrent client can run through the VPN while a banking app stays on the open line.
The decider is that sustained-throughput figure. On a large torrent from a distant swarm, NordVPN’s far steadier speed over a long transfer means the download finishes sooner, where Surfshark’s steeper drop-off is felt. Worth adding that neither has port forwarding, so a dedicated power torrenter is better off with Private Internet Access. Of these two, though, NordVPN takes torrenting on the combination of automatic routing and the speed that holds up under a long pull, with Surfshark a thoroughly capable second for lighter use.
In concrete terms, a large, well-seeded torrent that wraps up in an hour on NordVPN might take noticeably longer on Surfshark once the transfer runs long and its steeper drop-off appears. For the occasional download neither of you will notice; for a heavy, regular torrenting habit, NordVPN’s ability to hold its speed across a sustained pull is the practical reason to pay the premium here. Both keep the download private with no record of what you fetch, so the difference is one of time alone.
Privacy, jurisdiction, and audits
The shared parent changes how this round reads. Normally the ownership question is the first thing I weigh, but here both answer to Nord Security, so the usual “who owns it” concern is identical on both sides and drops out. What remains is jurisdiction and audit history. NordVPN is registered in Panama, beyond the major intelligence-sharing alliances, and came through a fifth Deloitte no-logs review in December 2024. Surfshark is based in the Netherlands, a nine-eyes member, and its no-logs policy was confirmed by Deloitte in a report dated January 2023 and re-examined since. Each runs its fleet wholly from memory, so cutting a server’s power leaves nothing behind.
Two notes belong here. NordVPN’s record carries the 2018 breach, when an intruder got into a leased server in Finland via a hole in the hosting firm’s management system; nothing of users’ escaped, and the shift to memory-only servers came after. Surfshark’s carries the August 2023 TunnelCrack WiFi-leak finding, which it patched in under a week. Neither is a live concern today, and both companies clearly take audits seriously. Weighing Panama against the Netherlands and a more recent, fifth audit against a strong but older one, I give privacy a slim edge to NordVPN on jurisdiction and audit recency, with the reminder that, owner aside, both clear the bar comfortably. Where each lands against the wider field is set out in my best VPNs of 2026 guide.
It is fair to ask whether one owner means one weak point, and the answer, so far, is no. The two keep separate engineering teams, separate server networks, and separate audits, and their incidents have been separate too: the 2018 breach was NordVPN’s alone, the TunnelCrack leak Surfshark’s alone, each handled on its own. What shared ownership does buy you is a single, heavily scrutinised company standing behind two independently verified no-logs promises, which is more reassurance than most standalone providers manage, rather than less. The old instinct to spread your trust across rival firms does not really apply when the rivals turned out to be siblings.
Apps, ease of use, and China
Both apps are pleasant to live with. Surfshark’s are tidy and consistent across platforms, and its unlimited connections make setup quicker because you never stop to weigh which devices deserve a slot. NordVPN’s have matured into something very good, but the extra features bring a slightly fuller screen, with a map view, the specialty-server tabs, and a deeper settings menu. Neither is difficult, and both cover Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, and Android, offer browser extensions, and run on a router to protect a whole home. For an outright beginner Surfshark is marginally simpler; for the user who wants the depth, NordVPN rewards it. My setup guide covers either on any platform.
On a phone, the one setting I always leave on with either is auto-connect: it switches the VPN on the instant you connect to an unfamiliar network, so the coffee-shop or hotel WiFi is protected before you have checked a single message. Both handle it smoothly, and both mobile apps are polished enough to hand to anyone. To cover a whole home, putting either on a router shields every device behind it while using a single connection slot, which neutralises NordVPN’s ten-device limit for a family, even if Surfshark rarely makes you reach for that trick.
The one place the two genuinely diverge is heavy censorship. NordVPN’s obfuscated servers and NordWhisper protocol earn it a real, if imperfect, record inside heavily filtered networks, mainland China included, where on a long stay in a serviced apartment in Chengdu, on a building network that blocked most VPNs outright, its obfuscated servers were the ones that kept me connected when Surfshark could not. Surfshark’s Camouflage and NoBorders help across most restrictive networks but struggle specifically against China’s Great Firewall. If you are heading somewhere the internet is tightly controlled, NordVPN is the safer of the two, and whichever you pick, get it installed and tested before you leave, since the download sites are frequently blocked once you land.
How this was tested
None of this is lifted from a brochure. I pay for both and keep them running together, switching between them across a wide spread of countries and connections. The figures I cannot measure well at home, mainly how much speed each holds over distance and on a long transfer, come from professional labs, weighed against what I see in ordinary use. The no-logs side rests on the named Deloitte audits, and the streaming on repeated outside testing, not on the sales pages, which is a shade easier to trust when the two companies are, in the end, one.
Where each falls short
In fairness, the true shortcomings. NordVPN’s are the higher price, the ten-device cap against Surfshark’s unlimited, a busier app for a beginner, and the 2018 breach on its record, resolved as it was. Surfshark’s are the steeper speed drop-off on long and upload-heavy transfers, the Netherlands base within the nine-eyes bloc, the manual P2P server selection, and the TunnelCrack bug, quickly patched. Neither list is a dealbreaker, but any comparison that paints a product as perfect is not levelling with you, and these are the things I would point out to a friend before they bought.
Who each one suits
Set yourself beside the pattern and the answer arrives fast. NordVPN is for the buyer who wants the best all-round performance and is happy to pay a little more for it: faster over distance and on long downloads, deeper on layered security, more reliable in censored countries, and backed by the more recent audit. Surfshark is for the value buyer and the busy household: cheaper, with unlimited devices, a deep feature set of its own, and a daily experience that concedes little to its pricier sibling. Because they share a parent, you are not trading away trust in either direction, which makes this a rare comparison where the advice is to match the product to your budget and your priorities.
To make it concrete, a single professional who works remotely across time zones, moves large files, and occasionally lands somewhere with a difficult internet gets real value from NordVPN’s speed at distance and its censorship reliability. A family of four who mainly stream, shop, and browse on home broadband gets almost the same protection from Surfshark for less money and with every device covered. Those two profiles cover most buyers, and they point in opposite directions for reasons that have nothing to do with one product being better than the other, only with which one is built for the way you use a VPN.
When to rule one out
Sometimes the quickest decision comes from eliminating one. Pass on Surfshark if you download or upload large files regularly, if you travel into censored countries, or if you want the fastest possible connection over distance, since its steeper drop-off under load and weaker China access will let you down. Pass on NordVPN if you have a houseful of devices its ten-connection cap cannot cover, if the price difference matters to you, or if you do not use a VPN hard enough to notice the performance gap. Most readers who run down those two lists land on the same side quickly, and because the two share a parent, neither choice carries a hidden trust cost.
The verdict on NordVPN vs Surfshark
Add it up and NordVPN wins speed, torrenting, security by a narrow margin, censorship access, and privacy on jurisdiction, while Surfshark wins price and devices outright and draws on streaming and apps. On paper that favours NordVPN, yet the categories it wins are the ones heavy users feel and light users never touch, while the rounds Surfshark wins, price and devices, are felt by everyone every month. So the tally favours NordVPN, but the wallet favours Surfshark, and for the buyer who wants the best performance NordVPN is the pick, worth its premium for speed and depth. I set the argument out in full in my NordVPN review.
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Surfshark, though, is the smarter buy for a very large group, and the tally undersells it. If value matters most, if you have a houseful of devices to cover, or if you want a deep, capable VPN for the lowest sensible price, Surfshark concedes little you would notice day to day and costs a fraction as much. For most households, it is the one I would recommend first. My Surfshark review goes through the whole toolkit.
Unlimited connections on one plan, 30 days to change your mind.
Because they are corporate siblings, there is no losing choice here, only the better fit for your wallet and your needs: premium power in NordVPN, unbeatable value in Surfshark, and the same well-audited company standing behind both.
The short version
Strip it back and the choice is unusually clean. Both are strong, independently audited VPNs from the same parent company, so you are not gambling your trust on either one of them. NordVPN is the premium product: faster where speed is tested hardest, deeper on security, more reliable in censored countries, and worth the extra dollar or so a month if you use a VPN heavily, travel to difficult places, or simply want the best of everything on offer. Surfshark is the value product: cheaper, unlimited on devices, capable and deep in its own right, and the smarter buy for the large majority who stream, browse, and want to cover a household without overpaying. Buy NordVPN if performance leads your list, Surfshark if value does, and rest easy that the same well-audited house stands behind whichever you pick. There is no version of this decision where you end up with a bad VPN, which is a nice place to be making a choice from, and a rarer one than the endless VPN league tables would have you believe.
Frequently asked questions
Is NordVPN or Surfshark better?
NordVPN is the better all-round performer, faster at distance and on long transfers, deeper on security, and more reliable in censored countries, which makes it the pick for anyone who wants the best. Surfshark is the better value, cheaper with unlimited devices and a deep feature set of its own, giving up little in daily use. They share a parent company, Nord Security, so trust is comparable; the choice is premium versus value.
Which one is faster?
NordVPN, on the demanding tasks. In testing the two were identical locally, each holding 96 Mbps for a 4% loss, but NordVPN held more at distance, 86 Mbps to Surfshark’s 83, and far more on a long sustained transfer, losing 3% to Surfshark’s 13%. Testers also measured Surfshark losing about half its upload speed. For everyday streaming you will feel no difference; for downloads and uploads, NordVPN is clearly quicker.
Are NordVPN and Surfshark owned by the same company?
Yes. Nord Security has owned both since a 2022 merger, though they operate as separate services with their own apps, server networks, and independent audits. It means you are trusting the same company either way, which removes the usual ownership question from the comparison and leaves the decision to price, performance, and features.
Do NordVPN and Surfshark share servers or user data?
No. Despite the shared owner, the two run separate server networks and separate apps, and each keeps no logs of user activity, verified by its own independent audits. There is no pooling of your data between the brands; the common ground is corporate ownership, while the infrastructure stays separate. In practice you use them as two distinct services that happen to answer to the same parent company.
Which is better for streaming?
It is a draw with a household twist. Both unblock Netflix across many regions plus Disney Plus, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, and Max, so a single viewer is well served by either. NordVPN’s larger network gives it a slight edge when a platform is actively blocking VPNs, while Surfshark’s unlimited devices let a whole family stream different regions at once on one plan. For one screen, either; for many screens, Surfshark.
Is Surfshark as secure as NordVPN?
On the fundamentals, yes. Both keep no logs, run every server from memory, encrypt to the same standard, and have been audited by Deloitte, and they share the parent company that stands behind those claims. NordVPN carries a few more advanced security tools, such as Double VPN and Onion over VPN, and its Panama base edges Surfshark’s Netherlands one on jurisdiction. But for the core job of protecting your connection and keeping no record of it, Surfshark is just as safe.
Can I switch between NordVPN and Surfshark later?
Easily. They are separate subscriptions with separate apps, so nothing ties you to one, and both offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. A sensible approach is to pick the one that fits your priorities now, use the refund window to test it hard, and switch to the other if it disappoints. Because they share an owner, moving between them is a change of product, not a change of how much you trust the company.
Which is better value?
Surfshark, clearly. It costs around $1.99 a month on its two-year plan against NordVPN’s roughly $3.09, and it covers unlimited devices to NordVPN’s ten. For a household or anyone with many gadgets, the combination of a lower price and no device cap makes Surfshark the obvious value choice, and it gives up little you would notice in ordinary use.
Which has more servers and countries?
NordVPN, on both counts: more than 7,200 servers across over 110 countries, to Surfshark’s roughly 4,500 across 100. In daily use both put a quick server close by almost everywhere, so the raw totals matter less than they look, but NordVPN’s larger fleet helps with congestion at peak hours and gives it more addresses to rotate through against streaming blocks. Both run entirely from memory.
Is NordVPN worth the extra money over Surfshark?
For a heavy user, yes; for a light one, rarely. The premium buys a faster network over distance and on long transfers, better upload performance, more reliable access in censored countries, and a slightly deeper security toolkit. If you download a lot, travel to difficult places, or make use of those tools, NordVPN earns its roughly one-dollar-a-month premium. If you mostly stream and browse on a normal connection, Surfshark delivers a near-identical daily experience for less and covers more devices.
Is it safe that both are owned by the same company?
It is a fair question, and the reassuring part is that both maintain separate apps, server networks, and independent no-logs audits, so shared ownership has not meant a shared weak point. Nord Security is one of the more scrutinised names in the industry, with repeated Deloitte audits across both brands. The practical upshot is that you are trusting a single, well-audited company either way, which removes the ownership uncertainty that clouds many VPN comparisons rather than adding to it.
Which should I pick for a family?
Surfshark, in most cases. Its unlimited connections protect every device in the home under one plan, without logging anyone out to free a slot, and it undercuts NordVPN on price as well. NordVPN’s ten-device limit is enough for a small household but starts to pinch once you count phones, laptops, tablets, a smart TV, and a console. For families, Surfshark’s value and unlimited devices settle it, unless you specifically need NordVPN’s edge in speed or censored countries.
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