If you’re trying to watch Disney+ Hotstar in Australia, you may have noticed the streaming service doesn’t work. This is because Disney+ Hotstar only has the rights to broadcast its content in India.
The good news is there’s a simple way you can unblock Disney+ Hotstar in Australia.
All you need to do is fool Disney+ Hotstar into thinking you’re accessing its content from within India.
This sounds complicated but the process is very simple. All you need is a reliable VPN.
This article will explain how you can get a VPN that will work with Disney+ Hotstar and read on to the end to find out how a VPN will allow you to reliably watch Disney+ Hotstar in Australia or anywhere in the world.
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How to watch Disney+ Hotstar in Australia: Quick Guide
To make Disney+ Hotstar think you’re accessing its service from within India, you need to change your Australian IP address to an Indian one.
VPNs are the easiest and most reliable way to do this.
To get an Indian IP address and watch Disney+ Hotstar in Australia, follow these simple steps:
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Create a new account with ExpressVPN ($6.67/month)
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Download and install the new VPN app
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Select a server in India
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Watch Disney+ Hotstar in Australia
Why doesn’t Disney+ Hotstar work in Australia?
The reason Disney+ Hotstar isn’t available in Australia is because it doesn’t have the rights to broadcast its content outside of India.
Disney+ Hotstar is an Indian-based streaming service that is only available for India-based customers.
Due to content and licensing agreements, Disney+ Hotstar stops anyone outside India from accessing its content. This is why you’re running into issues trying to access the service.
Disney+ Hotstar uses geo-blocking technology to prevent customers outside its broadcast zone from accessing its service. If it didn’t do this, it could face severe repercussions due to licensing breaches.
How does Disney+ Hotstar block my connection?
Disney+ Hotstar’s geo-blocking techniques are reliant on your IP address.
Whenever you go online, you’re allocated a unique IP address. This IP is used to communicate between your device and the service you’re connecting to.
When you connect to Disney+ Hotstar, your IP address is sent to Disney+ Hotstar’s servers, and the information is sent back to your device.
In order for this communication to work, your IP address contains information that discloses your location.
Disney+ Hotstar uses this to figure out where you’re located when you access its service. It scans your IP address and if it finds you’re outside of India, it blocks your connection.
How do I get around Disney+ Hotstar’s geo-blocks?
The way to get around these blocks is to make Disney+ Hotstar think you’re inside its broadcast zone when trying to stream its content. You need to make Disney+ Hotstar think you’re in India.
To do this, you need to change your IP address to an Indian one. A VPN allows you to do this.
All you need to know is a VPN will give you an anonymous connection so your location cannot be tracked, and it can provide you with an IP address from a country of your choosing. (provided the VPN has servers in that country).
VPNs provide you with an anonymous internet connection by encrypting all of your online data and rerouting it through one of their own servers. This process makes your location untraceable.
To get an IP address in a country of your choosing, this encrypted data is sent to one of the VPNs servers, that you choose, where it’s decrypted and sent to a local internet service provider.
To watch Disney+ Hotstar in Australia, all you need to do is download a VPN, select a server in India and you’ll have a US IP address meaning Disney+ Hotstar’s content will be unblocked.
Will any VPN work with Disney+ Hotstar?
Because VPNs are a well-known way to watch Disney+ Hotstar, or any streaming service, outside of their broadcast zones, Disney+ Hotstar tries to block VPNs from accessing its content.
The good news is Disney+ Hotstar doesn’t have the capabilities to block an entire VPN. But they can block the IP addresses that VPNs provide. They do this using three main techniques:
- The most common technique is to do with the IP addresses that your VPN can provide. VPN providers have more customers than IP addresses; this means that customers are forced to share the same IP addresses. Usually, only a household with a few devices uses the same IP address. When Disney+ Hotstar sees hundreds or even thousands of connections coming through on the same IP address, it knows that it is a VPN and it blocks it.
- Disney+ Hotstar monitors for IP, DNS and WebRTC leaks that can tip the service off you are using a VPN.
- Disney+ Hotstar teams up with GeoIP databases like Maxmind to identify IP addresses. If the IP address your VPN provides is on one of these databases, Disney+ Hotstar will be able to find out where in the world you are connecting to the internet from and it will block you.
Does Disney+ Hotstar still work with a VPN?
Yes, it does, however, you’ll need a VPN that has measures in place to get around Disney+ Hotstar’s VPN blocking techniques.
Lesser VPNs struggle to get around Disney+ Hotstar’s blocks. Over time, Disney+ Hotstar is able to identify and block all the IP addresses these lesser VPNs can provide.
This means you’ll no longer be able to watch Disney+ Hotstar in Australia with your VPN and more importantly it could mean you’re spending money on a subscription to a VPN that won’t work with Disney+ Hotstar.
The VPNs that will consistently work are VPNs like ExpressVPN ($6.67/month) or Private Internet Access ($2.03/month). When Disney+ Hotstar identifies and blocks an IP address provided by these VPNs, ExpressVPN ($6.67/month) or Private Internet Access ($2.03/month) will close that IP and open a new one. This allows them to stay one step ahead of Disney+ Hotstar, and it means you’ll be able to watch Disney+ Hotstar reliably in Australia or anywhere in the world.
The best VPNs to watch Disney+ Hotstar in Australia
1. ExpressVPN 🥇
Why You Should Use ExpressVPN? It’s the fastest and MOST reliable VPN of 2023
Pros
- ✅ Fast servers
- ✅ Thousands of IP addresses
- ✅ 10-simultaneous connections
- ✅ 24/7 Live Chat
- ✅ Easy-to-use app
- ✅ 30-day money-back guarantee
Cons
- ❌ Expensive
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Get 3 extra months free when you sign up for a 12-month ExpressVPN plan. That’s 15 months in total for the price of 12.
Number of servers: 3,000+ | Speed: >80% | Bandwidth: Unlimited | IP locations: 160 in 94 countries | Devices supported: 5 | Live chat: Yes | 30-day money-back guarantee: Yes
- $6.66/month for 15 months
- $9.99/month for 6 months
- $12.95/month for 1 month
ExpressVPN ($6.66/month) is still the best VPN. And importantly, it ALWAYS has servers that are open with major streaming sites such as Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+, Amazon Prime Video, etc.
ExpressVPN is usually very good at playing Cat and Mouse with online streaming sites. Meaning, whenever one of its servers is blacklisted it creates a new one – giving its users a constant stream of servers that aren’t blocked. Needless to say, this is a valuable attribute if you’re looking for a VPN to unblock streaming sites.
Its app is easy-to-use and free to download on pretty much any device you can think of. Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, FireStick, Android TV, Roku, PS4, Xbox, Linux, even Apple TV (with a workaround). It’s got it all covered.
The app is another main reason this VPN is so good at unblocking TV streaming sites (that claim they block VPNs) is that its software takes a pragmatic approach to user management. While other VPNs tempt customers by promising them access to hundreds/thousands of servers in multiple countries, ExpressVPN does things differently.
With ExpressVPN you only have a handful of server locations to choose from. Once you select your location the app takes care of the rest. Assigning you to the fastest available server that’s not oversubscribed. This simple technique is so important, as it keeps ExpressVPN’s servers operating at lightning-fast speeds and prevents its IPs from getting blacklisted for “abnormal” usage in the first place.
Check out our full ExpressVPN review.
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2. Private Internet Access 🥈
The BEST low-cost VPN for streaming!
Pros
- ✅ Fast and reliable servers
- ✅ Thousands of IP addresses
- ✅ 10-simultaneous connections
- ✅ 24/7 Live Chat
- ✅ 30-day money-back guarantee
Cons
- ❌ Only 48 server locations
Special Offer for you!
Sign up for a 3-year plan with Private Internet Access and save 83% + 3 months free. That works out at $2.03/month.
Number of servers: 25,000+ | Speed: >75% | Bandwidth: Unlimited | IP locations: 70 in 74 countries | Devices supported: 10 | Live chat: Yes | 30-day money-back guarantee: Yes
- $2.03/month for 3 years
- $7.50/month for 6 months
- $11.99/month for 1 month
Private Internet Access is one of the leading no-log VPN services with over 1-million paying customers.
This VPN is one of the best in the industry at beating streaming sites’ VPN bans. It provides reliable connections with US Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney+ Amazon Prime Video, etc. It also allows 10 simultaneous devices to be connected to its servers at the same time, so you can share the account with your close friends.
If – for whatever reason – you’re not happy with Private Internet Access, there’s a 24/7 live chat support available to assist you with your problem. PIA also offers the industry-standard 30-day money-back guarantee.
From my tests (from New Zealand) I was able to get download speeds of 70 Mbps while connected to a UK server using the Private Internet Access VPN (my non-VPN speed is 100 Mbps).
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3. NordVPN 🥉
A very quick and trustworthy VPN
Pros
- ✅ Fast servers
- ✅ No logs
- ✅ Thousands of IP addresses
- ✅ 6-simultaneous connections
- ✅ 30-day money-back guarantee
- ✅ Easy-to-use app
Cons
- ❌ No refunds for purchases from iTunes/App store
Special Offer for you!
Sign up for a 3-year plan with Private Internet Access and save 83% + 3 months free. That works out at $2.03/month.
Number of servers: 5,000+ | Speeds: >80% | Bandwidth: Unlimited | IP locations: 62 countries | Devices supported: 6 | Live chat: Yes | 30-day money-back guarantee: Yes
- $3.49/month for 2 years
- $6.99/month for 1 year
- $11.95/month for 1 month
NordVPN is the most widely-used VPN in the world. And it’s easy to see why. It’s a polished app that delivers fast connections (more on this later) to a massive network of VPN servers.
It’s the most reliable at unblocking popular streaming services too – US Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, BBC iPlayer, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, etc. This is because NordVPN hired a full-time technical team (that’s responsible for monitoring its servers’ connections with popular TV streaming services) and has been aggressively investing in its network of IP addresses in key locations.
Another interesting thing to note is that NordVPN is an industry leader in its development of Nordlynx technology. Nordlynx is built using the WireGuard, a new VPN tunneling protocol designed to outperform current standards (OpenVPN and IPSec). The benefits, according to NordVPN, are dramatically faster transfer speeds while connected to a VPN. My tests – New Zealand to London – confirm that Nordlynx is currently the fastest VPN on the market. However, the difference isn’t dramatic, a few Mbps is all.
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4. Ivacy
A very quick and trustworthy VPN
Pros
- ✅ Fast servers
- ✅ Thousands of IP addresses
- ✅ Dedicated streaming servers
- ✅ 5-simultaneous connections
- ✅ 30-day money-back guarantee
- ✅ 24/7 Live Chat
Cons
- ❌ Only 5 devices
- ❌ Sometimes runs slow
- ❌ Occasionally block by streaming sites for several days
Special Offer for you!
Sign up for Ivacy and enjoy a 7-day trial with no strings attached
Number of servers: 1,000+ | Speed: >65% | Bandwidth: Unlimited | IP locations: 275 in 100 countries | Devices supported: 5 | Live chat: Yes | 30-day money-back guarantee: Yes
- $1.16/month for 5 years
- $3.50/month for 1 year
- $9.99/month for 1 month
If you’re looking for an excellent VPN, with an even better price tag, Ivacy ($1.16/month) is a great option.
This VPN has all the features you need to stream BBC iPlayer, in HD, from any country in the world. I’ve been testing the app recently on Mac, PC, Android, iOS and FireStick and the results have been impressive – unlocking BBC iPlayer, US Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, etc. with ease.
The Ivacy app is a little different in regards to its UX (user experience). Instead of just selecting a UK server, you need to select the specific BBC iPlayer server. Don’t worry, this isn’t a bad thing – by connecting to a dedicated BBC iPlayer server, it simply means that you’re connecting to an IP address that Ivacy knows works with BBC iPlayer.
For an extra $1.99/month (£1.74) you can add-on a dedicated IP. This will buy you sole access to an IP address in a country of your choice, meaning you won’t have to share your IP (and speeds) with any other use. I don’t recommend this though, using the regular Ivacy servers is enough 95 per cent of the time.
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(30-day money-back guarantee)
5. CyberGhost
A very quick and trustworthy VPN
Pros
- ✅ 1-day free trial
- ✅ Reliable servers
- ✅ Thousands of IP addresses
- ✅ 7-simultaneous connections
- ✅ 30-day money-back guarantee
- ✅ Easy-to-use app
Cons
- ❌ Expensive
- ❌ Average speed scores
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Number of servers: 1,000+ | Speed: >65% | Bandwidth: Unlimited | IP locations: 275 in 100 countries | Devices supported: 5 | Live chat: Yes | 30-day money-back guarantee: Yes
- $2.75/month for 3 years
- $3.69/month for 2 years
- $5.99/month for 1 year
- $12.99/month for 1 month
CyberGhost is one of the more established VPNs on the market. It has a well-established, and well-tested global network of servers that perform well.
From my tests over the past several months, CyberGhost has no trouble at unblocking major streaming services – US Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max etc. This VPN performed well at maintaining download speeds, well above 65 per cent of my regular (non VPN) ISP speed.
That said, there’s nothing really unique about the service. Which forces you to look at its price-point. And there’s nothing special here. Its short-term $12.99/month price tag puts is well above the industry average of $10.10/month. Similarly, its long-term $2.75/month for 3 years deal isn’t much of a “deal” either.
Oddly, CyberGhost’s most unique feature is its a 1-day, no obligations, free trial. This is an appealing offer to customers who are new to VPNs. However, it’s important to remember that most reputable VPNs will offer customers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so try not to be too seduced by the offer.
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(30-day money-back guarantee)
