How to watch Spicee from anywhere via a French server
Feature-length investigative journalism has its own French home. Spicee is a paid niche streaming service devoted to documentaries and reporting on geopolitics, disinformation and the big social questions of our time. Built by three journalists in 2015, it now offers hundreds of carefully curated documentaries and reports, mostly acquired, alongside a handful of in-house productions each year, and there is not a single ad to sit through. The studio behind it is Paris-based VOD Factory.
You can subscribe and watch much of it internationally through spicee.com and the apps, yet part of the catalogue carries French rights and is locked to France, so some documentaries simply will not load from abroad. The fix is simple: a reliable VPN parks your connection on a French server and unifies the full French line-up exactly as it appears in Paris. That way Surfshark lets you watch serious reporting in 1080p wherever you happen to be.
How do I watch Spicee outside France?
Best VPN for Spicee
Tested weekly by our team. Green: works, amber: partial, red: blocked.
| VPN Service | Price | Spicee | Tested | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
SurfsharkBEST | From $1.78/mo | ✓ Works | August 23 | Try it |
ExpressVPN | From $2.79/mo | ✓ Works | August 23 | Open |
NordVPN | From $2.99/mo | ✓ Works | August 24 | Open |
Private Internet Access | From $1.79/mo | ✓ Works | August 21 | Open |
IPVanish | From $2.19/mo | ~ Partial | August 20 | Open |
ProtonVPN | From $3.59/mo | ~ Partial | August 23 | Open |
CyberGhost | From $1.75/mo | ~ Partial | August 23 | Open |
How to Unblock Spicee with a VPN
Takes about 2 minutes. Works on your phone, tablet, TV, PC, or laptop.
- Pick a dependable VPNChoose a provider with fast servers in France. Surfshark starts at $1.78 a month and ships with a 30-day money-back guarantee.Skip free VPNs; they tend to be slow and their IP ranges are often already blocked.
- Connect to a French serverOpen the VPN app, select a location in France (Paris works well) and wait for the connection to confirm. You now hold a French IP address.
- Sign in to your accountHead to the website or the app and log in with your subscription. The reporting catalogue loads exactly as it would in Paris.
- Stream a film in 1080pPick a title and hit play. Video streams in 1080p, smoothly and without any ad breaks interrupting the story.
Which countries is Spicee available in?
Spicee works in 2 countries, including in France and in Belgium. In 192 more it is blocked, and outside available regions you will need a VPN.
Blocked in 192 countries VPN required
Show all 180 more countries
Spicee is blocked in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Australia, in Canada and in New Zealand, plus in 187 more countries. To access it, use a premium VPN like Surfshark.
How Much Does Spicee Cost?
Monthly
- 2 simultaneous streams
- Ad-free
- No offline downloads
Annual
- 2 simultaneous streams
- Ad-free
- No offline downloads
Who’s behind the service?
What is Spicee
Spicee is a French paid streaming service built around investigative documentaries and reportage. Launched in 2015 and majority-owned by VOD Factory (the group behind Madelen, mk2 Curiosity and Shadowz), it offers more than 400 original ad-free documentaries spanning over 100 countries, covering geopolitics, in-depth enquiries and the fight against disinformation. A subscription runs at around 5 € a month, with an annual plan and a seven-day free trial. Spicee is officially available in France and Belgium.
Company and history
- Three journalists, Jean-Bernard Schmidt, Bruno Vanryb and Antoine Robin, launched Spicee as a French streaming service devoted to documentaries and reporting on the world today.
- The service's productions earned industry recognition, including honours at the FIGRA festival and the Prix Francoise Giroud, cementing its standing among journalistic studios.
- The platform widened its distribution, arriving as a standalone channel inside Amazon Prime Video Channels and reaching a broader French audience.
- The operator introduced Spicee Educ, a dedicated media-literacy platform built to fight disinformation, aimed at schools and teachers.
- The service was redesigned onto VOD Factory's Otto technology, giving it more freedom in editorial, sales and distribution across screens.
- By 2022, the studio VOD Factory had become the majority owner (53%) and taken over the platform's technical operation, much as it does for its other niche services.
- The service reached Belgium through the operator VOO TV+, letting French-speaking viewers in Wallonia and Brussels watch alongside France.
- Roughly a decade after launch, the operator unified a new-generation platform on Otto technology across the website, mobile apps and connected TVs, kept available through Molotov, Orange and Prime Video.
Watch on all your devices
Supported devices
Video quality
UX features
Accessibility
Tips & tricks you should know
5 tips from our Spicee testing team · Updated July 16, 2026
- Pick the 49,90 € yearly plan over paying 4,90 € monthly and you effectively get the whole year for the price of about ten months.
- Use the 7-day free trial to binge the strongest investigations first, then cancel before it renews if the 400+ documentary catalogue is not for you.
- Spicee is officially limited to France and Belgium, so when you travel connect through Surfshark on a French server to keep watching your queue.
- One subscription covers 4 registered devices and 2 simultaneous streams, enough for a household to watch different documentaries at once.
- If your French is rusty, switch on the English subtitles that Spicee adds to every title, with Spanish or Arabic available on a selection of films.
Other services you can watch
Not the right fit? Here are services in the same category you can compare.
Frequently asked questions
Everything you need to know before subscribing to Spicee.
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