If you’re looking for a free VPN, scrolling through hundreds of doubtful applications to find a good one might be time-consuming. And, after you’ve discovered one, you’ll need to understand the restrictions of a free VPN in comparison to commercial services.
Before committing your online behavior to a free VPN, it’s critical to understand how it works. It is not known how providers can afford to provide free service in the first place. What compromises you’ll have to make in terms of functionality and privacy are critical and will undoubtedly influence your decision.
You won’t be shocked to learn that no free VPN can compete with the finest VPN services. But for casual users, they may be a helpful tool to have. While none of them works with Netflix and all have limitations, they can be handy for reading emails and surfing secretly on insecure networks, but for many, the disadvantages may exceed the benefits.
ProtonVPN is the current favorite free VPN. While the standout feature is definitely that there are no data restrictions on how much data you can use with your VPN, there’s much more to like.
But it would be irresponsible of us not to start with that top selling point. ProtonVPN does not impose any data limits. In other words, you may use as much data as you like each month.
The free version of this service contains servers in three countries: the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands. Of course, there are clients for Windows and Mac, as well as apps for Android and iPhone. There are also some odd features for freeware, such as split tunneling and DNS leak prevention.
There are, of course, limits to the free plan to encourage upgrading to a paid-for product. The most apparent difference is that free users are given lower priority when it comes to performance as compared to paid customers.
There is no P2P support, and speeds may be reduced at peak periods when there are a lot of users and paying customers to get first.
And Proton makes it plain that if you want to use your VPN for streaming, you must subscribe to the Plus rate.
But if you can live with it, there is an outstanding company with a strict no-logging policy that you can sign up for with nothing more than your email address and a username of your choice. There are no advertisements on the website, let alone for the client.
PrivadoVPN, a new addition to our free VPN roundup, has shown to be a solid free service with several very attractive features.
To begin with, the 10GB monthly data allowance is reasonable. While it’s not infinite, it should be plenty for safeguarding your everyday browsing.
In terms of network speeds, PrivadoVPN isn’t quite up there with the best speed VPN services. For a free VPN, the speeds were good, especially given how many other companies further down our list restrict connections.
The option to arrange your server list in a variety of ways, including speed and listed alphabetically, is a useful tool. It’s also a rather strong and secure piece of equipment, thanks to the kill switch and auto-connect settings. It’s definitely worth a go, especially since it’s free!
Windscribe’s premium service is great, and this extends to their free VPN as well. When you sign up, you’ll have the option of receiving either 2GB per month without providing any information, or 10GB if you supply an email address – discover more in our Windscribe VPN review.
You may choose from a variety of servers, including those in North America, Europe, Hong Kong, and Turkey, which were just introduced. Of course, upgrading will give you a far broader variety, but this is rather rich for a free VPN.
What’s more, Windscribe’s free VPN has been reported to provide access to Netflix. while the goalposts are always shifting. If you’re searching for a free Netflix VPN, you could do a lot worse – plus you’ll receive an ad-blocker, a firewall, and no-logging assurances.
Windscribe’s applications, on the other hand, fall a bit short — the UI is rather tight and can make it difficult to discover options. However, if you keep to the suggested settings and simply switch it on and off, it is completely usable. It’s also worth mentioning that neither the premium nor free versions receive 24/7 assistance. So you might be left hanging if something goes wrong.
Overall, Windscribe is a strong free VPN service that is both easy and effective. It’s definitely worth a look.
Hide.me was a notable provider set of assessments, and while it isn’t quite up there with the big dogs yet, it has evolved as a service and is definitely worth investigating – especially as a free VPN.
It is ideal for individuals who enjoy tinkering with features and settings. It provides a plethora of customizable capabilities, all of which are available to free users. This contains a kill switch, a reorderable favorites list for servers, split tunneling, Stealth Guard, a slew of protocols, and more.
Unlike ProtonVPN, however, Hide.me does impose a data cap on its free users. At 10GB a month, it’s on par with Privado VPN, and while fairly generous, we’d prefer an unlimited plan. Otherwise, though, there’s not a lot wrong with Hide.me, and if you’re pretty techy with a desire to set your VPN up exactly as you want it, it’s a compelling choice.
Atlas VPN is a nice choice. The same goes for their free VPN, which was just bought by the venerable NordVPN.
With a reasonable monthly data cap of 10GB – and a whopping 2GB per day on Mac – it’s a handy little tool for increased privacy and changing your location to visit geo-blocked websites.
With only three servers to choose from, you won’t be able to travel far, but it’s plenty to get by, and privacy advocates will like the fact that you don’t need to input an email address to download or connect.
The applications are appealing, and while they require some work to seem as polished as those of premium competitors, they are reliable and useful – and it can give rates of approximately 100Mbps, which is as fast as our connection can go.
Overall, Atlas VPN is definitely worth considering, especially if you don’t mind bandwidth constraints and a limited server range.
TunnelBear may have a charming design, but it’s a serious free option, especially after being acquired by security giant McAfee. There are both free and paid subscriptions available.
The main limitation of the free plan is that you are only allowed 500MB of bandwidth per month. That is a very small amount, which means you may only use it when you feel that you need a little better security and want to take the freeway. You won’t be capable of keeping it on all the time, and you won’t be able to use it for torrenting or streaming. Obviously, using a service like ExpressVPN or NordVPN removes this issue totally.
But, at the very least, the free version does not restrict you to a subset of the premium service’s 20+ nations. And TunnelBear recently changed its privacy policy so that it now gathers even less data on users—deleting the requirement to provide a first name when signing up and deleting its record of the user’s total lifetime connections.
To be honest, there is no simple solution to this issue. It all depends on how you want to utilize your free VPN. They might be ideal for adding a layer of protection to your laptop or mobile device when using public Wi-Fi. Join the service, enable a secured server connection, and go about your online business certain that no prying eyes will be able to read your personal information.
However, if your primary goal is to utilize a VPN for streaming, or to download gigabytes of torrent files, a free VPN isn’t going to cut it. For starters, most of them restrict you to a daily or monthly data allocation that you’ll quickly deplete. While most lack the type of easy access support or server range necessary to make such tasks simple using a virtual private network.
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