See if a free VPN is right for you and which is best — including ProtonVPN, and Windscribe. Plus advice on pitfalls to avoid and whether to pay for your VPN.
If you know you want a VPN but don’t really want to pay for yet another software subscription, it’s only natural that you’d consider getting a free VPN instead. On the face of it, they carry out the same function as fully paid-for services, just without the cost. Very tempting. But it’s worth exercising some caution before you download. There are hundreds of free VPNs out there on the web and in your app store and the vast majority just aren’t very good. Some of the dodgier free apps bombard you with unwanted ads and may even sell your data. And if you were hoping to use yours to stream and torrent, you’re likely to be out of luck. That said, if your reason for having a VPN is just about having a bit more security on your laptop or mobile when using public Wi-Fi every now and then, the best free VPNs can do a decent job. So on this page, you’ll find our pick of the better options available to download today. We’ve assessed the ability of the top free VPNs to see which will keep your online activity anonymous without you having to spend a thing. ExpressVPN might take the crown of our favorite premium provider in the world, but the best free VPN at the moment is ProtonVPN — we explain why we think so below. Free VPN services may cost nothing but there is usually a good reason for that — it means the provider will be turning a profit in some other way, usually with invasive advertising or by selling your browsing data to third-parties (rather defeating the whole drive for privacy in the first place). Plus, free services tend to limit the amount of data you can use and the speed you can use it at, rendering them practically useless for streaming video, torrenting or as an extra layer of reliable security in your day-to-day online life. And don’t expect the kind of easy access support or server range that you get with the paid services, either. So before we get stuck in to our list of the best free VPN downloads, it’s worth knowing that a paid-for version can cost as little as around $2/£2 per month and will give you much better performance and protection. ProtonVPN is our current pick of the best free VPN. While the stand-out feature is undeniably that it offers zero limits on the amount of data you can use with your VPN uses, there’s plenty more to admire outside that alone. It would be remiss of us not to begin with that headline selling point, though. ProtonVPN doesn’t impose any data restrictions. In other words, you’re free to use as much data as you want every month — that’s really rare for a free VPN provider, as you’ll discover below with the others on this guide. The free version of this service has servers in three locations, spread nicely around the world: in the US, Japan and the Netherlands. There are clients for Windows and Mac, of course, as well as apps for Android and iPhone. On desktop, we like the option to toggle on automatic connections when you start up your computer. And some unusual features for a freebie are included, too, like split tunneling and DNS leak protection. There are, naturally enough, limitations for the free plan to incentivize upgrading to a paid-for offering. We think the most notable is the fact that free users get a lower priority when it comes to speed compared to paying subscribers. There’s no P2P support either and speeds may drop at peak times when lots of users are around and paying folks get priority. And Proton makes it very clear that you’ll need to upgrade to its Plus tier if you want to use your VPN for streaming. But if you can live with all that, this is an impressive provider with a strict no logging policy, and you can sign up with nothing more than your email address and a username of your choosing. There aren’t even any ads on the website, let alone the client. — Go to the ProtonVPN website to download this free VPN PrivadoVPN is a new face to our free VPN chart. The provider has been making enormous strides of late with its paid-for product, and the free version also impresses. It may not be able to offer the completely unlimited use that Proton does, but 10GB every 30 days will be more than enough for most people to have poised on their laptop and smartphone (it works with Windows, Mac, iOS and Android) to switch on when they need it. Unless you have it on all the time or are really binging foreign streaming content, then 10GB should be absolutely plenty. Where Privado does have the beating of Proton is its breadth of server locations. There are servers in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, and its native Switzerland. That kind of global coverage is rare for a free VPN, so a definite plus point. It can’t boast the fastest server speeds out there, but we like that there are handy features thrown in like P2P servers (so good for torrenters), auto connect and a VPN kill switch. And another bonus it has over Proton is that it doesn’t automatically stop you from streaming. We have to admit that we haven’t tested PrivadoVPN’s free app on major streaming service, but the paid-for version works a treat with US Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Disney Plus and Prime Video. That all bodes very well indeed for a VPN provider on the rise. So if you’ve heard the name and considered downloading it, you can use PrivadoVPN with confidence. — Download PrivadoVPN from its website now to get started The premium version of Hotspot Shield takes its place among the top paid-for services on the web, so it’s little surprise that its free option is so popular. Those on the free plan are limited to 500MB of data per day (so around 15GB per month).
