If you want to protect your privacy, hide your Internet traffic, or avoid geo-blocks, you need a virtual private network (VPN). With hackers developing more sophisticated cyberattacks every day and advertisers constantly harvesting your personal information, your personal data is at risk.
The best and fastest VPNs require a subscription, but the best free VPNs protect your privacy for free. There are some pros and cons, but you still get good speeds, premium features, and great security.
proton vpn
- Registration country: Swiss
- expense: Free or $11 per month; $66 per year for basic; $118 for 2 years
- Number of servers and locations: 136 in 3 countries (free), 6,380 in 112 countries (paid)
- Supported clients: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, Android
- Number of concurrent connections: Something with a free subscription
We rated Proton VPN as one of the best paid VPNs, and the free version is just as good. There are no monthly data limits, no third-party ads, and no nagging you to upgrade to a paid subscription. However, there are some limitations.
Proton has significantly reduced the number of free servers and locations. You can connect to the US, Netherlands and Japan. This limits your streaming options to that country. Proton VPN doesn’t throttle your data or speed limits, but the free servers fill up faster, resulting in slower speeds.
These limitations aside, Proton VPN is a very powerful, privacy-focused service that can serve as a permanent tool in your privacy arsenal, whether you pay for it or not.
Buy from Proton VPN
Windscribe VPN
- Registration country: cayman islands
- expense: Free or $9 per month; $69 per year; $1 per location per month
- Number of positions: 10 countries (free), 134 cities in 69 countries (paid)
- Supported clients: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, FireTV
- Number of concurrent connections: Unlimited with a free subscription
Windscribe’s free VPN can’t compare to Proton, but it’s relatively fast and has servers in the US, Canada, UK, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, and Romania. This is a significant amount to expand your streaming possibilities.
Monthly data limits range from 2GB to 15GB. Anonymous accounts have a 2GB monthly limit. You can significantly expand up to 10GB by sharing your email address when signing up. Windscribe may send you promotional offers for subscriptions, but it won’t pile up too much spam in your inbox. Publishing for Windscribe on X gives you an extra 5GB of monthly bandwidth.
Of course, subscribers get unlimited data and access to 500 servers in 69 countries for a reasonable price.
Buy from Windscribe
Hide.Me
- Registration country: malaysia
- expense: Free or $10 per month; $45 per year; $60 for two years; $120 for 3 years
- Number of servers and locations: 8 locations (free), 2,600 in 91 countries
- Supported clients: Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android and all major platforms
- Number of concurrent connections: Something with a free subscription
Hide.Me’s free VPN once had a 10GB monthly data limit, but now it’s unlimited. That means you can keep using it all month long without worrying about usage limits. It may be slightly slower than the paid version as the limited number of servers fill up quickly.
A Hide.me subscription allows 10 simultaneous connections, so you can share your account with the whole family. Paid members can also access servers in 91 countries to unlock content from around the world.
Hide.Me is an excellent all-round VPN service. If you want to use a significant amount of free bandwidth while protecting your privacy, Hide.Me has you covered.
Buy at Hide.me
personal vpn
- Registration country: Swiss
- expense: Free or $11 per month; $36 per year; $48 for 2 years
- Number of servers and locations: 13 servers (free), 66 cities in 49 countries (paid)
- Supported clients: Windows, Mac OS, Fire TV, iOS, Android
- Number of concurrent connections: Something with a free subscription
- characteristic: P2P transmission, SOCKS5 proxy support
If you want access to servers in more countries, PrivadoVPN may be the best free option. The only notable limitation is the 10GB data limit, which resets to zero every month. PrivadoVPN’s free plan still supports both streaming and P2P traffic. The company also follows a strict no-throttles policy and promises not to intentionally slow down your browsing (a common strategy for free VPNs).
PrivadoVPN’s free version lacks some subscriber features. Paid plans allow you to connect to 10 devices at once, use an ad blocker, turn on malware protection, and contact customer support 24/7.
Buy from PrivadoVPN
For more information about this service, see our PrivadoVPN review.
tunnel bear
- Registration country: Canada
- expense: Free or $10 per month; $60 for the first year; $120 for the first 3 years
- Number of servers and locations: 5,000 in 47 countries
- Supported clients: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, Android
- Number of concurrent connections: Something with a free subscription
With a huge number of servers, you can connect any device to TunnelBear and access content from around the world while staying safe and private. TunnelBear offers its free users the unique ability to access the same servers at the same speeds as paid subscribers.
This means you can stream video in higher quality without having to preload or download it. However, free users have a monthly data limit of 500MB. If you want to get more streaming time, you can increase it up to 2GB by posting about TunnelBear on X.
However, if you watch foreign content frequently, 2GB may be used up quickly. To remove restrictions, subscribe to get unlimited data.
Free VPNs can help protect your privacy online, but they’re not ideal for streaming. For this, you should consider a paid VPN for Netflix and other services.