To protect your privacy, hide your internet traffic, or get around geoblocking, a virtual private network (VPN) is a necessity. With hackers developing more sophisticated cyberattacks every day and advertisers relentlessly harvesting your personal information, your personal data is at risk.
While you need a subscription to use the best and fastest VPNs, the best free VPNs protect your privacy at no charge. There are some trade-offs, but you can still enjoy good speed, premium features, and great security.
Proton VPN
- Country of registration: Switzerland
- Cost: Free, or $11 per month; $66 per year for Basic; $118 for two years
- Number of servers & locations: 136 in three countries (free), 6,380 in 112 countries (paid)
- Clients supported: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android
- Number of simultaneous connections: One with a free subscription
We rated Proton VPN as one of the best paid VPNs, and the free version is also great. It has no monthly data limits, no third-party ads, and doesn’t nag you to upgrade to a paid subscription. However, there are some limitations.
Proton cut the number of free servers and locations significantly. You can connect to the U.S., Netherlands, and Japan. That limits your streaming options to those countries. Proton VPN doesn’t cap data or throttle speeds, but free servers will fill up quicker, causing slowdowns.
Those limitations aside, Proton VPN is an extremely strong, privacy-focused service that can serve as a permanent tool in your privacy arsenal, whether you pay for it or not.
Windscribe VPN
- Country of registration: Cayman Islands
- Cost: Free, or $9 per month; $69 per year; $1 per location per month
- Number of locations: 10 countries (free), 134 cities in 69 countries (paid)
- Clients supported: Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android, FireTV
- Number of simultaneous connections: Unlimited with a free subscription
Windscribe’s free VPN can’t match Proton, but it’s relatively fast and has servers in the U.S, Canada, U.K, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, and Romania. That’s a respectable amount to expand your streaming possibilities.
Note that there’s a monthly data cap ranging from 2 GB to 15 GB. Anonymous accounts have a 2GB per month limit. You can greatly expand that to 10 GB if you share your email address during sign-up. Windscribe might send you promotional offers to subscribe, but won’t overload your inbox with spam. If you post about Windscribe on X, you get another 5 GB in monthly bandwidth.
Of course, subscribers get unlimited data and can access 500 servers in 69 countries at a reasonable price.
Hide.Me
- Country of registration: Malaysia
- Cost: Free, or $10 per month; $45 per year; $60 for two years; $120 for three years
- Number of servers & locations: 8 locations (free), 2,600 in 91 countries
- Clients supported: Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and all major platforms
- Number of simultaneous connections: One with a free subscription
Hide.Me’s free VPN once had a cap of 10GB of data per month, but it’s now unlimited. That means you can keep using it all month without worrying about any restrictions on use. It could be a bit slower than the paid version since the limited number of servers fill quickly.
If you subscribe, you can share your account with the whole family since Hide.me allows 10 simultaneous connections. Paid members can also access servers in 91 countries, unlocking worldwide content.
Hide.Me is an excellent all-around VPN service. If you are interested in keeping your privacy and still having a decent amount of bandwidth for free, Hide.Me has you covered.
PrivadoVPN
- Country of registration: Switzerland
- Cost: Free, or $11 per month; $36 per year; $48 for two years
- Number of servers & locations: 13 servers (free), 66 cities in 49 countries (paid)
- Clients supported: Windows, MacOS, FireTV, iOS, Android
- Number of simultaneous connections: One with a free subscription
- Special features: P2P transfers, SOCKS5 proxy support
If you want access to servers in more countries, PrivadoVPN might be the best free option. The only notable restriction is a data cap of 10GB that resets to zero each month. PrivadoVPN’s free plan still supports both streaming and P2P traffic. The company also follows a strict no-throttle policy, where it vows to never deliberately slow down your browsing speeds (a common tactic among free VPNs).
The free version of PrivadoVPN lacks some subscriber features. With a paid plan, you can connect to 10 devices at once, use an ad blocker, switch on malware protection, and contact the customer support team for 24/7 help.
See our PrivadoVPN review for more information about this service.
TunnelBear
- Country of registration: Canada
- Cost: Free, or $10 per month; $60 for the first year; $120 for the first three years
- Number of servers & locations: 5,000 in 47 countries
- Clients supported: Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android
- Number of simultaneous connections: One with a free subscription
With a huge number of servers, you can connect all your devices to TunnelBear to access content around the world while keeping safe and private. TunnelBear is unique in giving free users access to the same servers and at the same speed as paid subscribers.
That means you can stream video in higher quality without the need to preload or download in advance. However, free users have a monthly data cap of 500MB. You can increase that to 2 GB by posting about TunnelBear on X to get more streaming time.
Still, 2GB can run out quickly if you frequently watch foreign content. If you want to remove the restriction, subscribe to get unlimited data.
Note that while free VPNs will help you to stay private online, they’re no good for streaming. For that, you should be considering a paid VPN for Netflix and other services.
