Top 5 Best Free VPNs

We’ve rounded up the best free VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) for internet users looking for security, privacy, and flexibility. Hide.me stands out as the best free VPN service, so that should be your first port of call if you don’t want to pay for the privilege of browsing anonymously.

However, be warned, as while we’ve picked out the best of the bunch, all free VPN providers come with their fair share of the problems, issues, and dangers of shopping in the free VPN marketplace in general (spoiler alert: there are quite a few!). So, be sure to check out our roundup of the best cheap VPNs for a more secure option that doesn’t break the bank.

By reading this article, you’ll find out:

• Which Free VPN Is Best?
• Important Terms to Know
• Are Free VPNs Safe?
• Are Free VPNs Useful For Anything?
• Should Your Business Use A Free VPN?
• What Type of VPN Should My Business Use?
• Free VPN Trials
• Frequently Asked Questions

You’d be surprised just how good a VPN you can get for only a couple of dollars per month – if you want to avoid the limitations of a free VPN, check our Best VPNs guide. But first, have a look at our top 5 free VPN providers in the table below:

Which are the Best Free VPNs to Use?

There are some great choices for free VPNs that you can try out, but the ones below are among the best to go for:

1. Hide.me – the best free VPN we’ve tested
2. ProtonVPN – technical yet trustworthy
3. TunnelBear – playful approach and simple to use
4. Hotspot Shield – extremely fast but not the most secure
5. Windscribe – 10GB of data on the free plan

We’ve also compiled the latest information on VPNs you should definitely avoid, such as Hola VPN and Betternet, and why free VPNs often pose a threat to the privacy of the very users they promise to protect.

Best free VPNs: speed tests

The free VPN that least impacted our internet speeds on our VPN speed tests was Windscribe with just a 23.8% decrease (remember, all VPNs will have some impact on your internet speed).

Connecting to hide.me, our top-rated free VPN, led to a disappointing 62.4% decrease in speed. There’s every chance it could have been having a bad day at the office; free VPNs are typically less consistent when it comes to speeds than paid offerings like NordVPN. The reason for this is that free VPNs/free VPN plans often have fewer servers available/included, so they tend to be more crowded and slower.

Here are the full results below:

Hide.me

Hide.me is one of the best free VPNs we’ve ever seen, and it has a surprising number of features for a piece of software that doesn’t cost any money. There is also a subscription package available, too.

If you’re a business owner looking for ways to protect your employees whilst they work abroad but don’t want to spend on a provider like ExpressVPN, then hide.me is by far the best option available on the market, and one of the easiest to get to grips with if you’re a newbie to the VPN scene.

If you go for the free version, you’re afforded 10GB data usage per month and a choice of 5 server locations: Germany, Canada, Netherlands, US East and US West, which means you can unblock all sorts of content despite not having access to the full server network. 10 simultaneous connections are permitted through one account as well, so you can log in on all of your devices and forget about it or share it with friends and colleagues. If you’d like access to the full fleet of 1,900 servers that are spread across, then you’ll need to look at getting the paid version.

Hide.me Key Features

Hide.me has an incredible suite of features on offer for a VPN that won’t set you back financially. The basic security features it offers that you’d expect to find in a top-tier provider include:

• AES-256 bit encryption
• A Zero logs promise
• A killswitch
• Obfuscated servers
• 24/7 live chat & email support

It’s important to note that, like a lot of VPNs, there is no killswitch integrated into the iPhone client. But if a no-logs VPN is what you’re looking for – maybe you have employees working abroad under certain regimes that deploy draconian surveillance tactics – then look no further than hide.me.

Their privacy record is one of the cleanest in the industry, and they’ve had their claim to keep no logs audited by Leon Juranic from DefenseCode Ltd. They’re also based in Malaysia, where there aren’t any laws that demand companies retain information such as activity logs. If you want assurances on hide.me’s position on logging, then this extract from their privacy policy will clear up any doubts:

“We maintain a non-persistent log of connection data for troubleshooting purposes which includes customer’s randomly generated username and internally assigned (non-public) IP address. The troubleshooting log gets securely erased every few hours. We purposely and strictly do not log any other data to mitigate our legal liability. We do not monitor or log your browsing behavior. It is impossible to record your browsing behavior with our technical backend.”

The great thing about hide.me is that, aside from the server limitations, you essentially get the same product as those paying for it. Features like split tunneling – which will let you reroute traffic from certain apps and programs through the VPN, whilst keeping others unprotected – are all available (this is quite useful for accessing banking sites that may IP block you if you try and access it from abroad without a VPN).

It used to be the case that hide.me didn’t provide all the available encryption protocols to users of the free service, but even that has been altered now, and free users can use whatever protocol they want to protect their data, requests, and information.

Hide.me in focus: the most reliable free VPN

As you’ll gather from the review below, ProtonVPN is an excellent free VPN. But hide.me stands out even further for several reasons. The first is that its hard to find any sort of VPN at all – let alone a free one – that hasn’t had a security breach or leak at some point in its history. NordVPN, one of the most reliable providers out there, does not have a squeaky clean record, having been hacked several years ago (although much has changed now). But with hide.me, there doesn’t seem to be any reported incidents of this kind of thing, ever. Now, this might mean they just resolve issues very quickly – or did a good job of brushing it under the carpet before any press got wind of it – but this is quite unlikely.

hide.me is the only VPN we know of to have integrated HaveIBeenPwned.com – a site that lets you enter your email and proceeds to check databases of email accounts that have been compromised in data breaches – within its package. Mightily impressive for a VPN you can get for free.

The small downside to hide.me is that it didn’t perform as well as some of the other VPNs when it came to our speed tests – Windscribe didn’t impact our speeds nearly as much as Hide.me, for instance.

Pricing and reviews

Hide.me has a 2-year plan available for $4.99 a month (billed as $129.95 every 24 months) or $12.85 month-to-month. The 2-year plan is actually a great option for business people as it comes with 2 terabytes of encrypted cloud storage, so if you’re looking for a new online backup option for sensitive documents, look no further than hide.me.

Hide.me has over 18,000 ratings on the Google Play store, with an average rating of just over 4 stars. iOS users are even more satisfied, with the app gaining a 4.4 rating on the App Store (although it only has 467 ratings).

ProtonVPN

Although much more well known for its super-secure paid service, ProtonVPN has one of the best free versions on the market. However, signing up to the free service will secure you a seven-day free trial of ProtonVPN Plus, which in fairness is only marginally different thanks to the strengths of the free version.

For absolutely nothing, users of the free service are given access to 23 different server locations in 3 countries, so not quite as expansive as hide.me’s 5 but good nonetheless. Unlike hide.me (which allows 10), ProtonVPN allows users to make just 1 connection per account on its free plan.ProtonVPN’s free version works with pretty much every platform imaginable, from Mac to Android, and all the clients perform well. ProtonVPN is based in Switzerland, a notoriously privacy-conscious country that has data laws to preserve rather than violate privacy.

ProtonVPN Key Features

ProtonVPN has other similarities with hide.me, including the fact it’s incredibly feature-rich and provides the type of baseline security functions you’d expect to be reserved for a paid service. It’s impressive ProtonVPN’s free version has:

• AES-256 bit encryption
• A zero logs promise
• A killswitch
• Malware protection (NetShield)
•  24/7 live chat & email support

If you’re worried about the government of a certain territory – or even cybercriminals and hackers – finding out what you’re doing online whilst abroad, then ProtonVPN will put you at ease. All of its apps have been fully audited and are open source (which means the coding used to create the software is publicly available and anyone who wants to can scrutinize it), and in 2019 ProtonVPN was unable to hand over logs to the police because the claim that it doesn’t keep any is a legitimate one.

It would be nice to see ProtonVPN roll out obfuscated servers at some point in the near future, as they’ll soon start to lag behind the pack when this feature becomes ubiquitous amongst the top-tier providers – and that’s the way we’re heading already.

ProtonVPN in focus: the only truly unlimited free VPN?

ProtonVPN is one of the only free VPNs around that enforces no limitations on its free users. For instance, you won’t find many free VPNs that, like ProtonVPN, refuse to cap the data usage of free users. With ProtonVPN, you have an unlimited amount of data without paying for anything, making it an excellent choice for businesspeople performing data-intensive tasks such as conference calls. Why do they do this? It’s part of the mission statement:

“We believe online privacy is a fundamental human right. Providing free access is part of our mission.” – ProtonVPN

Another great thing about ProtonVPN is that it doesn’t contain any advertisements at all, something that can’t be said for providers like Hotspot Shield. This is a massive achievement for a free VPN, something even reputable free providers like TunnelBear can’t claim to be able to do.

ProtonVPN’s streaming capabilities are good enough to match the top providers on the market, and if you’re winding down after a long day of meeting in your hotel, then look no further than this provider to unblock the entertainment you need, wherever you are in the world.

Pricing and reviews

Users of ProtonVPN’s free service looking for an upgrade have three choices: Basic, Plus, and Visionary. The $4 a month Basic plan (billed annually at $48) will grant you access to 350 of ProtonVPN’s servers in over 40 countries. The Plus plan, on the other hand, lets you use the entirety of the provider’s VPN network on up to 10 devices at the same time for just $8 a month (billed annually at $96). The Visionary plan is just the Plus plan with a ProtonMail account attached, making it a great option for businesses that want an encrypted email service.

ProtonVPN has 448 ratings on the App Store and an average rating of 3.8. On the Google Play store, 28.789 Android users have given the app an average rating of 4.1 stars.

TunnelBear

TunnelBear is the third VPN on our list, and in a marketplace full of dodgy free VPN providers, it’s genuinely refreshing to see services like hide.me and TunnelBear breaking the mold and providing quality services for nothing. TunnelBear ensures it stands out from the sea of VPN providers that have engulfed the internet over the past few years with a charming interface featuring, unsurprisingly, a cartoon tunneling bear.

Like fellow VPN/animal-lovers Hide My Ass (now known as HMA), although doesn’t really say anything about the software, it’s indicative of a company that understands the marketplace it’s operating in and makes the user experience more enjoyable. It’s not all branding either – TunnelBear will auto-select the fastest server based on your approximate location, to name just one thing the app does to make your life easier. Plus, you can great the most secure VPN provider in the world, but if your apps aren’t user-friendly, then no one will join your network.

TunnelBear has servers located in more than 46 countries across the globe, although it’s a little disappointing to see that there is no obvious way to obtain a list of these locations or the number of servers the service has access to on the website – reports suggest its somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000.

Hotspot Shield

Hotspot Shield is a VPN with credentials – it was once widely used by citizens of various countries in the Middle East during the Arab Spring to preserve their privacy whilst the government attempted to crack down on protest organizers in the region. Hotspot Shield is now one of the most widely subscribed to services in the world. In fact, it may be the most used VPN on planet earth, with over 600 million downloads.

Hotspot Shield has a global fleet of over 1,800 servers spanning across more than 80 countries, so if you’re looking to stream TV shows and movies, it’s a great choice – it has servers in more countries than other top providers like Surfshark. It does have some security issues worth talking about, however, which aren’t reputation-ending but worth being aware of.

Windscribe

The name is great and so is the service. Windscribe is a surprisingly robust free VPN (and an even better value when you pay for it) that allows for a wide range of functionalities while protecting your personal information. It offers a well-design app, blocks malware and ads, and can even unblock Netflix, which is not always the case with free VPNs.

There are, of course, some downsides, as is often the case with free VPNs. While the app is well-designed, the technical aspects of the service can get a little tricky, particularly for rookies trying out their first VPN. Additionally, speeds are a bit slow, but they aren’t going to completely ruin your browsing experience. The server network is also a bit smaller than most competitors, so you won’t have as many options. Still, if you’re confident in your ability to figure it out, Windscribe is a great free VPN option for anyone.

Winscribe key features

As we mentioned, Windscribe has a bunch of features, particularly for a free VPN, but they can be a bit hard to figure out given the technical nature of the mobile app and general service. Here’s a list of some of the key features from Windscribe:

• Advanced server selection
• Ad and malware blocker
• A killswitch
• AES-256 bit encryption 
• Netflix unlocker
• No leak promise

Let’s be honest, a lot of you are likely here to find out if Windscribe can unlock Netflix, and we’ve got good news, it can! And no, this functionality is not behind a paywall, you should be able to unlock Netflix in at least a few countries with the free version of Winscribe.

Windscribe in focus: is it worth the risk?

The biggest downside of the Windscribe free plan is that it limits your data to only 2GB. Subsequently, the idea of streaming Netflix via the Windscribe VPN for only 2 GB means you’re either going to have a lot a buffering or you won’t get more than a few minutes into your binge.

At only $9 per month for the starting premium plan from Windscribe, we’d say it’s definitely worth it, particularly if you’re a bit more familiar with the technical side of the technology. It’s a robust option that can do a lot and is decidedly secure, boasting “military grade security,” although who knows what that really means.

Pricing and reviews

Windscribe has 11,000 ratings on the app store and an average score of 4.5. The Google Play store, on the other hand, provides a bit more information, with more than 91,000 reviews and a 4.1 star rating.

For $9 a month, you’ll be able to get the paid version of Windscribe, which is a respectable price for a VPN this robust. You can also get a discount if you pay for multiple years in advanced $49 per year or $89 per two years.

VPN Jargon Explained

If you’re after a free VPN, there are lots of risky options around. You could end up using a service that exposes your data, serves a ridiculous number of adverts, or upsells aggressively. That means there’s even more onus on building up an understanding of some of the jargon that VPN companies use to describe the features they offer. Technical terms featured in this article include:

• AES-256 bit encryption – This is a military-grade encryption standard/symmetric key cipher deployed by large entities with lots of data to protect such as the US government. It is widely considered to be one of the securest encryption standards available and all reputable VPNs use this. Encryption ciphers or standards set the rules for how data is encrypted, including the lengths of the keys you need to decrypt them.

• Protocol – When you connect to a VPN, you will be using a protocol, a set of instructions that lays out how your data can – and can’t – be transferred. New ones are being created all the time and different protocols will be used for different things. The IKEv2 protocol, for instance, is particularly good at re-establishing connections, but it’s unlikely to be as fast as the WireGuard Protocol many VPNs offer.

• Kill switch – a VPN killswitch will drop your internet connection if your VPN connection drops, so you never spend any time surfing whilst unprotected.
• Obfuscation/Stealth servers – servers and/or protocols make VPN traffic appear as if it is normal traffic.
• RAM-only servers – A lot of VPNs now use servers that run on Random Access Memory, rather than writing to hard disks. This makes them much easy to wipe, which happens when they’re powered down.

Are Free VPNs Safe?

There’s an old adage that’s a good yardstick when considering not paying for a service. If it’s free, chances are that the product is you. This has never been truer than in the internet age, with companies tripping over themselves to offer you their services for free.

Free VPNs are no different. You should be asking yourself, as you should when advertised any free service: why are they offering a free service, and what’s in it for them? The free VPN market is full of shady behaviour committed by companies who consider your privacy the least of their concerns.

Free VPNs are not just generally unsafe and lack basic security features, they also have a number of functional and financial limitations that hold them back.

Functional and financial limitations of free VPNs

Generally, a free VPN won’t have the money to constantly upgrade its server infrastructure and is therefore quite unlikely to have a network that can rival a provider like NordVPN. If you purchase a two-year NordVPN subscription, for instance, when it comes to renewing that subscription in 24 months, you will still have a market-leading VPN that’s brought out new products, protocols, and patches in the meantime. Free VPNs do not have the financial or manpower to do this. This leads to a lot of cutting corners and in turn network vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers. Free VPNs, due to monetary limitations, are also a lot more likely to cap the amount of data you can use.

The Limitations Of Freemium VPNs

There are two types of free VPN – standalone free providers, that only offer free services, and free versions of paid services such as that provided by ProtonVPN and others, and which can be referred to as ‘freemium’. Let’s cover the latter type first because they’re usually the least of a customer’s worries. Free versions of paid VPNs still have the VPN’s reputation as a paid provider to uphold, and users will get access to a network maintained by a company with a revenue stream stemming from subscriptions.

However, one issue that seems to always come up with this type of free VPN is the omission of a key security feature (after all, if the software was identical, why would you ever purchase the paid version?). Another is the prioritization of paid traffic over users that aren’t paying for the service, so you’re more likely to get a slower browsing experience. This isn’t necessarily what we’d call ‘shady’, but it’s not like free version users are often made aware this is why their service is so slow all the time.

Shady Free Providers

There are some really sinister secrets that are hidden in the dark corners of the permanently free VPN market. You might be wondering why I’m writing in such broad terms about free VPNs. Every provider is different, right? Well, this is technically true – but the cohort of standalone free VPNs that have been caught not only inadequately protecting their users, but also deliberately compromising the privacy of their users, is worryingly vast and enough to treat the whole sector with suspicion.

Examples of free providers leaking IP addresses, harvesting user data and not even being VPNs at all are worryingly easy to find

Some free VPNs have even been found to steal bandwidth from certain customers and then let others use it (HolaVPN), Whilst others operate with embedded tracking libraries (Flash Free VPN). Perhaps the most common pitfall to free VPN providers though is that most of these services let advertisers harvest data from customers via ads found inside the service (Betternet).

Other free ‘VPNs’ don’t even encrypt your data properly and aren’t really even VPNs (OperaVPN) and others will log your activity (HolaVPN again) and expose your IP address via WebRTC leaks (Hoxx VPN), defeating the entire point of a private network. Some are reportedly teeming with malware (ArchieVPN), putting them at odds with paid services like NordVPN that actively block malware whilst you use them. Regular and privacy-threatening leaks where customer data is exposed online is, sadly, also a common feature of the free VPN experience (SuperVPN, UFO VPN, Secure VPN).

Are Free VPNs Useful for…Anything?

If you can’t afford a subscription to a top tier, paid provider, that’s okay – there are definitely still decent free providers out there that won’t harvest your data, such as the ones recommended above. However, be mindful of where you live and what laws are in place in your country when you’re accessing content through a free VPN.

If you’re exclusively going to use it to unblock TV shows and movies, privacy really on your mind and you understand the risks associated with free providers, then get streaming! A free service might be a little slower than a streaming specialist such as CyberGhost, which labels servers optimized for unblocking specific websites, but it’ll still do the trick if you pick the right one.

Just make sure you remember to check the End User Licence Agreement (EULA) when signing up for a free service to see exactly what it is you’re agreeing to, as well as the site’s privacy policy (often, this is where a dodgy provider will subtly admit to doing something most users would find unacceptable).

Also, if privacy really isn’t a priority, it’s worth checking out whether a DNS or Proxy service will suit your needs better. Neither types of software encrypt your data, but because they don’t, sometimes they’re quicker than VPNs.

Best Free VPN for iPhone or Android

Lots of VPNs, like Opera, don’t provide VPNs for smartphones, let alone any that we would rush to recommend on the App or Google Play Stores. In fact, it’s a pretty treacherous part of the market – in 2017, VirusTotal found that 38% of free VPNs on the Android store contained some form of malware. In the same study, almost a fifth of the VPN tunnels analyzed didn’t encrypt any data.

It’s important to be vigilant and not just download the first one you find on the app store, which might ask for odd permissions to access parts of your phone, and do who-knows-what with your data. Free VPNs also often have pop-up advertising inside them, meaning they have a commercial interest in your data in a way a reputable paid provider won’t.

A paid-for VPN is a Godsend if you’re a heavy smartphone user, and if you’re buying a package, you’ll also be able to use the software on your desktop, laptop, and other devices, all for one low price.

Read more on using VPN mobile apps safely.

Should your business use a free VPN?

To put it in simple terms: definitely not. As you can probably tell from the catalog of issues discussed in the previous section, free VPNs leave a lot to be desired when it comes to security, privacy and safety. If you work for a business and are, for instance, operating out of a country with high levels of government surveillance (China, Russia, UAE etc.), then a free VPN could land you in hot water by not preserving your privacy properly.

There are enough documented instances of shady behaviour from free services to avoid the this whole area of the VPN market

Although some free VPNs do actually perform well – hide.me is testament to this – providers like this are few and far between – the fact they won’t keep you safe is the least of your worries. There are enough documented instances of shady behavior from free services to avoid this whole part of the VPN market completely.

ISPs (internet service providers) in these sorts of countries – but also in places like the UK and US – can look at every single thing you’re doing online and link it back to you. They’re also more than often in cahoots with the government, and more than happy to provide information about their customers’ browsing habits.

A paid VPN service like ExpressVPN that implements encryption properly will make it a lot harder for anyone watching your traffic to link it to you or your device. So if you need to find out something via Google from inside an oppressive regime, it’ll be much safer to use a VPN. It’ll also make it a lot harder for an attacker to, for instance, launch an attack on your device or system via public wifi. They also are much less likely to bow to the pressure of an aggressive government if they’re backed by some capital and have an adequate legal team – free VPNs just don’t rake in enough subscriptions to take on a government in the same way.

What Type of VPN Should Your Business Use?

If your business processes or holds a lot of confidential information – the sort that if lost, would constitute a data breach – really you should be investing in a business VPN that will essentially ringfence your work network + data and allow it to be accessed remotely by employees. This will give your more security than a consumer VPN and many business VPN packages, like TorGuard’s, offer dedicated IP addresses that can be added to a network whitelist.

Consumer VPNs are great security tools because they encrypt your data on its journey from your device to one of their servers. As long as you’re using a VPN with watertight encryption standards, This means that no one between you and the server can see what you’re doing.

However, that tunnel does not extend beyond the VPN server – that last bit of the journey to the destination application is not encrypted (but any site you visit will see one of the VPN provider’s IP addresses, rather than your own). So if you have a staff member using a consumer VPN whilst managing sensitive or confidential data – or accessing part of your company’s network – part of the journey will be lacking in adequate encryption.

In reality, however, there are still numerous business uses for consumer VPNs. If you have a team working remotely – and your budget allows for it – the best practice would be to combine a business VPN for your company like NordLayer (NordVPN’s service for businesses) with a subscription-based personal VPN for your team.

This will minimize the chance of something going wrong for a staff member whilst abroad, even in employee downtime when they’re disconnected from your corporate network. You wouldn’t want to have to contact the US embassy because one of your staff decided to look up political content (a news website, forum, or even a movie with certain themes in it) banned in a country they’re working in and was paid a visit by the local authorities, for example. In terms of staff welfare, if you do have staff members working in certain countries, it might be better for them to not have to rely on connecting to the corporate network if they just want to, for instance, unblock US Netflix and stream a show that might be illegal to show where they are.

Free VPN Trials

We’ve already covered the issues with free VPNs and gone through exactly why paid services are better, particularly if privacy is your priority. It’s not as if paid VPNs are a $100 a month commitment either, more like $2.50 – it’s the equivalent of choosing between a Ferrari and a Bicycle with a price difference of, well, $2.50. But even Ferraris get taken out for a spin before their buyers decide to make the purchase – no matter how good they look on the surface, you’ve got to check what’s under the hood.

VPN money-back guarantees typically last 30 days, within which a customer can demand and receive a full refund if not satisfied

One of the saving graces of the VPN industry is that free trials have become the norm, even for quality services like Surfshark, which you can use for a week for free. However, this doesn’t apply to Surfshark One, an all-in-one cybersecurity package starting from $1.19/month on top of your VPN subscription or $3.49/month as a standalone product. It includes VPN and antivirus subscriptions as well as a safe search tool to keep you safe from trackers and hackers and a data breach alert function.

In terms of VPN-only subscriptions, you’ll be hard pushed to find a reputable VPN provider that doesn’t operate with some sort of free trial or money-back guarantee. NordVPN’s 30-day money-back period, for example, grants prospective customers access to the full range of features and all servers in the network. In fact, these sorts of money-back guarantees are so widespread, we wouldn’t trust a provider not offering one.

Can I go Subscription Hopping?

Technically, yes – there are a lot of VPN companies out there like PureVPN offering a 7-day free trial. Other major providers offering a free trial include:

• ExpressVPN (7 days, mobile-only)
• Private Internet Access (7 days)
• CyberGhost VPN (1 day on desktop, 3 days on Android, 7 days on iOS)
• NordVPN (7 days, mobile-only)

There are also lots of 30-day money-back guarantees to take advantage of, and you could feasibly just hop between providers month-to-month, never committing to a full subscription. On top of a free trial, CyberGhost has a 45-day money-back guarantee, so you could use this VPN for about 6 weeks before you’d have to make any permanent investment.

However, we wouldn’t recommend this simply because of the breadth of differences in features and quality provided by VPN providers. You don’t want to get into the habit of using a split-tunneling feature, for example, only for the next provider you try to not offer it. You’ll have to adapt to a new user interface every few weeks, which isn’t always the easiest considering some VPNs are really easy to use and others are significantly more technical.

FAQs