Funds are tight for everyone right now, so I understand the reluctance I'm often met with when I say that the best VPNs
almost always cost money. But it's unfortunately true that free VPNs
are more often looking to profit off you than to genuinely protect your interests. Some free VPNs are honest, like Proton VPN, hide.me and Windscribe, but there are a dozen scammers for each of those diamonds in the rough.
There's good news, though — a lot of great VPN services that cost money also sell subscriptions at big markdowns. All of the providers on this list either offer steep discounts, cost very little month-over-month or let you customize your plan to only pay for servers you need. All of them also come with free trials, refund guarantees or associated free plans. If you need a VPN
but can't spare the cash right now, this list is for you.
To set your expectations, I should mention that a lot of the best rates below are only for the first signup period. It's possible to get them again by starting a new account with a new email address, but this can be inconvenient. Wherever I can, I'll make sure to note when a VPN's price jumps significantly when you have to renew.
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Best cheap VPNs in 2026
Surfshark
Free trial:7 days, plus 30-day refund guarantee
Monthly price:$15.45
Best deal:$1.99 per month for 27 months
Read a detailed Surfshark review .
Calling Surfshark one of the best cheap VPNs requires a little clarification. Its monthly price is the most expensive of all top VPNs. If you just want a VPN for one event or a single vacation, you'll save a lot more with Mullvad or Windscribe. The main reason Surfshark tops this list is that its one-year and two-year plans come with massive discounts — which would still be huge even if its monthly plan was priced more reasonably.
Surfshark has a tiered pricing system, where four different plans are available at three durations each. The cheapest plan, which includes just the VPN itself with no additional features, costs $47.85 for a full year and $53.73 for two years. With bonus months, these prices work out to $3.19 per month and $1.99 per month respectively. Both these plans cost $99 to renew for each subsequent year, which is annoying, but the initial offerings are good enough to justify the hassle of making new accounts to grab them more than once.
Even if you decide to cancel after the first billing period, you'll enjoy one or two years of top-quality VPN coverage. Surfshark is incredibly fast, with almost no impact on download speeds no matter where you connect to in the world. It's easy to use, good at breaking into streaming services and uses an innovative system to continually rotate your IP address and make you harder to track.
- Very fast speeds
- Split tunneling on all apps
- Everlink automatically reconnects if VPN connection drops
- Single-month pricing is excessive
- Lots of popups on desktop
- NoBorders Mode useful but can turn on needlessly
Mullvad
Free trial:14 day refund guarantee except on cash and crypto payments
Monthly price:5 Euro
Best deal:5 Euro per month
Read a detailed Mullvad review .
Mullvad thinks affordability and privacy go hand-in-hand. It wants to help you protect your rights online without making you navigate a confusing pricing system. Here's how it works: each month of service costs 5 Euro (between $5 and $6 depending on exchange rates). You put money into your account, and Mullvad draws that down each month. If there's not enough, your subscription pauses until you put more in.
For the first two years, this will be a lot more expensive than Surfshark — but if you keep it for long enough, it ends up being cheaper. Mullvad is also a superior choice for just a month if you want to watch a specific event or look for a particular shopping deal. Just note that Mullvad only uses physical servers, so it doesn't have as expansive a list of locations as some other VPNs.
I generally consider Mullvad a better VPN for privacy than for entertainment. It uses no trackers of any kind, even on its own website, and doesn't require an email address to create an account. It's also easy to use and relatively fast, with nearby servers performing very well.
- Can sign up without any personal information and pay in cash
- Saves no data whatsoever on users, even on its own website
- Excellent apps on all OSes
- WireGuard is the only protocol
- Disappointing browser extension
- No live chat support
Free trial:Fully free plan; 7-day money-back guarantee on paid plans as long as you've used less than 10GB
Monthly price:$9.00
Best deal:$5.75 per month for 12 months
Read a detailed Windscribe review .
Windscribe has a few unique things to offer the VPN bargain-seeker. First, there's the free plan, which comes with 10 locations and 10GB of data per month as long as you confirm an email. You can get an extra 5GB per month by tweeting in support of Windscribe. This may be enough for streaming if you don't care about image quality, but it's better for one-off tasks that require privacy.
What makes Windscribe a great cheap VPN is an innovative option that lets you build your own plan by determining which server locations you need and paying only for those. Each location costs $1 and adds an extra 10GB per month. You can remove the data cap for an extra $1. To use the plan, you have to spend at least $3, but you'll probably want to do that anyway.
Windscribe doesn't have the best UI for beginners, but it does have decent speeds and a fiercely independent dedication to user privacy. It's great at breaking into streaming platforms, though, and power users will love features like the highly customizable R.O.B.E.R.T. blocker.
- Fast and private
- All features at least partly available for free
- Build your own paid plan
- Awkward app design
- Limited ability to use some features
- Monthly data caps
CyberGhost
Free trial:24 hours on Windows and macOS, 3 days on Android, 7 days on iOS; 30 day refund on all plans
Monthly price:$12.99
Best deal:$2.19 per month for 26 months
Read a detailed CyberGhost review .
CyberGhost is a VPN with a lot of advantages in its apps and quite a few in terms of price. Since you're here to save money, I'll tackle the latter first. CyberGhost's monthly cost is pretty average, but its longest deal of $56.94 for 26 months averages $2.19 per month, just a little more than Surfshark.
What really makes it affordable, though, is the renewal price. After the first term, CyberGhost costs $56.94 for a year, or $4.75 per month — a lot more than the introductory rate, but a lot less than renewing Surfshark or ExpressVPN. On top of that, there's a strong six-month deal that costs $41.94 ($6.99 per month) and stays the same upon renewal.
As an app, CyberGhost doesn't always hold together, with the odd error on connection and occasional drops in download speed. But when it works, it works well. Its streaming servers are a particular highlight, with each one targeted at a specific platform; in tests, I've yet to see it fail to unblock one of these called shots.
- Automation features
- Servers for specific streaming platforms
- No payment method required for free trial
- Drops speeds about 25 percent worldwide
- Connections sometimes lag
Free trial:Fully free plan; 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans
Monthly price:$9.99
Best deal:$2.99 per month for 24 months
Read a detailed Proton VPN review .
It's no secret that I love Proton VPN; I find a way to sing its praises in practically every article; when something is truly that good, you want to let people know. Price is one of the areas where Proton excels. While its initial deal is not as cheap as Surfshark, CyberGhost or even ExpressVPN, it's still pretty good at $71.76 for 24 months (a little less than $3 per month).
Proton's monthly price is better than any provider's on the list except Mullvad. It's also worth noting its free plan, which comes with some restrictions — you can't choose your own server location, and only eight are available — but has no data caps. That's fantastically convenient if you need a VPN quickly.
Nor is Proton VPN just a quick-and-dirty solution. It's fast in every location and its features are easy to find and use. Its apps have the kind of simplicity that clearly comes from years of careful work, removing anything that might get in the user's way. It also has strong privacy credentials, being based in Switzerland and still majority owned by its founders.
- Secure Core servers
- Fast browsing speeds
- Free plan with unlimited data
- High proportion of virtual server locations
- Live chat support only for paid users
Other VPNs with good deals
ExpressVPN
Free trial:7 days on mobile; 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans
Monthly price:$12.95
Best deal:$2.44 per month for 28 months
Read a detailed ExpressVPN review .
The refrain about ExpressVPN used to be that it was a very strong VPN but too expensive. But it's not nearly as expensive since switching to a multi-tier pricing model. The cheaper Basic subscription has all the VPN service you'll need, with upgrades adding wider tracker blocking, identity theft protection and a password manager.
Sadly, just like Surfshark, its best plan ($68.40 for 28 months) renews at a much more expensive annual rate — and with ExpressVPN slightly more expensive to begin with, I had to give its top spot to Surfshark. Even so, this is a worthy VPN service overall, with sturdy security and a design that VPNs newbies will find friendly and intuitive.
NordVPN
Free trial:7 days on Android; 30-day refund on all plans
Monthly price:$12.99
Best deal:$3.39 per month for 24 months
Read a detailed NordVPN review .
NordVPN is a trustworthy, well-designed and innovative VPN service, but it's hard to argue that it's cheap. Even its discounted introductory deal is about a dollar per month more expensive than its nearest competitor (ExpressVPN), and a one-year renewal costs almost three dollars more per month.
Even though NordVPN isn't a provider you go to for savings, it may still be the right VPN for you. It has a long list of useful server locations and connects quickly on all of them, with speed losses almost never exceeding 10 percent. It also has lots of specialty servers that perform well, including a secure multi-hop VPN and locations that auto-connect to the super-private Tor network.
Private Internet Access
Free trial:7 days on mobile; 30-day refund on all plans
Monthly price:$11.95
Best deal:$2.03 per month for 39 months
Read a detailed Private Internet Access review .
Private Internet Access (PIA) offers the absolute best long-term deal on any VPN I would recommend using. For a total of $79, you get 39 months of service, averaging just over $2 per month. Even better, there's no renewal time-bomb. If you renew PIA on the three-year plan, all you lose is the three bonus months, which only brings the monthly price up to $2.19.
The only reason PIA isn't higher up on the list is that I heavily weighted for quality and usability, and in those areas, it doesn't compete well. Speeds fluctuated all over the place in my tests, ending up at an average slowdown of 38 percent. It also didn't pass my streaming test with a perfect score, as some of its servers were detected by Netflix .
Finding a cheap VPN
This list is here to guide you in your hunt for a cheap VPN, but it isn't exhaustive. If you'd prefer to do your own research, you may find a better match for your needs. You'll have better luck on that route if you keep the following tips in mind.
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Look for expert opinions on any VPN you're considering. Check for anybody warning users about unsafe or unscrupulous practices, especially if the VPN is free.
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If you want to unblock a specific location, make sure your prospective VPN has a server there. Also, check whether it's a real or virtual location, which can affect performance.
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Use the free trial or refund period to test the VPN's security and speed. Check your IP address while connected to the VPN to make sure it isn't leaking, and use speedtest.net or a similar service to see whether it causes slowdowns.
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Read over the VPN's privacy policy and look for red flags. A good VPN will summarize important provisions so customers without legal training can understand their rights.
