In almost any situation where you might need a VPN, my advice is to pay for it. The best VPNs
— the ones that keep your internet fast, have all the features you need and never leak your real IP address — all cost money, and invest those fees into making an even better product.
However, there are cases in which using a free VPN
makes more sense. Software can be expensive, even if you go with one of the best cheap VPNs
. The worst free VPNs prey on this fact, offering no-charge apps that are way too good to be true. High-quality free VPNs, like the three on this list, give you the rare holy grail of a safe and reliable service without hidden fees.
Of course, there are always limits. No VPN gives away everything for free unless it's planning to make its profit off you in other, more invasive ways. But these three VPNs earn user trust by clearly laying out the rules and exceeding performance expectations. At the end, I'll discuss some other free VPNs that nearly made the grade, some I don't recommend at all and several frequent questions.
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Best free VPNs for 2026
Free trial:Fully free plan; 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans
Monthly price:$11.99
Best deal:$2.69 per month for 26 months
Although hide.me isn't exceptional as a paid VPN, it sneaks to the front of the free VPN field by simply giving you more than the competition does. There are no ads (a trait it shares with all three VPNs on this list) and you can pick your own server location from a list of eight choices.
It also has no monthly data caps. After you use 10GB in a month, hide.me caps your top potential speed, but you're not likely to notice unless you're streaming two videos at once in 4K for some reason. The combination of freedom from limits and freedom of choice makes hide.me the only free VPN that's truly viable for streaming.
The apps and underlying technology get nearly everything else right, too. Interfaces are colorful and understandable, with designs that guide you to the settings you'll need most often. It's also fast — average worldwide speeds never declined by more than 25 percent or so, putting hide.me on par with Windscribe and CyberGhost.
Digging into hide.me revealed that it's solid on security and privacy, with money coming from paid subscriptions and not from selling user data. It passed a third-party audit in 2024, in which Securitum reported that hide.me upholds its no-logs policy behind the scenes.
- Fully free with no data limits
- Fast apps with great interfaces
- Free IPv6 support
- Free plan has limited locations
- Claims to cap speeds after you use 10GB in a month
Free trial:Fully free plan; 7-day money-back guarantee on paid plans
Monthly price:$9.00
Best deal:$5.75 per month for 12 months
Read a detailed Windscribe review .
Windscribe is a free VPN with a political bent, but that doesn't mean it's not committed to working well. More than any other provider, Windscribe frames its free VPN as a weapon for users to take back their rights. It also relies a lot on irreverent branding.
Windscribe's free plan includes 10 server locations and starts at 2GB per month. Confirming your email address raises the limit to 10GB, and if you post about Windscribe on X -- i.e. give them free advertising -- you can bring the total up to 15GB. That may not be enough if you're a heavy user, but for average web browsing it's relatively generous.
Although the data cap puts it slightly behind hide.me, Windscribe excels in many of the same ways. None of its features are locked behind paywalls, and speeds are quite good no matter how far away the server is. There's even a custom plan option which lets you remove the data caps and unlock new locations without paying the full subscription price (Build-A-Plan starts at $3 per month).
- 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
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 .
I consider Proton VPN the best VPN, but it's not the best free VPN. Its free service is stellar, to be clear, only losing ground because you can't freely choose between the eight available server locations. The app picks the fastest one near you, though if you don't like the location it chooses, you can reconnect to try and get a different one.
Aside from that, Proton VPN gives you everything you could want out of a free VPN: no ads, an audit-proven privacy policy and most importantly, no data limits. If privacy is all you need out of your VPN, Proton VPN works as a permanent solution. The free plan even comes with the Stealth protocol, which can help you get around anti-VPN firewalls — so if you're trying to beat a content blocker in your school, workplace or country, try Proton VPN first.
While not being able to choose your server makes streaming on Proton VPN's free plan difficult, it is both very fast and capable of unblocking Netflix on almost every server. If you happen to live near a country with a free server and a big TV library you've been itching to check out, this free VPN is for you.
Obviously, since I put Proton VPN at the top of my best VPN list, I also think it's worth paying for. But even if you do intend to pay, the free plan is a great way to make sure Proton VPN will fit your needs.
- 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 free VPNs we tested
This section includes three other free VPNs I think deserve an honorable mention, plus one dishonorable mention at the end (Hotspot Shield). Although not quite as good as the top three, these services do a perfectly good job of protecting you for no cost, with decent speeds, safe apps and few usage limits.
PrivadoVPN
PrivadoVPN's free plan works on a model similar to hide.me's. You get 10GB of data per month, and once you've used that, your maximum possible speed is throttled down. Unlike hide.me, though, PrivadoVPN's speed limit actually feels palpable while you use the VPN. That's what dropped it from the fourth official pick to an honorable mention spot.
Actually, there's one other reason: PrivadoVPN hasn't yet had its (very good) privacy policy confirmed by an independent audit. Audits may seem like theater, but they're one of the best ways to corroborate a VPN's privacy promises — and all the better ways involve waiting for the police to raid the VPN's data centers.
If PrivadoVPN passes an audit and improves its speeds just a little, I'll happily move its free plan into the top tier. While download speeds aren't great, latencies are very fast and real-time activities go smoothly. Privado also gives you more locations than any of the top three, with 13 options distributed across the world.
TunnelBear
As much as I love the entire concept of cuddly brown bears digging tunnels under the Atlantic Ocean, I have to accept that TunnelBear's free pickings are simply too slim. This VPN's free plan includes over 40 locations, far and away the most on this list, but it's hobbled with a 2GB monthly data limit. That's enough for two or three emergencies, but not for much else — especially not streaming video.
It's also not fantastic as a paid option. News users will likely find its stripped-down apps comfortable, but ExpressVPN, which is cheaper than ever, gives you the same minimalist vibe. To hit the top, TunnelBear needs to do something nobody else is doing.
EventVPN
Speaking of ExpressVPN, its development team recently launched a free VPN called EventVPN. Don't think of this as a free tier of ExpressVPN; it's a separate service in its own right. This independence is a somewhat baffling decision, since instead of funding itself with ExpressVPN subscriptions, EventVPN makes money by showing 30-second video ads in the app.
With so many good free VPNs that don't make you watch ads (or even look at static ones), there's no reason to use EventVPN right now. Hopefully, the team will relent and find a better revenue stream, because I found its fundamentals to be solid.
Hotspot Shield: Not recommended
Hotspot Shield brought free VPNs into the mainstream by giving away service to Arab Spring protestors, but since then, it's lost sight of its mission to guarantee user privacy. Like EventVPN, its free plan makes money by putting ads in its apps, except this time it's even worse: the ads are coming from eight different places, including Meta, a company that has repeatedly shown it has little regard for its users' privacy .
Fortunately, you're not missing much if you spurn Hotspot Shield's free plan. 500MB of browsing data per day is theoretically nice, but it's a lot less flexible than a monthly lump sum. Also, there's no choice of server locations — it's the U.S. or nothing.
How to choose a free VPN
Shopping around for a free VPN comes with more pitfalls than looking for a paid subscription. With paid VPNs, the biggest risk is wasting your money, but the consequences of a bad free VPN can be a lot worse. App stores don't have a good way to separate the best services from the slop and the outright malware.
The safest option is to use a free VPN with an expert recommendation behind it, like hide.me, Windscribe or Proton VPN. PrivadoVPN and TunnelBear are decent backup options. If you'd rather vet the competition for yourself, though, keep a few points in mind.
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Research the free VPN's security record. If a service is dangerous, chances are good that investigators have warned against it somewhere on the internet.
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Go over the VPN's privacy policy and look for any clauses about what it can do with your personal data. Unscrupulous free VPNs commonly make money by selling advertising profiles on their customers.
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Make sure that the restrictions on the free VPN, such as monthly data allowance or available locations, won't interfere with the tasks you need it for. For example, if you're looking for privacy, server locations are less important than data caps.
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Run some speed tests. Even an otherwise secure free VPN will be useless if it makes the internet run too slow.
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Look up the customer service options for free users. This is an area where free VPNs often cut corners to save money.
Free VPN FAQs
There are a lot of questions around the proper selection and use of free VPNs. I'll cover a few of the most common here.
What is a free VPN?
A VPN, or virtual private network, is a piece of software you can use to hide certain identifying details in your internet connection. When you're connected to a VPN, your online "fingerprints" will lead back to devices owned by the VPN, not the one you're actually using. This makes it harder for people to see what websites you visit, trace your location and more.
A free VPN, therefore, is a VPN for which you don't have to pay a subscription fee. People commonly turn to free VPNs when their internet freedoms are unexpectedly curtailed, such as by the recent rash of online age verification laws .
Are free VPNs safe?
Not all free VPNs are dangerous, just as not all paid VPNs are safe. That said, since free VPNs are easy to establish and attractive to newcomers, they're more often used in exploitative ways. When someone needs a VPN quickly and cheaply to re-establish a blocked link to an important service, they don't always read the fine print.
Before downloading a free VPN onto any device you own, go through the checklist above. Research its background, comb through its privacy policy and be absolutely sure no experts are warning users away from it.
What is the best free VPN?
hide.me is the best free VPN, giving you a good mix of server locations, features and available monthly data. Although its paid version doesn't stand out, its free tier works well for both streaming and privacy.
Can you get a free VPN on your phone?
Yes, tons of free VPNs are available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, but — per our notes above — their privacy and security policies are all over the map. For instance, the iPhone app "Free VPN — Fast & Secure Proxy" shows the following privacy disclosures in the App Store:
The Free VPN app for iPhone collects and links quite a bit of data to you.
(Apple)That's why we strongly recommend hide.me, Windscribe and ProtonVPN instead. The first two stipulate that no data is collected, while Proton's app page notes that contact info and diagnostic data is collected, but not linked to your identity. All three have well-designed apps on Android and iOS, which also work on tablets.
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