How much does a VPN cost?

Using a VPN gives you lots of benefits . It encrypts your browsing activity so your ISP can't spy on it or sell it to anyone else. It lets you change your location to experience the internet from other countries, or reconnect to your home country while traveling. It protects you on public Wi-Fi and when you're gaming on public servers.

That's the good news. The bad news is that getting your hands on the best VPNs isn't free. Yes, there are some good cheap VPNs , but the fully free options all come with restrictions that keep them out of the top tier.

VPN costs vary a lot, and so does the value you get for that money. Today, I'll cover what you can expect to pay for a VPN , where that cost comes from and how you can subscribe to one without blowing through your budget.

How much is a VPN?

There's no one answer to this question. There are at least 100 VPNs out there, all competing with each other to offer the most features or the lowest prices. To make things even more confusing, lots of VPNs use convoluted pricing structures to hide how much they actually cost.

For example, a one-month subscription to ExpressVPN costs $12.99. This gives you basic VPN service and renews at the same price every month. You can save money by signing up for 15 months at a stretch, which costs $74.85, or $4.99 per month — but only the first time. Upon renewal, that plan becomes 12 months for $99.95, or $8.33 per month. The two-year plan appears to be the best, but after elapsing, it also renews at one year for $99.95 (again, about $8.33 per month).

It’s also worth noting that many long-term subscriptions include two to four “extra months” the first time you sign up (see the screenshot above for an example). These months tend to disappear when you renew, but since they do matter for your first time, I’ve included them in my calculations for the table below.

It gets even more complicated when you move on to the more advanced plans, which cost more and add more features. ExpressVPN has Advanced and Pro tiers available at three durations. That's a total of nine different prices for one service, with more than $10 monthly difference between the highest and lowest costs.

Average cost table of seven VPNs

Figuring out the monthly costs of VPNs is easy. Most services don't do anything to muddle these numbers, and they tend not to change very often. The first column in the table below shows what you'll pay per month for seven top VPNs. There are some outliers — Mullvad costs much less because it has no long-term discounts, while Surfshark is notably more expensive — but you can generally expect to pay between $10 and $13.

The later columns are where it gets tricky. Most VPNs let you sign up for a longer term — typically between six months and three years — by paying a one-time lump sum. When you divide this sum by the months of your subscription, you're almost always saving money.

The catch is that more of these deals are one-time only. The next period usually gets much more expensive, though not as expensive as buying month-over-month. The column next to each plan shows what that plan costs to renew.

Why do VPNs cost so much?

It's worth asking why there's such wide variation in the cost of services that all do essentially the same thing. It's the same as why a Michelin-starred restaurant costs more than a neighborhood bistro — both can serve a great meal, but the experience at each is quite different.

Other than typical corporate expenses, most of a VPN's operating costs come from maintaining a working network. The provider needs space to put its servers, power to operate them and people to manage them. Managing them includes smartly balancing loads, installing vital updates and changing IP addresses to stay ahead of bans.

The more locations and features a VPN offers, the more cash it takes to operate. Some VPNs charge more for a unique benefit, such as a special protocol or the ability to work in China. Others trade on smooth interfaces or good reputations. With so many factors at play, I don't usually draw conclusions about a VPN from its price unless it's either unjustifiably high or suspiciously low.

What about free VPNs?

Speaking of suspiciously low prices, let's talk about free VPNs. As convenient as a free VPN app sounds, there are only three of them I can recommend with enthusiasm. These three (Proton VPN, Windscribe and hide.me) are funded by paid subscriptions, but their free plans give you enough leeway that you can temporarily use them as your main VPN.

These "freemium" services are the only ones I consider safe, because you know exactly how they're making money. Most other free VPNs are either not worth your time or actively harmful. It's very common for them to be slapped together quickly in order to make money from showing ads on the app — ads which can plant trackers that erode the very privacy the VPN is supposed to be guaranteeing.

Some go even further by harvesting your home IP address and selling it to big businesses, who hide behind it to research their competitors' prices. At least a few are straight-out malware taking advantage of the recent rush to restrict internet access .

How to save money on a VPN

Although VPNs can get expensive, there are ways to spend less. Use these tips during your VPN search to find the provider that's asking for the least.

• Take advantage of holiday sales.VPNs love a good holiday deal, and most of them use a loose definition of "holiday." Christmas, Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day are on the list, but so are Black Friday, back-to-school month and sometimes entire seasons. Keep track of the lowest prices on our best VPN deals page, which I update every week.

• Subscribe for one year or longer.Assuming you'll need the VPN for the whole duration, go with a long-term plan, which can save you more than 80 percent.

• Cancel automatic renewal.Don't let the VPN charge you to renew itself without your consent, especially on a long-term plan — those tend to get a lot more expensive the first time you renew them. Instead, once the introductory deal runs out, switch to a new VPN (or make a new account with the same one).

• Play cancellation chicken.If you cancel auto-renewal immediately, many VPNs will get desperate to lure you back, and will send you special offers right before your plan expires.

• Save money on other services using the VPN.A VPN lets you wring more content out of a single streaming service by changing your location . You can also search the world for special regional discounts, particularly on the costs of traveling. Combined, these tricks make it easy to break even on a pricey VPN.