The best free VPN 2022
If you realize you need a VPN but don’t want to invest for another application subscription, it’s only reasonable to look for a free VPN. On the surface, they appear to provide the same functionality as completely paid services, but at a lower cost. It’s alluring.
However, you should proceed with caution before downloading. Thousands of free VPNs are available on the internet and in the app store, but the great majority aren’t particularly good. Some of the shadier free applications spam you with adverts and might sell your information. And if you wanted to use it to stream or torrent, you’re probably out of luck.
However, if all you want from a VPN is a little extra protection on your phone or laptop when you use open Wi-Fi every so often, the top free VPNs will suffice.
So, on this page, we’ve compiled a list of the best solutions accessible for download right now. We compared the capabilities of the best free VPNs to discover which ones can keep your online activities private without costing you anything. Although ExpressVPN is our favorite premium VPN provider in the globe, we believe Proton VPN is the finest freebie VPN at the time, and we explain why below.
Proton free VPN
The best free VPN at the moment is Proton VPN. While the most notable aspect is the fact that there are no restrictions on how much data you could use with your VPN, there’s a lot more to love.
However, it would be negligent of us to not start with the top selling point. There are no data limits with Proton VPN. In other words, you’re allowed to have as much data that you choose each month, which is really unusual for a free VPN company, as you’ll see later with another options on our list.
This service’s free edition features servers in three countries across the world: the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands. Clients are available both Windows and Mac, as well as Android and iPhone applications. We enjoy the ability to turn on fully automated connections whenever you open up your pc on the desktop. There are also some odd features for a freeware, such as split tunneling and DNS leak prevention.
Naturally, the free plan has limits in order to encourage users to upgrade to a premium plan. The point that free users are given lower importance whenever it refers to speed than paid customers is maybe the most striking. There’s also no peer-to-peer (P2P) support, and speeds may suffer during peak hours when there are a lot of people online and paying customers receive precedence. And Proton makes it plain so if you need to use their VPN for streaming, you’ll have to upgrade to their Plus tie.
If you really can live with all of that, this is a great service with a strong no-logging policy and the ability to join up with just the email and just a username of your choice. The website doesn’t even include any adverts, much alone the client.
Privado free VPN
PrivadoVPN is indeed a new addition to our list of free VPNs. With its paid offering, the supplier has made huge progress recently, as well as the free version is no exception.
This may not be possible to provide absolutely limitless use like Proton, but 10GB per thirty days is more than sufficient for most individuals to have ready to do so on their pc and phone. Unless you keep this on all the time or are binge-watching international streaming material, 10GB should plenty.
Privado does have a little advantage over Proton in terms of server locations. There’s many servers in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. That kind of worldwide coverage is unusual for just a unpaid Vpn, so it’s a big benefit.
It doesn’t have the quickest server speeds, but it does have some useful features including P2P servers, auto connect, and a VPN kill switch. It also has the advantage of Proton in that it does not instantly block you from streaming. So you can test this out with your favorite streaming provider to see how well it works for you.
All of this points to a promising future for a VPN business on the rise. If you’ve heard about PrivadoVPN and are considering downloading it, you may do so with confidence.
HotSpot Shield free VPN
Hotspot Shield’s premium edition is one of the most popular paid services on the internet, so it’s no wonder that the free version is so popular.
The free plan restricts users to 500MB of data each day. That may sound tight, but when compared to a couple of the other restrictions on this list, it’s really one of the fairly lenient restrictions.
If security is your first priority, Hotspot is on the same page as other premium VPNs, offering the same ‘military-grade encryption’. In addition to its safety, Hotspot Shield Free received high marks in our tests for its ease of use. You won’t find the tresses user experience given by certain rivals, whether on mobile or on desktop.
We’ve observed an odd issue with the freebie Hotspot Shield download in the past. When Hotspot was turned on for several weeks at the beginning of 2021, it entirely disabled the power to search on Google. We attempted this from a number of places and devices, but all we received was an error. Thankfully, the issues appear to have been resolved.
If you pay $2.50 per month for the Premium version of Hotspot, you can anchor yourself to one of 70-plus countries, allowing you to access just about anything you want; in the free version, you’re confined to only one U.s.-based zone that Hotspot Shield picks for you, and if you’re using Android, you’ll just had to put up with advertisements.
Hide me free VPN
Hideme offers both commercial and free VPN services, the latter of which includes 10Gigabytes of data per month. There are additional restrictions as well: you can just connect one device at a time, and you can just connect to 5 dedicated servers (containing both Us and a Canada VPN), rather than the 50+ available to paid customers.
On the bright side, Hideme says that it will not limit the connections speed of free accounts, and that it will not maintain any logs or save any user data, and that it will not send on any information to third parties in order to make money. There are no advertisements here either, and it supports P2P on its five free VPN servers.
You receive native software for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS, as well as elegantly designed clients and 24-hour technical assistance. In our tests, the performance was also remarkable. Overall, this is a respectable free service that aims to protect your privacy without imposing too many limits.
Windscribe free VPN
Windscribe’s employees are passionate about their free VPN service, so why shouldn’t they be? Because of its huge data allotment and commitment to safeguarding your privacy, it’s a fantastic choice.
As normal, you receive 2GB of bandwidth each month, which isn’t much. However, if you’re willing to provide Windscribe your email address, you can quickly increase this to a more manageable 10GB. You may pick between Eleven remote dedicated servers in the free edition, including the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, German, Canada, Turkey, & 8 American VPN cities (at last count). Because this is a ‘freemium’ model, you’ll get some subtle nudges to upgrade to the limitless version if you enjoy what you can see, but the sales promotion isn’t overbearing or forceful.
It’s simple to just begin with its desktops clients or extremely handy Chrome extension, and you’ll be bouncing all around world on various servers under no time.
We do not even anticipate free VPNs to enable us bypass region restrictions on applications, websites, or streaming services. As a result, we were ecstatic that Windscribe performed above and above in the Netflix VPN tests. Unlike most others, it provided us with complete access to unique material in the United States, German, and the United Kingdom. Of course, the data cap will keep you from binge-watching too many shows, but it’s useful to know for when you’re on the run or commuting.
When you’re constantly connected to a server, Windscribe records you username, the server you’re connected to, and the quantity of data sent, but this is wiped after 3 minutes of the session finishing. If that isn’t enough to entice you, there’s also an adblocker, malware protection, and firewall built-in.
But first,a word about speeds. We observed Windscribe to be a little reliable than some of its competitors, and it took a long time to connect to the server at times. But, in the larger scheme of things, they’re minor gripes.
Tunnel Bear free VPN
TunnelBear may have a cutesy aesthetic, but that’s a genuine free choice, especially now that it’s been acquired by security behemoth McAfee. There are both free and paid subscriptions available.
The most significant limitation of the free version is the monthly bandwidth cap of 500MB. Because it’s such a small amount, you can only use it when you think like you really need a little additional protection and would like to take the unrestricted way. You probably wouldn’t be able to use it all of the time, and you probably wouldn’t be able to use it for torrenting or streaming.
At the very least, the free plan does not limit you to the accessible servers, allowing you to access all of the premium service’s 20+ countries. TunnelBear’s privacy policy was recently tweaked, so it now gathers even less data on users – it no longer requires 1st name to join up, and it no longer keeps track of a user’s total lifetime connections.
Free Vpn’s problems
Although free VPN services are tempting, there is always a reason for this: the provider is making money in some other manner, either through invasive advertising or the sale of your browser data to other parties.
Free services also seek to restrict the quantity of data you could use and the rate at which you can use it, making them almost worthless for video streaming, torrenting, or providing an additional layer of trustworthy protection in your everyday online life. Also, don’t anticipate the same level of easy access assistance or server range as the paying services.
Dangerous or Not?
While the major complaint of free VPNs is simply they’re not really nearly as helpful as paid-for options, certain proponents do pose serious risks.
According to study conducted in 2020, over 40% of free Android VPNs offered just on Google Play Store doesn’t really adequately secure their customers’ privacy. As a result, the additional online security you expected isn’t present.