Using a
free VPN is a big risk.
If you aren’t paying for it, how is the VPN paying their costs? We
highly recommend you use a cheap VPN instead, take a look at our guide
here.
While most VPNs are priced under $10/ month this may be more than some people can afford so
free VPNs
are always appreciated. While these usually are limited in one way or
another, the ones we have selected provide a great service at absolutely
zero cost.
It’s hard for a free service to compete with a paid one due to the
downsides – which we have discussed for each VPN respectively – but the
services we have selected will help you achieve privacy and security
while carrying out your internet activities. If you do consider getting a
paid VPN but are short on cash .
WE Prefer
Froot VPN
Winner – CyberGhost
Positives: no logs, based in Romania, good client, accepts Bitcoin, allows P2P(on paid plans only) , shared IPs
Negatives:
multiple simultaneous connections only allowed on most expensive plan, speed cap
CyberGhost is a large Romanian company who
has been doing fantastic developments lately. With regards to security
they are absolutely top notch, going as far as deleting your payment
details after it’s been processed, are working on some security
technologies themselves and are willing to support promising security
start ups too! Not only is their security great, but other areas of
their service such as the client and support are also fantastic.
Overall CyberGhost is a great provider, and
while their free service has a number of limitations: speed, time,
advertisement; it is superb all round.
Try Out the Best Free VPN Today!
2. SurfEasy
Positives: great speeds, 5 simultaneous connections, easy to use software, phone support
Negatives: download cap (more can be earned), no P2P
SurfEasy is a fantastic Canadian company, with aims of bringing
privacy and security to the masses, so it’s no surprise that they
provide a free service alongside their normal plans. All their plans
come with a whopping 5 simultaneous connections, they have easy to use
clients and good speeds.
Their free plan is just as good as the normal plan but it does come
with come with a data limit of 500MB (can be increased to 1.5GB with a
few tasks) which is only useful for occasional/ normal use. Also in
order to be able to provide the security that they do, no P2P is
allowed. If you’re looking for something different they also have a Private Browser USB product, which comes with an initial fee but is valid for a life time.
3. TunnelBear
Positives: entertaining, minimal logs, great performance, great clarity
Negatives: limited countries, no P2P, download cap
In many aspects TunnelBear is very similar to SurfEasy: they are
Canadian, for the everyday person and don’t allow P2P. Even their
pricing is similar for the paid packages. We found that TunnelBear’s
support is better and their client to be a bit more useful and
entertaining.
They provide 3 simultaneous connections, up to 1.5GB download limit and overall a very good company.
4. FrootVPN
Positives: TPB blessed, no logs, great performance, based in Sweden
Negatives: only Swedish server, won’t be free for long
FrootVPN is a very young company and provides a completely free,
absolutely no limits VPN service. They’ve also got a lot of promotion
from The Pirate Bay which says a lot about it’s quality and nature.
Unfortunately, while great for P2P since they have Swedish server they
aren’t very useful for geo-location locked content.
While free for the moment, due to their immense influx of customers
this will likely to soon so make sure you take advantage while you can.
It also means that their customer service is playing catch-up and
therefore can take some time to reply.
5. VPN Gate
Positives: fully open source, constantly being developed, mirror sites and daily updates
Negatives: educational so does log, no P2P, slow speed
VPN Gate is developed by the University of Tsukuba by Japan and
servers are ran my volunteers. It is designed as a distributed VPN
system, based off of Soft-Ether, which means it’s fully open source. All
of these factors, including their mirror sites and daily updates, means
that it’s a fantastic tool for avoiding government censorship.
Unfortunately this does mean that P2P isn’t really allowed and
connection logs are kept for nearly 3 months from all the servers. Also
since it’s ran by volunteers it does mean that speeds are unreliable,
limited and can change very often.
Bonus. Tor
Positives: very secure
way (paid or unpaid) to maintain on-line anonymity (although bear in
mind that nothing is 100% secure), easy to install and use
Negatives: technically not a VPN,
Slow, no P2P
Not strictly a VPN service, but as a widely
used free system designed to ensure online anonymity it seemed criminal
not to mention the Tor Network here. The open source Tor client allows
you connect to the internet anonymously through a distributed network
(other Tor users) using a layered encryption service known as Onion
Routing. This means that whenever you access a website your request will
pass through at least 3 different computers (called nodes), with all
information encrypted each time to provide a very high level of
security. In addition to this, because your apparent IP is that of a
random volunteer (of which there are literally hundreds of thousands),
there is no way to even determine that you are masking your identity,
which makes this service famously invaluable for dissidents living under
restrictive governments.
The main downside is that it’s not fast, as
your traffic is being bounced around volunteers’ computers across the
world. The Tor Network also ask you not to use the service for P2P
filesharing, as the amount of traffic involved puts a severe strain on
the system and damages other users’ experience.
One use the truly paranoid may have for the
Tor Network is in conjunction with Bitcoin payments, allowing them to
maintain complete anonymity when signing up to and purchasing regular
VPN packages.
Conclusion
When your considering a free VPN make sure that you’re aware of all the restrictions imposed.
We believe that CyberGhost to be the best free VPN provider out
there. This is due, not only to the quality of provider, but also since
we believe it is the one with the most sensible restrictions. Their
speed cap means that you’ll be able to use the service as much as you
want while always being protected. Granted you will be disconnected
every 6 hours but this shouldn’t be a big downside.
The other VPNs listed also have a great value behind them and since
they are all free you can give them a full try before deciding which one
you use – absolutely perfect. So if you’re wallet is tight but you’d
still like to be protected while on the internet, we’d fully recommend
trying one of these completely free VPNs. Have a look below at our
summary below in case you haven’t made up your mind yet.