9 Best Free VPN Services of 2026

Proton VPN Free is the one free plan in this list that gives you an encrypted connection with no data allowance and no ads. Proton's free VPN page says the plan has no data or speed limits, shows no advertisements and does not log your online activity, and it lists a Kill Switch and the Stealth protocol among the features every user gets. That makes it a sound default for someone who switches the VPN on at an airport, in a hotel or on campus Wi-Fi and does not want to watch a meter. The trade-offs are clear on the same page: the free plan covers 1 device, and streaming support, P2P, the NetShield ad-blocker, 10 Gbit servers and the full list of 110+ countries are premium features. If you later want more, VPN Plus was listed at $2.99 a month on the 1-year plan when we checked the US pricing page, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Windscribe Free, which the company calls Starter in its App Store listing, gives you 10GB of data a month on servers in 10 countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, Germany and France, with no credit card and no ads. The home page says you get the 10GB after you sign up and confirm your email. Beyond the data, the free apps carry the same tools as the paid ones: the R.O.B.E.R.T. blocker for ads, trackers, malware and phishing, Stealth and WStunnel for restrictive networks, and WireGuard with post-quantum encryption. Windscribe says its servers run on RAM and that it keeps no identifying logs. The limit is the allowance: 10GB is plenty for email, banking and browsing on a trip, but a few hours of HD video will use it up. The upgrade path is unusually flexible. Build A Plan charges $1 per location per month with a $3 minimum, and each location adds 10GB, while full Pro costs $9.00 a month or $69 a year on the US upgrade page.

hide.me Free now competes with Proton on data: the comparison table on the hide.me pricing page lists unlimited data for the free plan, with 1 connection and 8 server locations against 10 connections and 92+ locations for Premium. The FAQ on the same page says the free service needs no trials, payments or sign-ups, and that free users get the same security and zero-logs policy as paying users. Not needing an account is useful if you only want a VPN for one trip and would rather not hand over an email address. The free plan is still a sampler of the full service: streaming support, dynamic port forwarding and fixed IP addresses are listed for Premium only, and 8 locations is a short list if you need a specific country. When we checked the US-dollar version of the page, the 1-month plan was $11.99 and the 30-month plan was $2.33 a month, billed $69.99, with hide.me promising the same renewal price.

Opera Browser VPN is the easiest option here if what you need is a private browser window on public Wi-Fi. Opera says its free VPN is built into the browser, requires no account and has no bandwidth limits, data caps or ads. It uses AES-256 encryption, and Opera says its no-log policy has been independently audited by Deloitte. You can pick from three real locations, the U.S., Singapore and the Netherlands, or let the browser choose the fastest. The catch is scope: the free VPN protects traffic inside Opera only, so your mail app, games and other apps on the same device go out unprotected. Opera sells VPN Pro for that, covering up to six devices, all apps and 48 locations, and the US page listed it at $3.33 a month on the 1-year plan, $39.99 a year, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Cloudflare WARP lives inside the free 1.1.1.1 app. Cloudflare says WARP replaces the connection between your device and the internet with an optimized protocol and encrypts more of the traffic leaving your device to stop others snooping on it. The App Store listing says 1.1.1.1 with WARP is free and WARP+ is a paid option, listed at $4.99 for WARP+ Unlimited, which gives access to a larger network with more cities. Two cautions keep it in the middle of this list. First, the 1.1.1.1 FAQ says the app in its DNS-only mode is not a VPN and only secures DNS traffic, so you need WARP switched on. Second, Cloudflare presents WARP as a faster, private connection rather than a way to appear in another country, so it is the wrong tool for travel streaming or region checks.

PrivadoVPN Free gives you 10GB of data every 30 days without a credit card. The FAQ on privadovpn.com says the free plan includes 10GB a month, access to 13 server locations and strong encryption, while the company's App Store listing describes 12 global servers, so expect roughly a dozen choices either way. The pricing page says you can use PrivadoVPN on 1 device with a free account and up to 10 devices with a paid subscription. That is a reasonable setup for someone who wants a VPN for banking and email on hotel Wi-Fi a few times a month, and the App Store listing describes the app as ad-free. The allowance is the limit, as with Windscribe: 10GB covers a lot of browsing but not much video. On the US App Store, Premium costs $10.99 for 1 month or $59.99 for 1 year, which works out to about $5.00 a month.

TunnelBear Free is the friendliest app here, but it is the most limited full-device VPN on data. The TunnelBear pricing page describes the free plan as being for testing and limited usage with 2GB of secure browsing a month, and the App Store listing adds that no credit card is required. The app itself is the same one paying users get: AES-256 encryption by default, WireGuard, a no-logging policy and what TunnelBear calls annual third-party public security audits. That makes it a good way to learn how a VPN works or to protect a short session on public Wi-Fi. 2GB will not last through much more than email, maps and banking, though, and the pricing page lists country selection and split tunneling under the paid Unlimited plan, which starts at $3.33 a month with unlimited devices. All prices on that page are shown in USD.

Hotspot Shield Basic is the free tier of a large commercial VPN, and it pays for itself with ads. The App Store listing says the free VPN includes unlimited bandwidth and data, a one-tap connection and a no-logs policy, and that you can use it free with ads or upgrade to premium. Premium adds 1800+ servers, 125+ locations across 80+ countries, modes for gaming, browsing and streaming, up to 10 devices and an ad-free experience. For an occasional user, the absence of a data cap is the draw, but you trade it for advertising, which Proton VPN Free and hide.me Free avoid while also offering unlimited data. The upgrade is also on the pricey side: the US App Store lists a 1-month subscription at $9.99 and a 1-year subscription at $95.99, with a 45-day money-back guarantee when you buy directly.

Avira Phantom VPN Free is the most restricted pick here and is included mainly for people who already use Avira products. The App Store listing sets the free traffic at 500MB a month without an account and 1GB a month with account registration. That covers a few sessions of email and banking on public Wi-Fi, not much else. The app does have a useful auto-secure function that detects untrusted Wi-Fi networks, and Avira says its servers do not save your log files. Avira also notes that its VPN is not available for use within India because of local logging rules. If you outgrow the allowance, Avira Phantom VPN Pro adds unlimited traffic and premium support, and the US App Store lists a monthly all-platforms subscription at $6.99. Most readers will get more from Proton VPN Free, hide.me Free or Windscribe Free at the same price of zero.