Running thousands of VPN servers costs serious money. When a VPN charges nothing, it pays the bills another way — and that is where the problems start.
How free VPNs make money
The honest ones limit speed and data to upsell a paid plan. The dishonest ones have been caught selling browsing data to advertisers, injecting ads into pages, and in the worst cases routing other people's traffic through your connection. Several popular free apps have appeared in security research for exactly these practices.
The practical limits
- Data caps of 500MB–10GB per month — a single HD film exceeds most of them
- Throttled speeds and crowded servers
- Few or no streaming-compatible locations
- No torrenting, often no router or TV support
When free is fine
A reputable freemium plan from a paid provider is fine for occasional light use — checking email on hotel Wi-Fi, for instance. For anything regular, paid plans from top providers cost little on long-term deals and remove every limitation. Compare the current offers in our VPN ranking.