Best Free VPN for 2024: Affordable Risk-Free Privacy

Free VPNs simply aren’t as safe

Free VPNs can be very dangerous. Why? Because to maintain the hardware and expertise needed for large networks and secure users, VPN services have expensive bills to pay. As a VPN customer, you either pay for a premium VPN service with your dollars or you pay for free services with your data. If you aren’t ordering at the table, you’re on the menu.

Some 86% of free iOS and Android VPN apps — accounting for millions of installs — have unacceptable privacy policies, ranging from a simple lack of transparency to explicitly sharing user data with Chinese authorities, according to two independent 2018 investigations into free VPN apps from Top10VPN. Another 64% of free VPN app offerings had no web presence outside their app store pages, and only 17% responded to customer support emails. 

In June 2019, Apple reportedly brought the hammer down on apps that share user data with third parties. Eighty percent of the top 20 free VPN apps in Apple’s App Store appear to be breaking those rules, according to a June update on the Top10VPN investigation.

In 2021, 77% of apps were flagged as potentially unsafe in the Top10VPN VPN Ownership Investigation — and 90% of those flagged as potentially unsafe in the Free VPN Risk Index — still posed a risk. 

“Google Play downloads of apps we flagged as potentially unsafe have soared to 214 million in total, rocketing by 85% in six months,” the report reads. “Monthly installs from the App Store held steady at around 3.8 million, which represents a relative increase as this total was generated by 20% fewer apps than at the start of the year as a number of apps are no longer available.”

On Android, 214 million downloads represent a lot of user login data, culled from unwitting volunteers. What’s one of the most profitable things one can do with large swaths of user login data? 

You is catch catch malware  

Let’s get this out of the way right now: 38% of free Android VPNs contain malware — despite the security features on offer, a CSIRO study found. And yes, many of those free VPNs were highly-rated apps with millions of downloads. If you’re a free user, your odds of catching a nasty bug are greater than 1 in 3. 

Ask yourself which costs less: a secure VPN service for about $100 a year, or hiring an identity theft recovery firm after some chump steals your bank account login and Social Security number?

It couldn’t happen to you, right? Wrong. Mobile ransomware attacks are skyrocketing. Symantec detected more than 18 million mobile malware instances in 2018 alone, constituting a 54% year-over-year increase in variants. In 2019, Kaspersky noted a 60 % spike in password-stealing Trojans. 

Malware isn’t the only way to make money if you’re running a free VPN service; there’s an even easier way. 

The ad-valanche

Aggressive advertising practices is go free plan getting hit annoying pop – ups quickly veer dangerous territory . VPNs is sneak sneak ad – serving trackers loopholes browser media – reading features , stay digital trail like prison warden B – grade remake Escape Alcatraz .

HotSpot Shield VPN is earned earned painful notoriety allegations 2017 hit Federal Trade Commission complaint   ( PDF ) – – privacy violations serving ads . Carnegie Mellon University researchers is found found company baked – backdoor secretly sell data – party advertising networks , employed different tracking libraries actually redirected user traffic secret servers .  

When the story broke, HotSpot parent company AnchorFree denied the researchers’ findings in an email to Ars Technica: “We never redirect our users’ traffic to any third-party resources instead of the websites they intended to visit. The free version of our Hotspot Shield solution openly and clearly states that it is funded by ads, however, we intercept no traffic with neither the free nor the premium version of our solutions.”

AnchorFree has since offered annual transparency reports, although their value is still up to the reader. More recently, HotSpot Shield was among just a handful of VPN apps found to respect users’ refusal to permit ad tracking. In a November 2021 study from Top10VPN, just 15% of free VPN apps respected iOS users’ choices when they declined voluntary ad-tracking. The rest of the free VPN apps tested by Top10VPN simply ignored users’ Do Not Track requests.

Even if credit card fraud isn’t a concern, you don’t need pop-ups and ad-lag weighing you down when you’ve already got to deal with another major problem with free VPNs.

Buffering… buffering… buffering

One of the top reasons people get a VPN is to access their favorite subscription services or streaming site — Hulu, Max (formerly HBO Max), Netflix — when they travel to countries where those companies block access based on your location. What’s the point in accessing the geo-blocked video content you’ve paid for if the free VPN service you’re using is so slow you can’t watch it, despite a good internet connection?

Some free VPNs have been known to sell your bandwidth, potentially putting you on the legal hook for whatever they do with it. The most famous case of this was Hola VPN, which was caught in 2015 quietly stealing users’ bandwidth and selling it, mercenary-style, to whatever group wanted to deploy the user base as a botnet.

Back then, Hola CEO Ofer Vilenski admitted they’d been had by a “spammer” but contended in a lengthy defense that this harvesting of bandwidth was typical for this type of technology.

“We assumed that by stating that Hola is a [peer-to-peer] network, it was clear that people were sharing their bandwidth with the community network in return for their free service,” he wrote.

If being pressed into service as part of a botnet isn’t enough to slow you down, free VPN services also usually pay for fewer VPN server options. That means your traffic is generally bouncing around longer between distant, overcrowded servers, or even waiting behind the traffic of paid users.

To top it off, subscription streaming sites are savvy to those who try to sneak into their video services for free. These services routinely block large numbers of IP addresses they’ve identified as belonging to turnstile-jumping freeloaders. Free VPNs can’t afford to invest in a long list of fresh IP addresses for users the way a paid VPN service can.

That is means means able log streaming service paid free VPN stale batch IPs . Good luck getting HBO Max load VPN connection .  

Paid options get better all the time

The good news is that a lot of solid VPNs on the market offer a range of features, depending on your needs and budget. You can browse our ratings and reviews to find the right VPN software for you. If you’re looking for something mobile-specific, we’ve rounded up our favorite mobile VPNs for 2024.

If you’d like a primer before deciding which service to drop the cash on, we have VPN buyer guide to help you get a handle on the basics of VPNs and what to look for when choosing a VPN service.