The Best Free VPNs of 2025

Of all the free VPN services, Proton VPN is probably the best all-rounder. Proton makes a suite of privacy focused products, such as Proton Mail, and it has earned trust over many years. Its free VPN doesn’t have speed restrictions or data caps, which means you can browse as much as you want, and you can connect to over 300 servers in six countries. That makes it among the most generous free VPN plans you’ll find today. It also has a kill switch, which means that when the VPN is off, it’ll keep your device off the internet.

The downside is that the free tier doesn’t let you choose which server you get connected to, as Proton VPN will automatically connect you to servers in Japan, The Netherlands, or the US. You can also only use the free service on one device at a time, but you can always create multiple accounts in case you really need to use it on different devices simultaneously.

Windscribe allows you 10GB/month of data on its free tier, and it prides itself on transparency and a no-logs policy. The app is surprisingly feature-rich, too, even when you’re not paying. You get access to split tunneling to keep some apps out of the VPN, plus the built-in adblocker, as well as a censorship circumvention feature.

You can also use this service without an email address, but then you’ll have to live with a reduced data cap of 2GB/month. Some people may prefer this option, to remain totally anonymous, but it also means that if you forget your password, you can’t retrieve that account. The app also lets you choose the server you want to connect to (in one of 10 countries), but in my testing, connection speeds were quite slow on the free plan.

TunnelBear has been in the VPN business for a long time, and its free tier is good enough for a lot of people. The company offers 2GB of data for free, has a good track record with privacy, and has a commendable commitment to making a pleasant user experience. Throughout the time you spend using this app, you’ll be greeted by its mascot (you guessed it—a bear) doing bear-y things such as tunneling underground. The adorable design is a plus point, as it makes the service approachable to people who don’t know anything about VPNs.

On its free tier, TunnelBear lets you run multiple connections at the same time, but its 2GB/month data limit is quite restrictive. On a mobile device, 2GB probably isn’t too bad, but on a laptop or a desktop computer, you could run through that limit quite quickly. It also lets you choose the country of your VPN server’s location, which is nice. Unfortunately, it lacks features such as ad-blocking or split tunneling (where you can exclude certain apps from the VPN).

On its free plan, Privado VPN comes with a fairly generous limit of 10GB/month. Without paying, the app allows you to choose a server from one of 10 countries, and you can configure it to automatically connect to your preferred server. You can ask Privado to connect to the previously used server or to the one with the least latency, which is really nice to have on a free plan.

The app also has a kill switch to block internet access when the VPN is not connected. Some useful features, such as an adblocker and split tunneling, require you to pay. These features are available for free in some other services, so look to alternatives if those are a must-have. 

If your top priority is to have a VPN with unlimited data and some choice of server, then Hide.me may be right for you. The free plan doesn’t have a data cap, and while you don’t get to directly choose the server you connect to, but there is a slight workaround. Go to Settings > Advanced in the app, and you can choose how the service determines which server to connect to. You can either pick a server nearest to you or the one that has the best ping, so you can at least optimize for those features (and since Hide.me is in 91 countries, you could get lucky and land on one you’re looking for). Note that the company also says that you’ll get slower speeds on the free plan as compared to its paid offering.

This VPN also limits you to one connection at a time, but you can get around that by using multiple accounts. For the free plan, you don’t even need to register for the service. You can simply install the app and start using a free plan for 30 days. Once that expires, click a button to extend it for another 30 days. It has a kill switch, too, which will take your device offline when it’s not connected to the VPN.

Hotspot Shield Basic is another VPN with a free plan, and it offers a nice set of features including unlimited data, a kill switch, and split tunneling. It also lets you choose one of four server locations (Los Angeles, New York, Singapore, United Kingdom) when you connect to it, which could be better or wose than Hide.me depending on what you’re looking for. As is the case with many free VPNs, Hotspot Shield Basic throttles your speed on the free plan, and locks some unique features behind a paywall. I was able to use this VPN without creating an account, but that doesn’t mean total anonymity, since I downloaded its app from the Mac App Store. Still, that makes it less of a hassle to quickly fire up this VPN and access something that’s blocked in your region.