Ranked on the price you pay in year 2+ - not the teaser rate that affiliate pages quote.
Short answer: At renewal, 11 providers currently stay under $3 per month - a mix of kinds (a dVPN's per-GB credit and a proxy's metered plan are not monthly subscriptions). PureVPN's $2.16 teaser renews at $4.00/mo (1.9x); several budget picks never publish a verifiable renewal price at all (AirVPN, Surfshark) - unknown is unknown, never cheap.
providers on this page: 11 · independent audit on file: 18% · court-proven no-logs: 1 · open-source apps: 45%
quick picks
Sentinel is real decentralized-VPN infrastructure - an open-source Cosmos chain with on-chain sessions, Wallet-only signup and per-gigabyte pricing that…
This is Hola's model rebuilt honestly: PacketStream is a residential proxy marketplace where users are paid $0.10 per GB to let strangers' web-scraping traffic…
The mainstream default of DNS-level filtering, with a genuinely honest scoping the operator itself states plainly: AdGuard DNS sits at the resolver - it…
The strongest case on this site for 'sometimes the answer is a DNS blocker, not a VPN' - and a product whose limits the operator itself does not oversell…
The best-evidenced no-logs claim in the business - twice tested in US courts (2016, 2018) and twice found to have nothing - plus the cheapest long-term renewal…
A rare genuinely usable free plan (no card, P2P allowed on the 10 GB free tier) plus audited no-logs claims twice over - DefenseCode 2015 and Securitum 2024…
Unlocator is a streaming-unblocking specialist, not a privacy product, and this dossier scopes it accordingly. Its core Smart DNS product does exactly one…
This is a bundle afterthought with a serious brand behind it, not a serious VPN. The product is real and now reasonably modern (WireGuard, split tunneling…
A competent budget proxy vendor for scraping and automation - and this dossier is honest that it is not a privacy product. Webshare is a California-founded…
The canonical case study of 'you are the product' in this industry, and the model has not gone away: Hola's own privacy policy (April 2026) and FAQ state that…
A DNS-layer filtering service that has grown up in public: born January-April 2021 out of the Windscribe team (same three founders, spun out precisely because…
11 providers bill under $3/month in their first term. That number is real - you genuinely pay it - but it is a customer-acquisition price, not a subscription price. The spread between intro and renewal is the whole story of this page: 2.9x is the steepest jump we track, and $2.69/mo is what the middle of this page pays in year two.
A 3-year term on Private Internet Access is one $79 bill (the plan covers 39 months). The same window on PureVPN is $58.20 for the 27-month intro plus one $47.95 renewal year - $106.15 in two charges - nearly double per year, which is why cancellation churn is priced in. The honest comparison the affiliate pages skip: flat-price Mullvad totals $205 over three years[1], mid-market, with zero cancel-before-renewal bookkeeping. Price is a system, not a headline.
Four recur across the market. The date trap: the discount term ends on a random Tuesday and the difference bills before you notice. The tier change: the intro price was for the 2-year plan; renewal applies to the 1-month rate. The currency shroud: billing in EUR or GBP at an internal rate. And the prepay trap documented above - lifetime deals that die with the company. Set a calendar reminder 30 days before term end, or buy from providers whose renewal equals the intro ($1.00/mo gets you in the door; the renewal column keeps you honest[1][4]).
A cheap subscription from an evidence-carrying provider is the best value in the market: PIA at $2.19/mo equivalent[2] is court-proven, hide.me at EUR 2.69/mo (EUR 69.99 per 26 months) carries audits. What cheap does not buy: obfuscation for censored networks (see the China hub), anonymous payment rails (see the anonymous-payment hub), or flat pricing (this page's green bars). Match the provider to the actual job, then let price break ties - the finder does this in five questions.
Most "cheapest VPN" pages sort by the intro rate and call it done - the exact column that disappears after your first billing cycle. The two-column discipline on this page (intro and renewal, always visible together) is the fix: any comparison that hides one of the two columns is selling the hidden one. Our own table carries both, the provider comparison sorts on either, and the renewal column is the one our scoring prices. When you see a "from $X" headline anywhere else, the missing number is the product.
The filter is the renewal price - under $3/month in year 2+, not the teaser. $2.69/mo is the median renewal across this page's providers, and 2.9x is the steepest intro-to-renewal jump. A $2.15 intro that renews at $47.95 is a $47.95 VPN with a discount on the first term.
Private Internet Access - $2.03 intro, $2.19 renewal, court-proven architecture. The flat-price providers win the rest of the table: Mullvad at EUR 5 (about $5.65) and IVPN at $5/year-billed ($6 monthly) cost more per month than PIA but less than almost every "cheaper" provider's renewal rate[6][1]. The true-cost calculator prices your exact term.
Because affiliate economics pay for it. Providers pay affiliates $60-$100 per signup - PureVPN's program advertises 100% of the first invoice - which only works if renewals bill much higher. The intro price is a customer-acquisition cost you benefit from once; the renewal is the actual product price. TechRadar's "best VPN" lists quote the intro number for exactly this reason[4].
They are prepayments, not purchases. VPNSecure cancelled every lifetime subscription after a 2025 ownership change[3], and Ars documented another firm that cancelled lifetime deals it had lost track of[5]. The pattern is the prepay risk itself, not one company[3]. If you prepay years, treat it as credit with a company that may not honor it - and prefer providers whose renewal is at least knowable.
Compared to a teaser, yes; compared to any renewal column, it is mid-market - and it is the same price in year one and year five, with an account number instead of an email[1]. Cheap and cheap-looking are different products; the flat-price tier exists precisely because the teaser model has a different business behind it.
Not uniformly - PIA is court-proven with quarterly transparency reports[2], hide.me documents audits. But the discount tier is where renewal jumps concentrate, and payment processors see more churn disputes. Judge each provider on evidence and renewal together, never on the teaser alone.