#1
IVPN
The anti-affiliate champion candidate holds up: no affiliate program (stated out loud on the homepage), flat honest pricing, quarterly warrant canary, annual…
audited canary open source crypto accepted
intro $5/mo
Free tier
Ranked on documented facts, not sponsored placement - every provider page shows the evidence.
Short answer: Three free models exist - donation-funded (RiseupVPN), funnel free tiers (Proton, Windscribe, hide.me) and card-required trials (NymVPN, AirVPN). The unlimited-data free apps outside this ranking are the ones the FTC cases are about.
providers on this page: 14 · independent audit on file: 57% · court-proven no-logs: 0 · open-source apps: 43%
quick picks
- Free forever, no account at all Riseup VPN - donation-funded collective, install and run, no users table
- Unlimited-data free tier from an audited operator Proton VPN - unlimited data, ~5 countries, no ads, no logs architecture - the paid funnel exists
- A usable free monthly allowance Windscribe - 10GB/month with confirmed email, buildable locations
#2
Mozilla VPN
The only big-name VPN from a nonprofit-owned company: open-source clients, a 2021 Cure53 audit, WireGuard-only on Mullvad's network and a strict 'we don't…
audited open source
intro $4.99 /month
#3
AirVPN
Community-run Italian operator with the best power-user transparency stack in the business: fully open-source Eddie client (GPL-3.0), 258 bare-metal entry IPs…
open source crypto accepted
intro €2.75/mo (about $3.11/mo)
#4
Proton VPN
The most honest mainstream deal in 2026: open-source apps, real audits, a genuinely usable free tier with no data cap, and a transparent renewal model - and in…
audited open source crypto accepted
intro $3.49/mo renews $83.88 / 12 mo ($6.99/mo)
#5
hide.me
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…
audited crypto accepted
intro €2.69/mo (about $3.04/mo)
#6
Riseup VPN
The most trustworthy free VPN on structural grounds: an anarchist Seattle collective that has run since 1999, funds itself by donations, asks no account…
canary open source crypto accepted
completely free, no account registration, donation-funded
#7
NymVPN
The only consumer VPN with a real metadata-protection architecture - a 5-hop noise-generating Sphinx mixnet with cover traffic - and it costs just $4/mo on the…
audit open source crypto accepted
intro $4/mo
#8
Windscribe
The freemium that actually respects you: a 10 GB free tier, transparent $9/$69 pricing with no renewal rug-pull, open-source Linux CLI, and a CEO who publicly…
intro $5.75/mo
#9
TunnelBear
The friendliest VPN on the market and the only one with a published annual independent audit habit (Cure53 since 2017), but that honesty buys less privacy than…
audited
intro $3.33 /month
#10
Turbo VPN
A 500M-install free VPN from the Qihoo 360-linked developer cluster (Innovative Connecting / Autumn Breeze / Lemon Clove, per TTP 2025 and OTF 2025)…
yes - ad-supported free tier + premium upsell
#11
UrbanVPN
The rare VPN where no investigation is needed - the privacy policy is the evidence. Urban VPN's parent self-declares as a data broker and sells behavior…
free tier remains on the extensions/apps, but the iOS app moved to a subscription + 3-day free trial in 2026 per App Store user reviews - and the 'free' product is funded by data brokerage and advertising
#12
CyberGhost
Cheap ($2.19/mo intro on 26 months, renews at $56.94/yr = ~2.2x), Romanian-based, and one of few Kape brands whose no-logs claim is Deloitte-audited - but the…
audited
intro $2.19/mo renews $56.94 / 12 mo ($4.75/mo)
#13
NordVPN
A strong everyday VPN with a huge live-verifiable network (7,287 servers in 150 countries counted in the official API on 2026-10-01) and a genuine audit…
audited crypto accepted
intro $3.49/mo renews $139.08 / 12 mo ($11.59/mo)
#14
VPN Proxy Master
The worst documented app in this comparison set: 100M+ installs, ownership in the Qihoo 360-linked shell network (TTP 2025), and a peer-reviewed NDSS 2026…
no-logs contradicted
yes - ad-supported free tier + premium upsell
Free is a business model - the only question is who pays
14 of the 14 providers on this page document a free tier or trial. The filter is deliberately narrow: it catches the honest free products - donation-funded, funnel tiers with real limits, and card-required trials - and excludes the "free unlimited" app-store tier where the FTC cases and breach databases live[6].
The three honest models, compared
Donation-funded (RiseupVPN): no accounts, no billing, no funnel - funded by the same collective that has run Riseup's mail for decades[3]. Limits: small network, best-effort performance, and a political project you should agree with. Funnel tiers (Proton VPN, Windscribe, hide.me): real product with real limits, designed to convert you to paid - the privacy architecture is the same as the paid tier[1]. Trials (NymVPN, AirVPN, IVPN's paid trial): full features for days, sometimes card-gated. Each model is fine; mixing them up is how people end up on a data-harvesting app.
The free tier as a privacy decision, not a price decision
Two questions decide whether a free product is honest. One: what does the operator sell - subscriptions (fine), donations (fine), or attention and data (documented: Onavo[5], Avast, Hola)? Two: does the free tier share infrastructure with the paid product? When it does (Proton), the free tier inherits the audits and the no-logs architecture. When it does not - a separate "free" app from an unknown developer - you are the product, and the free-VPN trap dossier has the incident record.
What to actually do
Occasional travel: a funnel tier with a data cap beats a suspicious "unlimited" app every time. Testing before buying: prefer a short paid trial or the money-back window over card-required "free" weeks, and calendar the cancel date. Budget privacy as a daily driver: the paid honest tier starts around $2-6 (the cheapest hub), which is the cheapest product in this market that comes without a data-side business. If a "free week" needs a card, it is not a trial - it is a renewal you will forget, so read the cancel terms first. And whatever you pick, run the leak test - free clients are the ones that most often ship without DNS leak protection.
Sources
- Proton VPN - free VPN product page (limits and funding) - accessed 2026-09-30
- Windscribe - pricing and free plan terms - accessed 2026-09-30
- RiseupVPN - donation-funded, no accounts - accessed 2026-09-30
- FTC - order bans Avast from selling browsing data, $16.5M settlement - accessed 2026-09-30
- TechCrunch - Apple pulls Facebook's Onavo from the App Store - accessed 2026-09-30
- The Register - UFO VPN database exposed (23M "free" users) - accessed 2026-09-30
- Have I Been Pwned - SuperVPN/GeckoVPN breach (10M records) - accessed 2026-09-30
FAQ
What is the difference between a free tier, a trial and a money-back guarantee?
A free tier runs indefinitely with limits (data, locations, speed). A trial is full-featured for days and usually wants a card up front. A money-back guarantee is a paid subscription you can cancel inside a window - refunds have a paper trail, which matters if you paid anonymously. On this page: 14 of the 14 providers document a free tier or trial.
Which free options are honest?
Three models. RiseupVPN is donation-funded with no accounts at all[3]. Proton VPN's free tier is unlimited data with no ads, funded by the paid plans it funnels toward[1]. Windscribe gives 10GB/month with a confirmed email. The dishonest model - "free unlimited VPN" apps outside our ranking - is the one with FTC orders and breach databases attached.
What happened with the big free VPN apps?
SuperVPN leaked 10M user records and reappeared in a 10M-user credential sale; UFO VPN left a 1.2TB database with ~23M users exposed - both products logged everything while advertising strict no-logs[6][7]. Facebook's Onavo harvested traffic until Apple banned it[5]. Avast sold browsing data until the FTC's $16.5M order. The free tier is a business model; the question is whose.
Do card-required trials auto-convert?
Usually, yes - that is the design. NymVPN's 7-day trial requires a card on select plans, AirVPN's 3-day trial costs EUR 2. The failure mode is the forgotten trial converting to a full-price month, then renewing at the standard rate. Calendar reminder on day one, or pick a data-limited free tier that cannot bill you.
Is the free tier of an audited provider safe?
Proton VPN's free tier runs the same audited architecture as the paid product[1] - the limits are commercial (few countries, one device), not privacy theater. The trade is honest: the free tier exists to upsell. Read the free tier's actual limits on the provider page rather than in app-store copy.
Why is a paid plan usually the better deal?
Because at $2-6/month (see the cheapest hub) you get full locations, full speed, streaming and support - less than a coffee. Free tiers make sense for occasional travel and testing; as a daily driver they trade convenience for limits, and the unbranded "free unlimited" apps trade your data for it.