Riseup VPN vs VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment): which wins in 2026?
Head-to-head on the facts that decide the purchase: real prices in the provider's own unit, minimum, KYC, proof, payment and terms - every number sourced in the linked reviews.
The most trustworthy free VPN on structural grounds: an anarchist Seattle collective that has run since 1999, funds itself by donations, asks no account registration and states plainly that it does not log IP addresses, with a quarterly PGP-signed warrant canary and honest documentation of its own VPN limitations and the 2016 canary incident. But it is still US jurisdiction, there is no independent audit, servers are few, and the client is Bitmask-based with basic features - activists' pick, not a streaming tool.
VPN Gate is a legitimate, transparently-run academic experiment that is genuinely free forever and genuinely useful for one thing: getting past government firewalls from censored networks, which is exactly why its users are concentrated in China, Iran and Russia. It is also one of the least privacy-friendly VPNs in existence - by its own published policy it keeps 3+ months of connection logs including your real IP and the destination hostnames you visit, hands them to police, prosecutors, lawyers and courts, and publishes a live feed of connections; every volunteer relay additionally sniffs two weeks of TCP/IP headers on untrusted hardware. Speeds and uptime are luck-of-the-draw because ~100 volunteer relays (measured 2026-11-03, against a '6000+' marketing line) come and go, and users in censored countries report the network is actively blocked. Use it as a free research tool or emergency censorship escape hatch - never for anything you would not be comfortable having logged and disclosed.
Short answer: Riseup VPN wins overall (4.5/10 vs 3.7/10). VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment) is the better pick if you care most about security. Facts checked 2026-11-07.
The facts
 Riseup VPN | VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment) | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score (0-10) | 4.5 | 3.7 |
| Privacy & proof | ||
| Logging claim | 'Unlike most other VPN providers, Riseup does not log your IP address' | We always keep VPN Connections Logs of VPN Gate Public VPN Relay Servers for three or… |
| Logging evidence | promise only (no proof) | promise only (no proof) |
| Audits | unknown | Guido Vranken (independent security researcher) 2018 |
| Jurisdiction | United States | Japan - web site hosted at the University of Tsukuba campus… moreJapan - web site hosted at the University of Tsukuba campus (Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8573), administrator Daiyuu Nobori, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of Tsukuba; the volunteer relays themselves are distributed worldwide and 'are not placed in the campus'; aggregated log servers are owned and managed by SoftEther Corporation, the joint research partner (about_us.aspx and about_abuse.aspx fetched 2026-11-03) |
| Owner | Riseup Collective (volunteer collective, Seattle) | unknown |
| Money | ||
| Intro price | unknown | $0 /mo |
| Renewal price | not published | not published |
| Anonymous payment | bitcoin | unknown |
| Account | ||
| Personal info | none | none - 'No user registration is required' (FAQ); anonymous c… morenone - 'No user registration is required' (FAQ); anonymous connections are explicitly accepted |
| Kind | Free VPNs | Free VPNs |
| Facts checked | 2026-09-29 | 2026-11-03 |
Score breakdown
Riseup VPN leads on ownership & track record (+3.5) · VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment) leads on security (+1).
Riseup VPN at a glance
++ What holds up
- Completely free, donation-funded, no account registration (VPN page re-checked 2026-09-28)
- 'Riseup does not log your IP address' - explicit operator statement
- Quarterly PGP-signed warrant canary (re-checked 2026-09-28)
- Unusually honest docs: a dedicated 'security issues / limitations of VPN' page that explains what a VPN cannot do
- Open-source Bitmask client; same stack as CalyxVPN
- Fifteen-year paper trail of collective operation (FBI server seizure 2012, canary episode 2016) handled candidly
-- What to watch
- US jurisdiction and US-based infrastructure
- No independent audit of the no-logs claim
- Small free network; speeds and server choice are basic
- Client setup is less polished than commercial apps (users report uninstall troubles and occasional site-blocking quirks)
VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment) at a glance
++ What holds up
- Free forever by design - the FAQ explicitly promises it will 'NEVER be a paying service', and there are no data caps or device limits (Security.org 2026)
- No account, no registration, no payment - anonymous connections accepted (FAQ, fetched 2026-11-03)
- Rare transparency: the anti-abuse policy states exactly what is logged, and a live anonymized connection-log feed updates every 60 seconds on the site
- Four protocols per relay (SoftEther SSL-VPN, L2TP/IPsec, OpenVPN, MS-SSTP) usable from stock OS clients without installing anything on Mac/iOS/Android
- Fully open-source stack (SoftEther VPN, Apache-2.0/GPL on GitHub) with an academic pedigree - NSDI'14 paper by the University of Tsukuba authors
- Purpose-built censorship resistance: distributed volunteer IPs, mirror sites for when the main site is blocked, and 23.67 billion cumulative connections from 239 countries (counters fetched 2026-11-03)
-- What to watch
- Extensive logging by policy: 3+ months of connection logs including source IP and destination HTTP/HTTPS hostnames (FQDNs), disclosed to police, prosecutors, lawyers and courts on request
- Packet logs (all TCP/IP headers) kept 2+ weeks on each volunteer's machine - you are routing traffic through strangers' computers that the project itself warns to treat cautiously
- Aggregated log servers are 'owned, operated, and managed by SoftEther Corporation', a commercial joint-research partner, not the university
- Tiny real network vs marketing: 101 running relays in 8 countries via the live API on 2026-11-03, most in Japan and South Korea (Security.org concurs: 'Most of the servers are in Japan and South Korea')
- Unreliable performance and availability: dynamic IPs, servers 'appear and disappear at any time', and community reports of US servers that 'never work' and speeds that are 'too slow'
- No native apps outside Windows, no kill switch/split tunneling/multihop, and no effective obfuscation - forum staff concede counter-detection features are 'completely useless' against modern DPI (March 2026)
FAQ
Which is cheaper, Riseup VPN or VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment)?
VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment) publishes a price ($0 /mo); Riseup VPN is free (no comparable price exists) - compare what each one takes instead of money.
Which has better logging evidence, Riseup VPN or VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment)?
Tie - both are at the same evidence level (policy-only).
Which renewal price is honest, Riseup VPN or VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment)?
Riseup VPN is free - there is no renewal price to hide; the honest question is what the "free" is funded with. See the linked reviews.
Which needs less KYC, Riseup VPN or VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment)?
At least one provider does not document its KYC policy - treat it as unknown, not as "no KYC".
Which has the longer track record?
Riseup VPN has the longer track record (since 1999).
Scores and facts: meta-reviews with dated sources - Riseup VPN · VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment). Method: how we verify. More: all providers compared · all head-to-heads.