Best Free VPN

ProtonVPN is managed by a Swiss company, it was created in 2014. The company offers four plans to choose from: Free, Basic, Plus, Visionary. Unfortunately, its free plan is very restrictive, proving you only 3 countries, 1 device connectivity and slow speed. As always free users are at the bottom list and get limited features.

Let’s move to better news. one of the reasons why ProtonVPN is in the “best free VPN” list, is its zero-logging policy. The only data that ProtonVPN logs are a single timestamp of your account’s most recent login just to make sure that you’re who you say you are.

What is more, it uses the best encryption on the market AES-256, which is similar to other VPNs in the “best free VPN” list. So, even if it’s a common feature, I still identify it as a major advantage. The most surprising point is that ProtonVPN offers unlimited data bandwidth, making it one of the best free unlimited VPN providers.

The reason why I cannot give the best free VPN name to ProtonVPN is that it doesn’t work with Netflix and doesn’t provide you with P2P support.  Moreover, it’s quite slow, when testing average download speed, results showed only about 20Mbps.

Visit ProtonVPN
...or read our ProtonVPN review

Let’s begin with the best free VPN - Hotspot Shield. It was first released as a free VPN service in 2008 in California, the US. A little bit later it was split into free and paid (Hotspot Shield Elite) versions.

Since it’s the free version, you do not need to register or transfer money, so you stay completely anonymous. However, if you want to connect multiple devices to this VPN, the registration is required.

Another reason why Hotspot Shield is the best free VPN is that it allows torrenting. Since it uses AES-256 encryption, which is the best on the market (so far), it gives you full protection. Moreover, Hotspot Shield seems to have a solid zero logs policy, it replaces your real IP address with anonymous proxy IP address making it impossible to identify you. 

What is more, even if you do not get unlimited data, it gives you more than most of the free VPN providers - 500MB per day, making it the best free VPN. Also, it’s quite fast. The average download speed, when I connected through Hotspot Shield to the US server, was 56.90Mbps.

One more thing, Hotspot Shield is not only the best free alternative, but it’s also the best free unlimited VPN since it’s the only one that gives you an infinite number of devices that you can connect to.

However, there’s another side to it. While using the free version you won’t be able to unblock Netflix. The thing is that none of the free VPNs manage to unblock Netflix US, that's why it's recommended to choose almost free alternatives.

Therefore, even if Hotspot Shield free VPN has limitations, each of the free providers has them, yet it’s the best out of charge alternative you can get at the moment.

Visit Hotspot Shield
...or read our Hotspot Shield review

Windscribe is a Canadian VPN provider, established in 2015 which offers both free and paid plans. It comes with a reasonable 10GB bandwidth cap.

Windscribe gives you 2GB per month, but you can easily get 10GB by providing your email address (less than the best free VPN - Hotspot Shield, which offers about 15 GB). The main problem with free VPNs is that they won’t give you enough data to use day-by-day.

Furthermore, when testing the speed, it came out with the download speed of 63.52Mbps when connected to the EU server, which you probably know are amazing results! So, if it was the fastest free VPN listing, the numbering would be different.

Moving to security, Windscribe uses AES-256 encryption standard and IPsec/IKEv2, OpenVPN protocols. Since logging policy is also very important, you should know that Windscribe megabyte bandwidth and timestamp of your last activity using Windscribe. What is more, even though many free VPN providers leak your IP and DNS, Windscribe is not one of them.

Unlike other free VPNs, it has a firewall that blocks any activity happening outside the connection of their servers. But, unfortunately, it doesn’t unblock Netflix, just like the majority of good free VPN providers.

Visit Windscribe
...or read our Windscribe review

Speedify is Philadelphia-based VPN service provider, established only in 2014. Considering the fact that they’re a young company, Speedify's number of servers grows rapidly. At the moment it offers more than 200 servers in 50 locations. Since free plans usually have restrictions, I was surprised to see that Speedify allows both free and paid users to access any of the servers.

The only and largely noticeable difference is that the free version gives you data limit of 5GB per month, which is not enough for active users, or any users, I would say...

Let’s move to the most important aspect of every top free VPN provider - security measurements. Speedify protects users’ data with 256-bit ChaCha encryption, however, if a device you’re using has integrated AES hardware encryption, then it uses AES 256-bit encryption instead. 

However, even though you get strong security, Speedify collects a bunch of your personal information... Even though they claim to have a zero-logging policy.

One of the strongest Speedify's sides is their app, which is one of the best you get to see, there’s even your current speed and data flow graph included.

Another exceptional feature, which was the reason I added Speedify to “the best free VPN list” is that it combines two Internet connections, boosting your speed! That’s where their name came from, it all makes sense now, don’t you think? Therefore, even though every VPN provider that I analyzed before slows down your Internet experience, Speedify works the other way around. My average download speed went all the way up to 77.88Mbps!

As I tested Netflix and torrenting, I was quite disappointed with the results. Sadly, but you won’t unblock Netflix using Speedify (no surprise since none of the top free VPN providers do). Now, torrenting is allowed, but it's limited and you don’t get to choose which server to use, you’re simply assigned to one.

What is more, when testing IP and DNS, I detected DNS leaks, which is one of the biggest concerns that not only free but also some paid VPNs have.

Visit Speedify
...or read our Speedify review

I’m getting to the end of the best free VPN services reviews. The time has come to look into the Hide.me. To no one's surprise, it’s another VPN provider that offers both free and paid plans. It was established in 2012 in Malaysia.

One of the strongest features that got the Hide.me into “the best free VPN service” list is their reputable logging policy. None of the information collected by the Hide.me can threaten to reveal your identity. Even your email address is encrypted.

Hide.me uses the strongest security on the market AES-256 (and so does every provider on the best free VPN service list).

The company offers more than 55 servers to choose from for a free user, which is much more than the majority of free services provide you with. It works with torrenting but, unfortunately, does not unblock Netflix. When testing download speed, it came out delivering pretty solid results - 61.22 Mbps.

Therefore, it’s a good free VPN but not the best on the market.

Visit Hide.me
...or read our Hide.me review

TunnelBear is based in Toronto, Canada, it was established in 2011. In 2018, the company was acquired by McAfee, the software security company.

If you were searching for “the best VPN free”, TunnelBear is not the best option but it does have some great qualities.

First of all, it does have a strict zero-logging policy. It won’t collect any of the data related to your IP address, DNS Queries or anything that you’re using while connected to TunnelBear.

Another point that matters is IP and DNS leaks. TunnelBear came out delivering squeaky-clean results.

What is more, TunnelBear uses the IKEv2/IPsec and OpenVPN protocols. You will be able to choose from 1,700 servers in 20 different countries, which is a significant number compared to other free providers. And it uses the AES 256-bit data encryption standard - the best on the market.

The last thing that I would like to add is that TunnelBear, similar to other free providers, won’t work with Netflix, however, it supports torrenting.

Therefore, that was the last free VPN that I wanted to introduce you to. If you're worried about your security, let's take a look at better options you can choose from. 

Visit TunnelBear
...or read our TunnelBear review