VPNs have held a place comparable to antiviruses in our digital lives. And as with antiviruses, most VPN services are paid, but some offer free services. This can be tempting: if you need a VPN for a specific purpose, such as quickly making a purchase or transaction on a secure connection, to watch a particular show on a blocked service in your country, it is necessarily interesting not to have to pay a monthly subscription. or even yearly for that.
Also check out paid VPNs:
Even more than for paid VPNs, on the other hand, it is necessary to know what these offers contain, because a VPN may not be suitable for all users. Do you want to use a VPN without paying a dollar? Discover all the information you need to know!
Free VPN: does it really exist?
VPNs have been developed mainly as paid services and there is an obvious reason for this: a VPN is an expensive infrastructure and to ensure the development of new servers that provide excellent speed, the creation of innovative new services or customer service available in various Languages. and continuously, obviously it is necessary to be able to generate income. However, free VPNs exist, it’s a fact! Some are free offers from well-known providers, others are, for example, integrated into free security suites.
We tend to think that a free service is unreliable and in the case of VPNs this is not necessarily the case, far from it. Simply, these free offers are usually more limited. For example, they can limit usage to a certain number of gigabytes per day or per month. The servers may also run at a lower speed. Some providers also limit the possibilities of choosing your own server, offering only the possibility of automatically connecting to the closest one geographically. Depending on your uses, these limitations can be prohibitive or, on the contrary, adequate for the occasional use that you want to make of a VPN.
The cons of free VPNs
We often hear the maxim “When it’s free, the product is you”. And that, sadly, may be true. This is the first question you can ask yourself when using a free VPN: why is it free? If it’s a free offer from a big name or an actor known for his commitment to user privacy, no problem. On the other hand, it may happen that we find ourselves before a VPN whose reputation is not clear, and we wonder if it does not collect data. Fortunately, this does not apply to most popular free VPNs, but it is important to know the privacy policy of a VPN, whether it is free or paid. This is why a paid VPN can be more “secure”.
A free VPN can also be limited, and most of the time it is. You don’t have all the features that a paid VPN offers, the number of servers is more limited, you can’t connect in the country of your choice, these are points to check: what does the free offer include and what are we deprived of?
Finally, performance can also be limited, and this is important if, for example, you want to use a VPN to download files or connect to video streaming services. In this case, the speed may be insufficient and you will have to go through a paid VPN.
Take advantage of the trial periods of the great VPNs!
One tip, if one needs VPN access for one time, is to go through the paid VPN trial periods. That said, the idea has its limits. First, the VPN service may not offer a “free” trial and require paying for a subscription for which you can get a refund within 30 days.
It is already more restrictive, and you have to think about canceling. So this will force you to change providers regularly and therefore reinstall all your applications on your PC, Mac, smartphone… It may be more interesting to go through a true free VPN knowing its limitations.
3 Free VPNs: Proton VPN, Windscribe, and AtlasVPN
Some VPNs offer a free plan and even make it their main strength. This is the case of Proton VPN, a VPN of Swiss origin and created by the Proton company that already manages the Proton Mail or Proton Drive services. The idea is the same: offer a service aimed at protecting privacy for free. Proton VPN offers 100 servers with one connection and medium speed servers in free version with strict privacy policy.
Atlas VPN is another VPN that offers a free plan, and it’s interesting if you don’t necessarily want to choose your location, because it doesn’t limit access on the number of simultaneous devices or connection speed. On the other hand, you only benefit from 3 different slots against 750 for the paid version.
Finally, Windscribe offers a free plan limited to 2 GB per month, with the ability to increase to 10 GB per month if you agree to provide your email address. Le VPN offers applications for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone and Android and extensions for the main web browsers.
The BFMTV newsroom was not involved in the production of this content. BFMTV is likely to receive compensation when one of our readers makes a purchase through the links included in this article.
Source: BFM TV
