Most "free" VPNs pay their bills by selling your browsing data to advertisers. That's not a privacy tool. That's the privacy problem wearing a different hat.
I tested 12 free VPN services — checking their privacy policies, running DNS leak tests, and verifying logging claims. Here's what I found.
| VPN | Free Limit | Logs? | Data Selling? | Audited? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proton VPN | Unlimited | No logs | No | Yes (SEC Consult) |
| Windscribe | 10GB/month | No logs | No | Partial |
| Mullvad | 10-day trial only | No logs | No | Yes |
| TunnelBear | 500MB/month | No logs | No | Yes |
| Hola VPN | "Unlimited" | Yes | Yes (peer network) | No |
| Hotspot Shield | 500MB/day | Extensive | Yes | No |
| Betternet | 500MB/day | Yes | Yes | No |
| TouchVPN | "Unlimited" | Yes | Yes | No |
The only VPN with a genuinely unlimited free tier that doesn't sell your data. From the company behind Proton Mail. Based in Switzerland, which has strict privacy laws. Third-party audited. Open source clients.
The free tier restricts you to one device and servers in 3 countries (US, Netherlands, Japan). It's slower than the paid tier and doesn't support torrenting. But for basic privacy, it works without any data limits.
Best free VPN. No competition.
10GB per month free, which is enough for light browsing and privacy use (not streaming). If you confirm your email address during signup, you get 10GB instead of 2GB. The free tier includes 10+ server locations.
Windscribe's privacy policy is explicit about not logging. Their GDPR compliance page is detailed and transparent. No audits published yet — a minus point — but the policy itself is good.
Technically not a free VPN — but worth mentioning. The 10-day trial is no-credit-card, no-email, just download and test. After that it's €5/month. Mullvad is probably the most privacy-focused paid VPN — account numbers instead of emails, accepts cash and crypto.
If you need a paid VPN, Mullvad is the one I'd choose. If you're on a budget, use Proton VPN free.
Servers cost money. Bandwidth costs money. If a VPN is free, someone is paying for it. Usually, that someone is advertisers who buy your browsing data.
The pattern: app promises "no logs" but the privacy policy says they collect "aggregated usage data" which gets sold to partners. The word "logs" is undefined. Aggregated data still identifies you at the ISP level.
Proton VPN, Windscribe, and Mullvad survive on freemium models — they lose money on free users and make it back on paid. That's the only sustainable model for a privacy-respecting free VPN.
A VPN protects your connection from your ISP and network observers (coffee shops, hotels). It does NOT:
For public WiFi and ISP snooping: yes, use a VPN. For true anonymity: use Tor. For stopping ad targeting: use uBlock Origin and a privacy-focused browser.