The Best Free VPN Services in 2025 — Top 4 Free VPNs Reviewed and Compared

The best free VPNs allow you to bypass regional restrictions to watch your favorite movies and TV shows or download apps and keep you safe online. Typically, paid services offer much more than their free counterparts, but that isn’t necessarily the case with Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

Although there are many free VPN apps available online, not every one of them functions well, and some may even be scams. To help you out, we’ve looked into all the free VPNs available and created a list of the best free VPN services in 2025. Our top choice this year is PrivadoVPN, which offers 12 locations across nine countries, closely followed by ProtonVPN and AtlasVPN.

The Best Free VPN Services in 2025 | Top 4 Shortlist

Our research went into detail regarding free VPN services and the features they offer, and we found that these four free VPNs are unmatched, with PrivadoVPN offering the most out of all of them:

1. PrivadoVPN – Best free VPN overall, with above-average performance, a no-logs policy, connections for 10 devices, and extremely wide-ranging compatibility.
2. ProtonVPN – Great free VPN with powerful encryption and VPN protocols, unlimited bandwidth, a reliable kill switch, and lots of free servers to choose from.
3. AtlasVPN – Impressive service with no speed limits, which has military-grade encryption, a kill switch, and unlimited simultaneous connections.
4. TunnelBear – Popular pick that’s straightforward and easy to use and comes with powerful security features. Great for light browsing and completing your daily tasks online.

The Best Free VPNs in 2025 Reviewed

Many of the best premium VPN services offer a free/freemium service, but they’re rarely functional, while some bombard you with ads or force you to pay to continue using them. To save you the trouble of trying them all, we’ve done it for you and included only the best free VPNs.

1. PrivadoVPN – Best Free VPN Overall 

PrivadoVPN offers a whooping 10 GB of full-speed data each month for its free users — for those who exceed that limit, the VPN just gets a bit slower — making it practically an unlimited free VPN.

Beyond this, its above-average performance makes PrivadoVPN one of the best free mobile VPNs and one of the best free VPNs for PC.

PrivadoVPN offers a great choice of servers for its free users, with 12 server locations available in nine countries. One of the best things about its service is that, unlike other free VPNs (and even some premium VPNs), PrivadoVPN allows uninterrupted access to many streaming servers.

This makes it one of the best Netflix VPNs. That means you can unlock streaming services like US Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney Plus and watch them from anywhere in the world.

Plus, PrivadoVPN doesn’t store your data, and the company secures your online connection with world-class encryption. You’ll feel safer knowing that nobody can monitor your online activity or track your IP address while using PrivadoVPN.

If you use more than one device throughout the day, you’ll find PrivadoVPN’s premium plan better, as it allows up to 10 simultaneous connections for each account.

That means you can skip the tediousness of making additional accounts for your secondary devices. PrivadoVPN’s excellent free VPN services perform well in all areas, making it an appealing addition even to those using a premium VPN service as a backup free VPN provider.

2. ProtonVPN – Great Free VPN With Powerful Encryption 

ProtonVPN offers a reliable free VPN service with a nice mix of features and a high-quality free VPN app. The company behind ProtonVPN believes that cybersecurity is a fundamental human right, allowing users to use its VPN services for free for all kinds of internet activity.

People choose ProtonVPN over other free VPNs because it offers unlimited bandwidth each month for its free users. That’s highly convenient because you won’t ever have to worry about running low on data, making this free VPN service available at all times.

Based in Switzerland, home to some of the world’s finest privacy laws, ProtonVPN offers a highly encrypted and secure email address with its ProtonMail service, used by various journalists and activists worldwide.

ProtonVPN also boasts a highly functional Android app that supports split tunneling, a feature that allows you to choose which internet traffic you want to be encrypted and lets you leave the rest running at your usual internet speed without VPN protection.

Netshield ad blocker, kill switch, and a map interface is ProtonVPN’s other advanced features that make it one of the best VPNs for Android. While ProtonVPN doesn’t reserve all its features for its premium VPN service, only three countries are available for its free VPN plan.

With that said, ProtonVPN offers over 100 free VPN servers in Japan, the Netherlands, and the U.S., giving you a lot of choices to ensure the fastest internet connection.

3. AtlasVPN – Impressive Service With No Speed Limits

AtlasVPN offers outstanding free VPN speeds, making it the best VPN for gaming and torrenting that you can use for free. This free VPN provider offers 10GB of data a month and ensures that your data isn’t available to anyone else.

AtlasVPN takes third place on our list because it lets its free VPN users pick from three servers – Amsterdam, New York, and Los Angeles. However, unlike our picks for the top two free VPN providers, AtlasVPN offers unlimited simultaneous connections.

That means you can have all your devices connected to your free VPN account instead of a separate account for every device. AtlasVPN is also a great free VPN service for gaming, as it ensures that you face no lag or delay with its uncapped connection speed.

This makes it one of the best free VPNs for PC. Plus, with its fast peer-to-peer (P2P), AtlasVPN makes for a great torrenting free VPN on top of everything, and it’s one of the best VPNs for iPhone because of its iOS torrenting capabilities.

AtlasVPN doesn’t reserve its other helpful features for its premium VPN service either, including VPN ad blocking and data breach monitoring.

These features ensure that your online activity is well-cared for, notifying you if your email becomes a part of a massive data breach that could put your passwords at risk, and they block suspicious websites and pop-up ads that could put you in harm’s way.

4. TunnelBear – Popular Pick That’s Straightforward and Easy to Use

TunnelBear is by far the easiest free VPN to use for someone who needs it to securely browse the internet, check their email, or unblock a website. The popular free VPN service provider offers industry-leading annual VPN audits — the most in-depth in the business — reassuring you that your privacy is protected while using its free VPN services.

Providing a simple free VPN service that doesn’t bombard you with details about protocols and various features, TunnelBear is the perfect free VPN provider for someone who wants to complete their daily tasks securely.

Just because it doesn’t constantly mention all the protocols doesn’t mean TunnelBear doesn’t offer advanced features with its free VPN plan.

For example, a kill switch called VigilantBear will instantly stop your system from sending data to a website if TunnelBear detects an IPv6 or DNS leak or your connection drops.

That way, the websites you visit have no way of obtaining your real IP address, even if something unexpected, like a power loss, happens.

TunnelBear also offers good connection speeds at 300Mbps and allows you to change your location to 48 server locations across 46 countries with its free VPN services.

However, PrivadoVPN’s free VPN service is a better choice if you want to watch movies or TV shows online, as TunnelBear can’t unblock streaming services like BBC iPlayer, Netflix, and others.

The Best Free VPNs in 2025 | Top 4 Compared

Here’s a nifty table to help you compare the best free VPNs on the market:

Free VPN VS. Paid VPN Services | Which is Best?

Since most premium VPN providers offer free VPN plans, they’re great if you want to get a feel of their service before committing to a monthly subscription. However, free VPN services pale compared to their premium counterparts simply because most of them have connection speed, data, and feature limits.

With that said, if safety is your main concern while you focus on your daily tasks on your computer or phone, providers like PrivadoVPN offer the same protection on their free VPN and their premium VPN service.

However, while all the free VPNs from our list keep you safe, not all free VPN services have your safety on their mind.

Many free VPN providers that we encountered during our research are looking to lure you into downloading their VPN apps so they can steal and sell your personal information.

Premium VPNs are a much better choice if you spend a good chunk of your time online, especially if you intend to download large quantities of data, stream geo-restricted content, or torrent TV shows and movies.

Although finding the best premium VPN service isn’t an easy task, as they all offer superb cybersecurity features, most of them are well worth the price since the pricing of the best cheap VPNs starts at an average of $2/month.

Our list includes the best free VPN services with today’s market-leading options you can try risk-free, thanks to them having a lengthy money-back guarantee you can use as a free trial.

Are Free VPN Services Safe?

Caution is mandatory while picking any free software, not just free VPNs. Hundreds of VPN services advertise themselves as free VPNs that provide a complete service, comparing themselves with premium VPN services.

These shady websites try to prey on you by luring you in and then stealing and selling your data while offering extremely limited or no service at all. However, not all free VPNs are a scam or dysfunctional, as many reputable providers offer a free VPN service, although with some limits.

Our list includes four trusted, free VPN providers that won’t prey on you or force you to pay. We’ve picked those four out of all other free VPN providers based on their server location, connection speed, generous data per month, privacy policy, and more.

How to Choose the Best Free VPNs | Our Approach

The first step we take before considering a free VPN service is to carefully examine their website and look for catches in the small print as well as if they go through an audit and its results if so.

It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for the best Linux VPN or the fastest VPN services — none of them should fall into consideration if they have hidden fees or don’t value your privacy.

One free VPN service might provide exceptional results on Android but pale in comparison when used on Windows, for example, making the free VPN provider inconsistent. That’s why we thoroughly test these apps across multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.

Encryption is another crucial factor for free VPN apps, and all of our top picks rely on industry-standard AES-256 encryption, making any of them a viable choice. We made sure that our top picks have a no-logs policy and that they offer industry-leading security to their free VPN users.

Another decisive factor is the number of available servers. You should always look for a free VPN provider that can offer you multiple servers near your physical location for the best performance.

If you’re far from your server of choice, your connection will be slower, so it’s always best to have multiple servers nearby that you can switch between if needed.

Although the limit on data by your free VPN provider of choice matters, some users might find a low amount perfectly fine, like TunnelBear’s 500MB. Others who extensively use the internet will find the 10GB offered by PrivadoVPN and AtlasVPN more suitable for their needs.

Lastly, it’s helpful to examine the quality of the streaming services provided by free VPNs and if they can unblock websites like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and Disney Plus.

After testing all free VPNs extensively, we found that only PrivadoVPN manages to consistently unblock BBC iPlayer, making it the best free BBC iPlayer VPN in 2025.

Free VPN FAQs