Free Download VPNs For PC or Mac
Free VPNs For PC or Mac
ProtonVPN has risen to the cream of our free VPN crop. While the stand-out feature is undeniably that it offers zero limits on the amount of data you can use with your VPN use, there's plenty more to admire outside that alone.
It would be remiss of us not to begin with that headline selling point, though. ProtonVPN doesn’t impose any data restrictions. In other words, you’re free to use as much data as you want every month - that's really rare for a free VPN provider (as you'll discover below with the others on this guide) and handy if you're determined to use your VPN for streaming.
The free version of this service has servers in three locations, spread nicely around the world: in the US, Japan and the Netherlands. That's good to know if you were looking to check out a show on US Netflix, or there's some niche Japanese content you wouldn't normally be able to see where you live.
There are clients for Windows and Mac, of course, as well as apps for Android and iPhone. On desktop, we like the option to toggle on automatic connections when you start up your computer. And some unusual features for a freebie are included, too, like split-tunnelling and DNS leak protection.
There are, naturally enough, limitations for the free plan to incentivize upgrading to a paid-for offering. We think the most notable is the fact that free users get a lower priority when it comes to speed compared to paying subscribers. There’s no P2P support either and speeds may drop at peak times when lots of users are around and paying folks get priority. So if you do use this for streaming, be prepared for the odd bit of buffering.
But if you can live with that, this is an impressive provider with a strict no logging policy, and you can sign up with nothing more than your email address and a username of your choosing. There aren’t even any ads on the website, let alone the client.
- Go to the ProtonVPN website to download today's best free VPN
The premium version of Hotspot Shield takes its place among the top paid-for services on the web and, indeed, the #1 slot in our fastest VPN countdown. So it's little surprise that its free option is so popular.
Those on the free plan are limited to 500MB of data per day (so around 15GB per month). That may sound restrictive, but compared to one or two on this list, it's actually one of the more generous limits (although, of course, not a patch on the unlimited data you get with paid-for services).
If security is your sole aim, then Hotspot is on the same wavelength, boasting the same 'military-grade encryption' that most premium VPNs shout about. In addition to security, Hotspot Shield Free also won plaudits in our testing for being so friendly to use. Whether on its mobile version or on desktop, you won't find it the hair-pulling user experience offered by some competitors.
In our most recent round of putting free VPN providers through their paces, we did spot a fairly major issue with Hotspot Shield. For the period of a few weeks, Hotspot was completely killing the ability to search on Google when switched on. All we got was an error - and we tried this out a lot from a variety of locations and devices. Thankfully (at the time of writing) this issue appears to have been sorted, but it's something we'll be keeping a keen eye on in future testing.
You can choose to anchor yourself to one of 70-odd countries and solve the Google issue if you pay around £3 per month for the Premium version of Hotspot, and this should enable you to access just about anything you want; in the free version you're limited to one US-based location that Hotspot Shield chooses for you, and you'll have to put up with ads if you're using on Android and speed is limited to 2Mbps.
- Head through to the Hotspot Shield website to download now
The folk at Windscribe are vigorously and vocally proud of their free VPN offering... and why shouldn't they be! It's a really strong option thanks to its generous data allowance and commitment to protecting your privacy.
You get 2GB bandwidth per month as standard - so not much. But that is easily upped to a more palatable 10GB if you're happy to give Windscribe your email address. The free version lets you choose from 11 remote server locations including the UK, Hong Kong, Germany, Canada, Turkey and eight US VPN cities at last count). It's a 'freemium' model in play here, so there are some gentle nudges to get you to sign up to the unlimited version if you like what you see, but the upselling isn't too annoying or aggressive.
Getting started with its desktop clients or super useful Chrome extension is easy - you'll be jumping around the world on different servers in no time.
We actually don't expect free VPNs to help us get around region blocking from certain apps, sites and streaming services. So we were delighted when Windscribe went above and beyond the call of duty in our Netflix VPN testing. Unlike most others, it got us full access to exclusive content in the US, Germany and UK (as well as to BBC iPlayer in the latter). Of course the data limit is going to stop you from too many massive binges, but good to know for the odd show on your travels or commute.
Windscribe doesn’t store connection logs, IP stamps, or visited sites; when you’re actively connected to a server it stores your username, the server you’re connected to and the amount of data transferred, but this is erased within three minutes of the session ending. And if that isn’t all enough to tempt you, there’s even a built-in adblocker, malware protection and firewall.
A word on speeds though. We found Windscribe to be less consistent them some competitors and at times it took a while to even connect to a server. But they're fairly minor complaints in the grand scheme of things... did we mention it was free!
TunnelBear might have something of a cutesy design, but it's a serious free option, especially after its acquisition by security giant, McAfee. There are free and paid-for subscriptions to choose from.
The major restriction with the free plan is that you are limited to 500MB of traffic each month. That really is a tiny amount and means you can only really use it at those times when you feel like you need a little extra protection and want to go down the free route. You won't be able to keep it on all the time and you can forget using this VPN for torrenting and streaming. Obviously going for a provider like ExpressVPN or NordVPN alleviates this pain point entirely.
But it least this free version doesn't limit you on available servers, making all 20+ countries of the premium service available. And TunnelBear recently tuned up its privacy policy, so it now collects even less data on users – removing the need to supply a first name to sign up, and ditching its record of the user’s number of total lifetime connections.
Speedify, as the name suggests, has one main aim as a free VPN provider: to ensure that while you benefit from encryption, your internet connection remains as speedy as possible. To that end, this provider will make use of all available internet connections to get the best possible performance, potentially combining, say, an Ethernet connection (fixed broadband) with a tethered mobile connection. Even if you only have one type of internet connection, the firm claims its turbocharging technology will still help speed things up.
The free plan boasts full access to those servers (just as with the subscription options), the only restriction of the free offering being that you’re limited in the amount of data you can download. Free users get 2GB of data each month. That’s not a huge allowance, and certainly not as much as some other rivals you’ll see elsewhere on this page, but it’s more than some, and still enough for covering some basic surfing and email duties.
And this provider is definitely worth a look on the performance front, as during our testing, the aforementioned speed-granting technologies did actually prove themselves to have a positive effect.
Hide.me offers both paid and free VPN providers, with the latter giving you 2GB of data per month to play with. There are other limits too: you can only connect a maximum of one device, and are limited to five server locations (including the US and a Canada VPN) rather than the 50+ locations paying subscribers get. On the plus side, however, this provider won’t throttle the connection speed of free users, and Hide.me further promises that it keeps no logs and stores no user data, so won’t pass on any data to third-parties in order to try and make a profit (simply because it doesn’t have any data to pass on). There are no adverts here, either.
You get native software for Windows PC and Mac, Android and iOS, with the clients being smartly designed, plus there’s 24/7 technical support (which is in place even for free users). Performance was impressive in our testing, too. Overall, then, this is a more-than-solid free offering which tries to maintain your privacy, without too many restrictions.
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