We publish a free VPN ourselves, so this is not the argument you might expect. It is an explanation of what free actually funds, including in our own case, so you can judge any free VPN on the right terms.
Running a VPN is not free for the provider
Every megabyte a VPN carries costs the provider money. Servers must be rented in each region, and bandwidth is metered almost everywhere. A VPN is unusual among free apps in that a heavy user genuinely costs more than a light one, every single month, forever.
So the question is never whether a free VPN is being funded. It is how.
The four ways free gets funded
1. Advertising
The app shows ads and the ad revenue pays for the bandwidth. This is the honest end of the range, and it is how our own Android app is funded. The trade is visible: you see ads, and the ad network sees some data about your device in order to serve them.
2. Selling your bandwidth
Some free VPNs turn your device into an exit node for other people’s traffic, and sell that capacity. This one deserves genuine alarm. It means traffic that is not yours leaves the internet from your connection and your IP address. If someone uses that capacity for something illegal, it points at you.
3. Selling browsing data
A VPN sees every destination you connect to. A provider that logs and sells that has monetised the single thing you installed it to protect. Several large free VPNs have been caught doing exactly this.
4. It is a loss-leader for a paid tier
The free version is deliberately limited so that some users upgrade. Usually benign, and usually why free tiers cap data or speed.
What to actually check
- Who publishes it? A named company in a jurisdiction you can look up is worth more than a slick app from an anonymous developer account.
- Does the privacy policy say what is logged? Not whether it uses the phrase “no logs”, which is marketing, but whether it states specifically what is and is not recorded.
- What does the store listing declare? Both app stores require disclosure of data collection. Read that panel rather than the marketing page.
- Does it explain how it is funded? A provider that cannot answer this is answering it.
- What permissions does it ask for? A VPN needs the VPN permission. It does not need your contacts.
Being straight about our own apps
Ours are funded two different ways, and we would rather state it plainly than let you discover it after installing:
- Android is free and carries ads, with optional in-app purchases. The ads pay for the bandwidth.
- iOS is a single payment of $5.99 with no ads and no subscription. You pay once, and that is what funds it.
The servers, the regions and the encryption are identical. The only difference is which of those two arrangements you prefer.
The short version
Free is not automatically bad, and paid is not automatically trustworthy. What matters is whether the funding model is disclosed and whether it conflicts with the reason you installed a VPN. Advertising does not conflict much. Selling your bandwidth or your browsing history conflicts completely.