The 2 Best Free VPNs - Spring 2025

Hotspot Shield Free is the best free virtual private network we've tested. You can easily download and begin using it without creating an account, ensuring there's no personal data tied to your IP address from installation or use. This VPN doesn't have a cap on data usage and has decent speeds with the Wireguard protocol on desktop, although they cap it at approximately 100Mbps. Since it doesn't require an account, it doesn't track how many devices you're using it on, so there's effectively no limit on how many devices you connect simultaneously. Unfortunately, this VPN lacks the transparency and obvious commitment to digital rights of our recommended paid VPNs, and its corporate ownership structure is unclear. However, if these concerns aren't important to you, it's an effective and practical free option.

As with nearly all VPNs we've tested—free or paid—the kill switch doesn't function properly. This means it leaks some unencrypted data if you restart your computer or if the VPN client crashes. It also only has servers in a few countries. Check out our pick below if you need a VPN with more destinations.

If you need access to servers in more countries than our top pick and don't mind a data limit, Windscribe Free is the better choice. You can create an account with an email address for 10GB of data per month, or you can sign up with a username only for 2GB of data per month. This VPN is transparent about its private, independent ownership and straightforward privacy policy and has a generally positive reputation online. Like Hotspot Shield Free, there's no limit on how many devices you can have connected simultaneously. Additionally, it has many extra features normally reserved for paid VPNs, like malware & ad blocking, wide protocol support, a Linux application, split tunneling, and a high degree of granular setting control. It has fairly slow speeds, so downloading large files takes some time, depending on where you're located and which server you're connected to. Still, it has good latency and acceptable upload speeds, so it's suitable for everyday browsing and internet use.

If you need access to even more countries, Tunnelbear Free is another alternative. It allows you to connect to servers in 47 countries, the same as the paid service. That said, it has a very low monthly data allowance of 2GB, so you'll run out of data quickly if you use it a lot.