There's no doubt that the internet is an integral part of our everyday life. However, our data and privacy on the internet are exposed to severe risks. If we want to be safe, the best solution is to use a Virtual Private Network - or VPN for short. Below we list the best free VPN services for 2018 and describe the best strategies to maximize our safety and anonymity while browsing the internet.
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What is a Virtual Private Network (VPN)
A VPN is a method that encrypts our internet connection, for anonymous browsing and data traffic on the internet. We can imagine the VPN as an invisible and secure tunnel, through which all the upload and download traffic passes.
In this way, we protect both our activity - the web pages we enter and the files we download - as well as our personal information, such as our IP address, our operating system, our browser, etc.
Through a VPN, the only one that knows our browsing activity is the company that maintains the VPN server. We should note that the best companies in the field do not keep any logs or other records.
The security of this implementation is so high that even our internet provider can't find what data is transferred over the VPN. All they may know is that we use a VPN. It is one of the best methods for secure and anonymous internet browsing.
Why choose a free VPN
The primary use for a free VPN is to hide our real IP address and use an alternative one, which the VPN provides.
The most common reason to want to change IP is if we wish to access a service that is not supported in our country.
With the right VPN, we can have a European IP, watch YouTube videos with country limitations, or access other geo-restricted services, such as the BBC iPlayer, which requires a UK IP.
At the same time, anonymous VPN navigation allows us to dodge censorship on the internet. By using a VPN, we can access websites that our employer has blocked, such as Facebook or other social media.
In countries like Germany or Japan, where downloading illegal content can result in huge fines, we can keep our activity hidden if we download via a VPN.
Of course, we do not in any way recommend the use of VPNs for illegal actions of any kind, nor do we take any responsibility for such a use.
But even for web browsing, with a VPN no website can record our IP and other personal information, such as our operating system, the browser we use, and so on.
Finally, VPNs can protect us when we connect to unlocked WiFis in public places, like in a cafeteria or an airport. In such open networks, it is rather easy for someone malicious to steal our e-mail password, our Facebook account, or other accounts.
You do not even need to be a hacker to do that; there are automated tools that will do the trick in no time.
Admittedly, this is the least possible of all other scenarios. But since it costs nothing to have secure and anonymous free VPN, there is no reason to take that risk.
Is it legal to hide our IP Address with a VPN?
In countries like China, where censorship is strict, VPN is considered a serious violation, as it bypasses rigorous state censorship on the internet.
The case is similar for Russia as well, where from November 1st, 2017, a law prohibiting the use of VPN and other technologies known as anonymous proxies has come into force.
But China and Russia are an exception to the rule. In most countries, there is no question of legitimacy regarding the use of VPNs.
However, it's important to be careful about the headquarters of each VPN. VPNs based in the US and most European countries are required to record and maintain their customer login information for a while and deliver them to the authorities if requested.
For the European Union, the legislation providing for such registration is called the EU Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC). This obliges internet providers and VPNs to maintain connection data from six months to two years.
In other countries, however, the law protects the VPN users. Especially in Romania, in 2009, the Constitutional Court voted against the obligation to keep such data.
Of course, it goes without saying that the use of a VPN in no way legitimizes unlawful actions, such as hacking.
The disadvantages of a free VPN
Those who use unlimited internet connection plans at home do not care about the amount of data they download or upload per month. Whether we download 5GB a month or 500GB, we'll pay the same subscription.
On a corporate level, however, concerning internet providers, website hosting, and VPNs, the situation is different.
The bandwidth of the lines they use to serve hundreds of thousands of subscribers has a substantial monthly cost of tens of thousands dollars.
Especially for VPNs, where every serious company must have hundreds of servers around the world, it adds significant cost to operate and maintain the system.
Therefore, the question arises: How is it possible to provide free VPN services?
The truth is, most VPN services provide free access with significant constraints. The offer is more like an incentive for users to upgrade to a paid subscription.
Several services limit the volume of data traffic. Usually, the limit is from 200MB to 1GB per month. Other services limit the speed or continuous connection time.
However, as we will see below, there are new generous services that provide us from the very beginning 5 to 10GB per month for free.
Another major drawback to a free VPN, except specific OpenVPN servers, and some of the services we'll list below, is that they forbid torrent downloads.
Therefore, if we chose a free VPN for torrenting our home cinema movies, our fun might get ruined.
Most VPNs provide a small number of servers for free use, which are usually overloaded by many users. This often results in slow speeds, with OpenVPN being the exception.
Activity record
When we use a VPN, we need to know who we trust to safeguard our valuable data and our activity. Some free VPN companies may record our every move in exchange for their free services.
This is the most significant disadvantage for a free VPN, because, as we all know, if you are not paying for it, you become the product.
Betternet is an excellent example of this tactic; it's a free VPN service that tracks everything a user may do.
And, of course, it is not the only one. Facebook's VPN service, Onavo Protect, is another good example. This service gathers data for what we do on the internet and delivers it directly to Facebook.
In general, if we are interested in entirely anonymous browsing, it is better to avoid the use of a free VPN service. Just because they have no incentive to keep our data secretly, and they are sure to sell our history of browsing.
The speed of a free VPN
If we want fast and anonymous browsing, we need to pay attention to choose a low latency server when using a free VPN.
For video streaming and downloading files, the download speed should be as high as possible.
Typically, with any VPN, there will be a 2Mbps lag as the additional server is always in a foreign country and we end up having data via Italy, Romania, Turkey, England, etc.
Also, with limited servers on the free plans, the latency in a free VPN will be higher. In a nutshell, the equations in speed are as follows:
- Low ping = Faster anonymous navigation
- High download speed = Faster downloads
Windscribe: 10GB + torrenting
- 10GB of free monthly data
- Free Server Locations: 8 countries
- Allows torrenting: Yes
- Simultaneous connection to other devices: No
- Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux
Windscribe is a very generous free VPN, which provides us with 10GB of monthly data traffic. The traffic may increase if we recommend the service to others.
To get the 10GB, the service will guide us to create a free account, and then we need to confirm our registration with the email we used.
Another advantage is that Windscribe allows torrenting at very high speeds, as we have seen in our tests.
Indeed, this excellent free VPN also has an automated function that recognizes whether we run Kodi and limits the use of our system resources.
Windscribe has a straightforward client with an active firewall. The settings are simple, and it allows automatic connection for even easier anonymous browsing.
The free client has several servers from eight countries, without requiring the paid version.
As we saw at the beginning, Windscribe is available for almost all operating systems, and it has extensions for our browser.
Advantages
- Allows torrent download
- High speeds
- Effectively hide IP without leaks
- An easy-to-use client
- It is not necessary to disconnect from a server to connect to a different one
- Automatically connect VPN to public Wi-Fi networks
- Ideal for beginners
- Includes firewall
- Support for many operating systems
- Extension for the browser
Disadvantages
- Unknown privacy policy. Promotes zero logs only in the paid version
Our rating: 9.0 / 10
ProtonVPN - No data limit
- There are no monthly data limits
- Free server locations: 3 countries
- Allows torrenting: No
- Simultaneous connection to other devices: No
- Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux
This is a free VPN that has interesting features, as it does not impose restrictions on data traffic, which means we have unlimited anonymous navigation.
However, this reflects the speed of the free version, and we will inevitably have lower speeds compared to Windscribe or a paid plan.
Also, there is no P2P support, and we can not download any torrents. ProtonVPN also restricts our access down to a single device and with to only three server locations.
The client, as we can see in the picture above, has a very modern design. The service also gives us all the capabilities of the paid version for seven days.
We can download it here for Windows, MacOS, Linux, and Android. Then we will need to register with a free account through the client, or the official website.
Advantages
- Unlimited use for free
- Many features
- Modern client
- Automatically connect the VPN to public Wi-Fi networks
- Support for many operating systems
Disadvantages
- Slower speeds
- Only three servers
- Does not allow torrent download
- Only one device
- Limited support options
- It is most likely to record the activity and collect data
Our rating: 8.0 / 10
Hotspot Shield Free - On five devices
- 500MB of data per day free of charge (about 15GB per month)
- Free Server Locations: USA
- Allows torrenting: Yes
- Simultaneous connection to other devices: Yes (five)
- Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS
This is one of the most popular VPNs, and undoubtedly one of the fastest - especially the paid version.
In addition to Windows, it is ideal for Android and iOS users, as they can use it for free on all their public Wi-Fi networks.
The service provides free VPN in Windows in two ways.
Once we download the client, if we click on the "Start 7-day trial," we will get full access to the paid service for seven days. However, we need to give our card details.
In case we don't want to give our credit card number, we need to click on the arrow as shown in the picture below.
That will take us directly to the free limited edition.
After installing the client, we will see a Hotspot Shield button at the notification area. At the same time, its easy and friendly environment will automatically emerge so we can start interacting with the service.
A significant advantage of Hotspot Shield is that it is the fastest service we've tested so far, especially about the time it takes to connect to a server.
Most of the time the connection will be up in seconds.
The free version client allows connection only to a US server. However, the Chrome extension will enable us to connect to four other countries.
Advantages
- Allows torrent download
- High speeds
- Easy client
- Automatically connect VPN to public Wi-Fi networks
- Ideal for beginners
- Support for five devices
- Free Chrome extension with ad blocking and cookies
Disadvantages
- The daily limit may seem inadequate
- The privacy policy is not the best. It has been accused of sharing and selling user data.
- Limited support options
- Many ads in the Android app
Our rating: 8.0 / 10
Speedify - 32 countries, 1000+ servers
- 5GB of free monthly data for each device and operating system independently
- Connect to other devices: Unlimited
- Free server locations: 32 countries, 1000+ servers
- Allows torrenting: Yes
- Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS
This is a relatively new service that uses sophisticated software, powerful encryption, and features that we only encounter in paid services.
Speedify differs from other free VPN services and is cited as one of the best among other popular technology websites.
It combines the bandwidth provided by all available Wi-Fi, 4G-LTE, and wired connections of a device to increase our browsing speed.
Of course, this feature is not available if we have only one internet connection. Also, many of us may not want to spend MB from a 4G internet plan if we have access in a public Wi-Fi.
But if we use mobile data regularly and we want this particular network merger, this free VPN allows us to check daily and monthly usage of mobile internet.
The free VPN is available for iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. There is currently no option for Linux.
The client is undoubtedly the most elegant among the ones we tested. In fact, in the free version, it asked if we want to download any torrents, and it suggested the best P2P server.
In our tests, we used the suggested server from the Netherlands, and the download speeds were relatively good, as we can see in the picture below.
Advantages
- Allows torrent download
- It gives free 5GB for each device
- Advanced network merge software to enhance performance
- Numerous servers and locations
- It has paid VPN features, such as Kill Switch and DNS leak protection
- Elegant client
- Good performance on Android
Disadvantages
- We do not recommend it for Windows. It needs at least two different internet connections to work correctly.
- As the limit decreases, the slower it becomes in Windows, with any server we tried.
- Unknown privacy policy because it is based in the US. It is most likely to record the activity and collect data.
- Displays frequent interruptions in web radio
- We couldn't access several sites in Windows
Our rating: 7.5 / 10
Compare speeds of free VPN services
For this test, we used a 30Mbps VDSL connection to determine how much speed we can get through the use of a free VPN service.
Here are photos of the measurements made on five different servers in each VPN.
Greece without VPN
Windscribe
ProtonVPN (the trial version)
Hotspot Shield Free
Speedify
OpenVPN GUI
OpenVPN is an open source software.
It provides an excellent client, which makes all the difference in comparison to most free VPN services. With the help of third parties, it offers better speeds and unlimited free data traffic, with no monthly limit.
The OpenVPN GUI (Graphical User Interface) enables us to build our free VPN with the gradual addition of many servers from around the globe, with the help of third-party applications.
VPN Extensions
The difference between a desktop VPN and VPN extensions is the part of our internet activity that remains protected.
When we have a VPN client, it covers any computer activity on the internet, from any other program.
However, with a VPN extension, only the specific browser is dedicated to anonymous navigation.
More importantly, in most VPN extensions that are not available in paid services, we can have anonymous browsing and bypass any geographic restrictions.
However, there is also a precarious privacy policy, and in many cases, we remain exposed.
Touch VPN
This is a VPN gained recently by AnchorFree, the company behind Hotspot Shield.
Despite its takeover and high performance, no official site certifies the capabilities of this extension.
Touch VPN stands for unlimited data traffic and providing servers from the UK and US.
For example, once we tested the English server, the BBC iPlayer, which does not work in Greece, was immediately unlocked. The same is offered with locked US streaming services.
It also has useful features to block ads, cookies, and malicious websites.
Advantages
- Simple and effective extension
- Good speeds
- Remove geographic restrictions on UK and US sites
- Block ads and suspicious sites
Disadvantages
- It is most likely to record the activity and collect data
Browsec VPN
We used Chrome to run our tests, but Browsec VPN is also available for Firefox, Opera, iOS devices.
It offers four servers in the free version: the Netherlands, USA, UK, and Singapore. We found them to be more than enough at high speeds and anonymous browsing.
We switch them by clicking on "Change," and we can turn it on and off with the relevant button at the bottom right.
Advantages
- Simple and effective extension
- Great speeds
- Available for almost all browsers
Disadvantages
- It is most likely to record the activity and collect data
ZenMate
This is a well-known VPN subscription service, and the extension does not differ much from Browsec. It varies only in the free server countries, coming from Germany, Romania, USA, and Hong Kong.
For ZenMate's anonymous browsing, we'll need to add the extension from the Chrome Store, Firefox extensions, or Opera's extensions, and then create a free account.
Advantages
- Simple and effective extension
- Available for almost all browsers
Disadvantages
- It is most likely to record the activity and collect data
Unlimited Free VPN - Hola
Hola is probably the most popular browser extension to use as a free VPN and at the same time the most dangerous.
When we use this free service, we give it the right to assign our IP to other members. It does not provide its servers, but it works as a peer-to-peer VPN.
This means that if someone does something illegal with our IP through Hola, the authorities will knock on our door.
At this time, Hola has the most positive reviews of any other relevant VPN extension in the Chrome Store.
This is because most simple users do not know the dangerous part we mentioned above. Hola itself does not make it clear.
The Best Premium VPNs for 2018
To ensure our safety and maximum security online, we will have to pay for a premium plan. Below you will find some of the best VPNs for 2018.
Note that we picked these VPNs after extensive research and testing here at PCsteps.
At the same time, most of them are also suggested by all known technology sites. Surely there will be other great VPNs, but these are our personal favorites.
NordVPN
NordVPN is one of the fastest emerging VPN services, and in 2015 increased its subscribers by 450%.
Typically, they have different types of servers depending on whether our priority is fast or secure navigation. Furthermore, they allow for both P2P and torrent downloads.
Monthly subscription starts at $5.8 and drops to $3.5 a month for a two-year plan.
Hotspot Shield
Hotspot Shield is extremely popular, as it has over 400 million downloads. It is ideal for fast and anonymous torrenting.
We already mentioned the free version and its limitations. The "Elite" version has no ads and allows for the selection of 20 countries.
The cost starts at $12.99 for one month; if we pay in advance for two years, the price falls to $2.99 per month.
CyberGhost
To CyberGhost is one of the most famous VPN services for all operating systems and according to their website, it has more than eight and a half million users.
The upgraded service offers 1779 servers from 60 countries.
PureVPN
This service has over 500 servers in 141 different countries. It does not offer a free version; if we choose the two-year package, the cost comes at $2.08 a month.
Private Internet Access VPN
The Private Internet Access VPN has won the "editor's choice" distinction on websites like PC Magazine and Tom's Hardware.
It has 3339 servers in 25 countries, about half of which are in the US.
The monthly subscription is at $6.95. However, if we pay in advance for a year, the cost falls to $3.33.
Would you use free VPN for anonymous browsing?
What is your opinion about the free VPN services? Are you interested in anonymous browsing?
If you have a problem with the installation or features on the free VPN services we listed above, feel free to leave a comment below.
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Greta! nordvpn as a premium VPN on your list. I'm using it too and can confirm that it is a high quality service with a bunch of different features like kill-switch, double encryption and p2p servers.