VPNs are all the rage. Experts left and right constantly sing their praises, claiming that VPNs protect you from all manners of evil. But if you're thinking of going the free route, you need to reconsider.

But what if you don't want to pay for a VPN subscription? While there are plenty of free VPNs that you can use to protect your privacy, these might come with risks—and those may not be worth taking, even if you're paying nothing for it.

Why You Should Be Using a VPN

For the uninitiated, there are three main benefits to using a VPN. Here's why VPNs have exploded in popularity over the past few years.

  • Rerouting: A VPN can mask your internet connection. If you're in Canada and connect to a VPN server located in America, websites will perceive you as an American user. This can be useful for accessing region-locked content, such as on YouTube or Netflix.
  • Privacy: One side benefit to masking your connection is that the VPN server can act as a "final stop" when anyone tries to retrace your traffic. If the VPN host doesn't log your activity, then there's no way to trace your traffic back to you.
  • Security: A proper VPN service will encrypt your traffic before it leaves your computer and decrypt it once it arrives at the VPN server, which means it's protected even as it travels through the router and your ISP. This is particularly useful on public Wi-Fi hotspots as hackers sometimes sniff public transmissions to intercept and steal digital identities.

8 Reasons to Never Use a Free VPN

It's one thing to recognize the benefits of a VPN; it's another to place your trust in them with all your heart. There are many VPN-related myths that just aren't true and VPNs have a handful of risks and flaws that you must be aware of, especially for VPN services offered free of charge.

1. Unreliable Service

person activating vpn on phone and laptop

As with most things, free options are rarely as performant or polished as paid options, and that's absolutely true when it comes to VPNs.

We have to remember that VPNs are a service. They require upkeep, maintenance, and constant attention in case something goes wrong. And since free services don't make money, they usually can't afford around-the-clock support. If there's an outage, it could take days or weeks to fix.

2. Restricted Functionality

Most of the time, VPN developers offer a free version to convince you to use the paid version. However, free VPNs often lack some of the best features such as split tunneling, a kill switch, or a dedicated IP address.

So, on a free VPN version, you might miss the best VPN features.

3. Data, Speed, and Usage Caps

Woman in White Shirt Showing Frustration

Bandwidth may be cheap now compared to years ago, but it still costs money—especially if you're providing a free service that's in high demand. Not only do you need enough bandwidth to serve thousands of simultaneous connections, but you also need servers that can handle the processing load.

Which is why most free VPNs have limits. One might give you a set amount of data for the month. Another might restrict the speed of your connection. And another might have a login queue that limits the number of users on the VPN, meaning you have to wait for a slot to free up before you can log on and start using it yourself. These are all inconvenient, to say the least.

4. Restricted Regional Options

One of the big reasons to use a VPN is to reroute your traffic through another country, so you can access region-blocked content. Or maybe there's a routing issue and you want to bypass it by hopping through a different VPN server. Either way, server locations are important.

But each additional server location costs more money, and free VPN services don't have much of a budget. Most will likely offer at least one American server and one European server, but beyond that, it's down to chance—and they may have login queues!

Also, there are server locations that you must avoid if you care about your privacy.

5. No Guarantee of Privacy

Graphic of a threat actor hooking a folder named personal data from a laptop
Image Credit: Net Vector/Shutterstock

This is the main dealbreaker for most people. Think about how a VPN works: your traffic is routed through the VPN's servers. You have to trust that your VPN host is doing right by your data, i.e. that they aren't intercepting, peeking, logging, or even altering your packets.

How much trust can you put in a free service? You aren't paying them a dime, so it'd be naive to think they have your best interests at heart. Any free VPN that promises privacy and security cannot be trusted, even if they offer encryption!

The truth is, free VPNs don’t come with the best encryption protocols. Most of them use not-so-efficient protocols such as PPTP, which might leave you vulnerable to cyberattacks. If you want better encryption protocols, you have no choice but to pay for a VPN service.

6. Malicious Intent

man in a hoodie using a laptop

Let's say you find a free VPN service that doesn't suffer from any of the above. It's reliable, it's fast, it's unlimited, it's available in dozens of countries, and it can somehow guarantee logless privacy. At this point, you have to ask yourself: why are they offering this free of charge?

If you can't come up with a good answer, then you're probably the one being exploited. When looking for a free VPN that you could use, take the time to analyze it. Poor security features or data logging are just a couple of the signs of a scam VPN that you should be aware of.

Free services are rarely offered out of true altruism, most of all VPNs. Don't fall for it.

7. Ads

Because VPNs need a lot of money to keep running, there has to be a way for VPNs to make money with their free version. As a result, free VPN users might get swamped by ads that are unique to their proxy server session. And because the VPN needs users to click those ads, the ads get traffic priority.

Not only does this feel like an invasion of your privacy, but it will further slow down your overall internet speed.

8. Higher Data Consumption

In general, VPNs need more data for the encryption and decryption protocols. Free VPNs don’t use the most performant encryption protocols, so they use more data. In addition to this, running ads will use even more of your data.

Let's be clear about one thing: a paid VPN can be just as bad as a free VPN. Just because you pay money doesn't mean the service will be good, that they'll delete your activity logs, or that they'll keep your best interests at heart.

But they are more likely to be trustworthy. They want to keep your business, after all, and the best way to do that is to maintain a great reputation and deliver on their promises.