Without revealing too much private information about them or their situations, I have some low-income friends who would benefit from using a VPN service. The few trustworthy free VPN services are too limited for what they’re looking for, but ProtonVPN, Mullvad, and IVPN are all a bit too pricey for them. To set a specific budget, I’d say I’m looking to recommend them a VPN service that is $3.50 USD per month or less. We’re also hoping to avoid super long term plans that give you a bigger discount if you pay for 2+ years upfront. Both because they probably can’t afford a massive payment upfront, but also because I want to avoid locking them in with a provider for an extended period of time. Let’s say we’re aiming to stick to plans where you pay for 1 year or less.
My first thought was Private Internet Access (PIA). I don’t have the time to fetch all the sources, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that their clients are open source, they are audited, they use reasonable encryption (for now), and I believe their no-logs policy was proven in court multiple times. For a 1 year plan, it comes in under our budget at only $3.33/m. Would anyone have any objections to PIA or have alternative suggestions?
I’ve typically been able to find (1) AirVPN, and (2) Windscribe for under $3/mo.
In the case of AirVPN you get deeply discounted rates if you buy during there (usually 2-3 times a year) sales, especially if you buy 2 or 3 years upfront. These usually occur on their ‘birthday’ in the spring, Black Friday sale in the fall which often extends into December. I know you say you don’t want to prepay multiple years up front, but I mention it anyway since in the case of AirVPN the discount can be quite substantial (in some cases less than $2/mo).
Windscribe has what seems like a constant stream of various discounts and deals. This commonly includes $30/yr deals, and sometimes other discounts that require jumping through some hoops, finding an easter egg, or some other caveat.
The above link should clarify this as well. You’re not wrong, 1.1.1.1 is in fact a DNS resolver, but Cloudflare WARP can be accessed with the same app that allows you to access 1.1.1.1, and this is a VPN.
Kaspersky Premium with VPN is $30 a year for 10 devices.
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on a serious note, Proton VPN offers an unlimited free no-account guest mode. but note guest mode on the Android version only works from the Google Play Store variant
I personally don’t care for Proton, but PG recommends them.
and Riseup VPN is also an option, you can use it via the Bitmask app on all platforms:
as far as paid goes, I don’t think anything seriously beats the polish and technical prowess of Mullvad for the $5 a month.
depending on how close you are with your friends maybe just consider paying for 2-3 accounts and sharing them and splitting the cost so it is less?
Although Privacy Guides does not currently recommend it, I believe Windscribe provides excellent value for your money. I pay just $9 per year, which breaks down to less than $1 per month, and it allows unlimited device usage. While I primarily use Mullvad as my VPN these days, I still maintain my Windscribe subscription due to its affordability. As far as I know they don’t offer the $9 annual subscription anymore, but you can still often find it for $19 or $29 per year. They frequently run promotional deals and discount codes, and they don’t raise prices as long as you keep your subscription active.
Another vote for Windscribe. They do a ‘build-a-plan’ tier - “Starting at just $3 per month, you can get access to all nodes in any two Pro locations you want as well as Unlimited Bandwidth. You can add whichever locations you plan on using to your plan and you can even edit the plan in the middle of the month without paying any extra fees, just pay for what you use.”
I tried this for a while and then when one of their frequent deals came up I took that: $29 a year for the Pro Plan.
They also offer a free, limited node, 10 GB a month plan.
I still don’t think this qualifies as a VPN though. Even ControlD DNS can give you a different IP address and you can choose as well - doesn’t make it a VPN.
