Best VPN Free Trials in 2024

1. NordVPN - Best Android Free Trial

SecurityScore:

9.7 /10

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How We Review

Product Specs

Multihop	Yes
Camouflage Mode	Yes
Kill switch	Yes
Split Tunneling	Yes
Netflix	Yes
Torrenting	Yes

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Free Trial Terms

NordVPN topped our list because it has a seven-day free trial for Android on top of its 30-day money-back guarantee for other platforms. We went with the seven-day free trial. It was easy to claim. We downloaded the NordVPN Android app2 and signed up for a subscription in-app. The free trial came complimentary; even the Google Play receipt says we wouldn’t be charged until the seven days are up. It also said that even if we cancel midway though the trial, we’d still continue to have access for the rest of the week. We actually canceled the trial just minutes after we subscribed, and indeed, it still lasted for seven days.

We should mention that the 30-day money-back guarantee only works if you bought NordVPN from the website. It also won’t apply if you’ve previously subscribed to NordVPN.

After-Trial Costs

Had we let the free trial run out without canceling, we would have been automatically subscribed to the two-year plan. That’s the thing about in-app free trials: They are completely free, but the auto-renewal is usually for the longest existing subscription. For NordVPN, that’s two years for $102.33, or about $4.26 per month. Among the VPNs on this list, that’s the highest monthly rate for a two-year subscription, but we’d say it’s worth it given NordVPN’s performance in the trial, as we’ll discuss below.

>>Learn About: How Much VPNs Cost

Cancellation Process

The cancellation process depends on how you signed up for the trial. If you signed up via Google Play, just go to the Google Play app, tap on your profile photo, and select Payments & Subscriptions. You’ll see NordVPN there. Select it and tap Cancel Subscription at the bottom of the page.

On the other hand, if you got your risk-free trial from NordVPN’s website, you’ll have to cancel by chatting with live support. Just note that they might pressure you into keeping your subscription. In our case, they offered discounted prices and one complimentary appointment with GotYourBack if we kept our account.3

NordVPN is a top-notch VPN service, and it has proven that once again in our most recent trial run.

Let’s start with its performance. We know from our tests of VPN speeds that NordVPN is by no means sluggish. Since we’ve upgraded our internet plan since our last VPN speed tests, we decided to give NordVPN another go and it didn’t disappoint. Connected to a server in Australia, it notched an average download speed of 222 Mbps on our 250 Mbps internet. That’s less than a 12-percent decrease. Of the five VPN free trials on this list, NordVPN recorded the fastest download speeds, followed by Surfshark (218 Mbps on average).

We were also expecting a solid performance in terms of security, and once again, NordVPN delivered. NordVPN is the best VPN for Android because of its privacy features. It’s one of the very few VPNs that offer Multihop on Android (just like Surfshark), but even on its default settings, it’s plenty secure. It uses 256-bit AES encryption and after testing it for IP address leaks, NordVPN came back negative.

We didn’t just test the VPN on Android, though. We used our NordVPN free trial account to log in to the Windows and iOS apps, and it worked! NordVPN promises up to seven connections per account – not plenty, but just enough – and we got to test that by simultaneously connecting one Android phone, two Windows laptops, three iPhones, and one iPad. We tried to connect one more laptop but seven devices really was the limit.

>> Further Reading: Top Free VPNs for iPhones

2. CyberGhost - Longest Free Trial

SecurityScore:

8.9 /10

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How We Review

Product Specs

Multihop	Yes
Camouflage Mode	No
Kill switch	Yes
Split Tunneling	Yes
Netflix	Yes
Torrenting	Yes

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Free Trial Terms

Risk-free trials are common in the VPN industry. We see 30-day trials from industry giants like ExpressVPN to smaller companies like Ivacy. What sets CyberGhost apart is the length of the trial. You could get up to 45 days if you sign up for a multi-month or multiyear CyberGhost subscription. If you sign up for a monthly subscription, however, you get a 14-day money-back guarantee. Either way, that’s plenty of time to test out the service. We got the monthly plan and still got to fully test CyberGhost within the 14-day refund period.

After-Trial Costs

We paid $12.99 for the one-month CyberGhost subscription, but when we went to cancel our account and request a refund, CyberGhost’s support team offered us a deal that was hard to resist. They offered us a two-year subscription with three months free for $56.97. That’s roughly equivalent to $2.11 per month. Did we take the bait? No, we did not, but we would’ve if we were genuinely looking for a VPN to use long term. That is an excellent deal for a VPN, and it’s only a few cents more than the $1.99 per month offer from UltraVPN, the VPN with the best pricing on this list.

Cancellation Process

The cancellation process with CyberGhost went smoothly. We signed in to our online dashboard, navigated our way to the help page, and then submitted a support ticket stating our intent to cancel and request a refund. Seconds later, a member of the support staff named Mark entered the chat. Before granting our refund request, however, they offered to troubleshoot any issues or give us a better price (the after-trial price above) to make us stay. We declined politely and no other marketing attempts were made after that.

So how did CyberGhost perform? Quite impressively. It wasn’t the most feature-rich VPN we tested, but it did deliver all its promised features. For example, it says on its website that it has a “large server fleet,” and indeed, we saw about a hundred server locations in the server list of the CyberGhost Windows app. The majority of the servers were in Europe and Asia, but there were also a considerable number of servers in North and South America, Africa, and the Middle East.

Speaking of locations, we tried using the VPN to stream Netflix and change our Netflix region on our Windows laptop. We connected to a server in the United Kingdom and streamed (ironically!) the U.S. version of “The Office,” which is no longer available on Netflix U.S. We were able to access the entire U.K. catalog too, which goes to show that CyberGhost does its job of changing a PC’s location and IP address quite well.

CyberGhost wasn’t just for entertainment, though. Its encryption and tunneling proved formidable as well. As one of the best VPNs for torrenting, we were able to share files in the office over a P2P network using a torrent client without fear of ISP throttling, thanks to CyberGhost. It hid our P2P traffic and our IP address from our internet provider, making sure we didn’t get penalized for using so much bandwidth.

» Did You Know: Best Free Torrenting VPNs

What is ISP throttling? ISP throttling is when your internet service provider (ISP) reduces your internet speed considerably to discourage heavy bandwidth usage. ISPs often do this to those who download a lot, such as those who use torrenting.

>> Learn More: How to use a VPN for torrenting

3. Surfshark - Easiest to Cancel

SecurityScore:

9.5 /10

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How We Review

Product Specs

Multi-hop	Yes
Camouflage Mode	Yes
Kill switch	Yes
Split Tunneling	Yes
Netflix	Yes
Torrenting	Yes

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Free Trial Terms

Surfshark’s money-back guarantee is only 30 days, but it’s quite unique because you can claim a refund more than once according to Surfshark’s terms of service.1 Other VPNs, like CyberGhost for example, allow refunds only once per account to protect against abuse. After using the money-back guarantee, it no longer applies the next time you sign up for a subscription. With Surfshark, you can claim a refund up to twice as long as the period between each cancellation exceeds six months.

We last tested Surfshark in November of last year, after which, we claimed and got a refund. Since that was over six months ago, we signed up for a new Surfshark plan, tested the VPN, and requested a refund after two weeks. And sure enough, Surfshark granted our request.

After-Trial Costs

Surfshark’s after-trial offer wasn’t as good as CyberGhost, but considering that Surfshark is better than CyberGhost in terms of features, we were glad that it was willing to offer a discount at all. The offer is one month free for the $59.76 two-year subscription, with an average monthly cost of $2.39 per month. It’s a bit pricier than CyberGhost, but Surfshark is still one of the most affordable VPNs around.

Cancellation Process

We really liked how Surfshark handles cancellations. It was the easiest VPN free trial to cancel. Although we had to use the live chat support feature, we didn’t need to speak with a live agent at all. The chatbot handled everything. First, it asked whether we were just canceling auto-renewal or requesting a refund. After choosing the latter, it asked us to provide a few details about our subscription, like which platform we used to buy it, when we bought it, and so on. And after that, the refund was issued – no questions asked, and without any marketing attempts! It took us less than two minutes.

>>Read More: The Best VPN Service for The Netherlands

Our time with the Surfshark trial proved fruitful. It gave us a chance to test out its upgraded features that weren’t available last time we tested it, such as Dynamic MultiHop.

When we reviewed Surfshark last year, it had a MultiHop feature that bounced our traffic off of two VPN servers for extra privacy and encryption. It worked well, but the problem was, there were only limited server pairings available and we could not freely choose servers to use for the Multihop. For example, when we wanted a U.K. IP address and use Multihop at the same time, Surfshark couldn’t provide it because none of its server pairings end up in the U.K.

Surfshark upgraded the MultiHop feature to Dynamic MultiHop, which now allows users to choose the first and second servers to use. The first server (aka entry location) encrypted our traffic once, while the second server (aka exit location) encrypted it again and then changed our IP address to its location. We could, for example, choose a U.S. server as the entry location and a U.K. server as our exit location. With total autonomy over which servers to use, Surfshark’s Multihop is now more robust and flexible than ever.

While it’s not Surfshark’s main feature, the Dynamic MultiHop proved one thing to us: Surfshark is always evolving.

4. Private Internet Access VPN - Best iOS Free Trial

SecurityScore:

9.4 /10

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How We Review

Product Specs

Multihop	Yes
Camouflage Mode	No
Kill switch	Yes
Split Tunneling	Yes
Netflix	Yes
Torrenting	Yes

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Free Trial Terms

Just like NordVPN, Private Internet Access was free for one week. This time, we signed up using the Private Internet Access iOS app.4 The same terms as the Google Play free trial applied – we could cancel anytime, but if we didn’t, we would have been on the hook for the longest subscription available, which was two years.

If you sign up for a subscription on Private Internet Access’ website, however, you’ll get a 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans, including the monthly plan. As a reminder, CyberGhost offers its multi-month plans with a 45-day guarantee but offers its monthly plan with only a 14-day leeway. So in a way, Private Internet Access offers a longer guarantee on monthly plans than our top pick.

After-Trial Costs

We forewent the 30-day money-back guarantee in favor of the iOS free trial, and according to it, if we didn’t cancel within seven days, we’d be on the hook for the $79 three-year plan. That’s one of the better after-trial prices we’ve seen, averaging only $2.19 per month compared to UltraVPN’s $1.99 and CyberGhost’s $2.11 lowest average monthly rates.

That said, we did notice that Private Internet Access’ website was offering a deal at the time for 40 months for $79 (essentially, three years plus four months free). That deal didn’t apply to in-app purchases, unfortunately, so we guess that’s kind of the tradeoff for using the completely free seven-day trial instead of the pay-first risk-free trial.

Cancellation Process

When it was time to cancel, we simply went to our iPhone’s subscriptions page within the App Store and canceled the trial. We retained access to Private Internet Access for seven days even though we canceled on the third day.

>> Read More: How to set up a VPN on any device

In testing Private Internet Access, we saw a VPN that is perfectly suitable for everyday use. It offers fast download speeds – it averaged 204 Mbps on our 250 Mbps network – although the upload speed could be improved.

Private Internet Access also offers user-friendly apps for iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. We liked the iOS app in particular because of how customizable it was. For example, of the 20-something VPNs we tested for this review, Private Internet Access was the only one that let us change the VPN’s encryption level. NordVPN, Surfshark, CyberGhost, and UltraVPN all used 256-bit AES for all VPN connections. With PIA, we were able to lower the standard to 128-bit AES if we wanted a secure but slightly faster connection; for example, to be able to stream Netflix without lag while on mobile data.

With its customizable and user-friendly smartphone apps, we really think that Private Internet Access is worth a try.

>> Learn About: Best VPNs for Windows

5. UltraVPN - Best After-Trial Pricing

SecurityScore:

9.2 /10

How We Review

Product Specs

Multi-hop	No
Camouflage Mode	No
Kill switch	Yes
Split Tunneling	Yes
Netflix	Yes
Torrenting	Yes

Free Trial Terms

UltraVPN offers a risk-free 30-day trial, and it was the cheapest one we could find (as low as $1.99 monthly). The only caveat is that it doesn’t offer monthly plans, so you’d have to sign up either for a one-year or two-year deal. If you cancel within 30 days, they’ll give you your money back. Just keep in mind that you have to cancel at least 24 hours before the 30 days are up; it says so in the terms of use.5 Other VPNs with a risk-free trial, like Surfshark and CyberGhost, allow cancellations and refund requests up to the last minute.

After-Trial Costs

After canceling, we received an email from UltraVPN offering us a two-year subscription for only $1.99 per month or a one-year subscription for $4.99 per month. If you do the math, the one-year plan actually comes out costlier ($59.88 versus $47.76), so we recommend the two-year plan if you choose to keep your subscription.

Cancellation Process

We actually ran into some issues trying to request a refund from UltraVPN. The process is to contact UltraVPN’s support, cancel the subscription, and then request a refund, but as mentioned earlier, you’d have to cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends. The problem is that UltraVPN doesn’t have live chat or phone support, so we had to submit a request ticket with a 24- to 48-hour turnaround time. By the time the support team got back to us, it was already past the 30-day trial period.

Initially, the support staff member didn’t want to grant our refund request, but after explaining the circumstances and showing proof that we submitted the ticket ahead of the 30 days, UltraVPN eventually refunded our subscription fee.

All things considered, we think UltraVPN is a good-value VPN, especially if you consider the extras included in every subscription.

First, there’s a Dark Web Scan feature. After entering required personally identifiable information like our names and email addresses, it scanned the dark web for potential data breaches. That’s one way to protect yourself against identity theft, especially if you don’t have a subscription to an identity theft protection service.

Second, UltraVPN gives complimentary access to PassWatch, a third-party password management tool. PassWatch encrypts passwords inside a vault, making it easy to store passwords securely and enter them conveniently when needed.

As a VPN, though, UltraVPN wasn’t the strongest performer, but it was still more than adequate for privacy and security. It encrypts traffic using 256-bit AES encryption and uses the Catapult Hydra tunneling protocol, a speedy protocol we saw in action in our Hotspot Shield review. Although UltraVPN lacks advanced features – it doesn’t have Multihop like NordVPN and Surfshark and doesn’t block malicious websites and ads like Private Internet Access’ MACE feature – it is a secure VPN to use.

>>Further Reading: What are the best VPN protocols?