How Much Does PureVPN Cost?

PureVPN, ironically, isn’t purely just a VPN. Over the years, it has started offering other cybersecurity products that include a password manager and a secure personal cloud. We have nothing against that. In fact, we love it. Like PureVPN, our top-pick VPN from Nord offers bundled services with those cybersecurity additions too.

If anything, though, those additions can make a VPN service’s pricing more complicated. Instead of just one subscription for all VPN features, PureVPN currently offers three. And each of those subscriptions are available for monthly, yearly, and two-year billing. But don’t worry, because that’s why we’re here. We’ve tested PureVPN and we’re here to expand on how its pricing works. We’ll also talk about other related things like PureVPN’s bug bounty program (and how you can get free access from it) and other ways to save.

Contract costs

Subscriptions

Let’s first go over the options provided by PureVPN – Standard, Plus, and Max.

Standard is the VPN-only plan. It offers nothing else besides full access to the VPN service. The Plus plan throws in the password manager and secure personal cloud to the mix. And lastly, the Max plan includes the Personal Privacy Manager that looks at data breaches and data broker sites for potential personal information leaks. The Surfshark subscription called Surfshark One+ offers a similar feature. Here’s a simpler way to look at it:

With that out of the way, let’s look at each plan’s pricing. All three plans are available in one-month, one-year, and two-year subscriptions.

Standard

The Standard plan, being a VPN-only plan, is the cheapest of the three. You can get it for as low as $2.03 per month, counting the four free months that come with the two-year subscription.

The one-year and two-year plans are a good deal, considering that similar VPNs like NordVPN cost more. NordVPN’s pricing starts at $81.36 ($3.39 per month) for the two-year Standard (VPN-only) plan.

Plus

PureVPN’s Plus plan offers the VPN, password manager, and secure cloud storage. It’s similar to NordVPN’s Plus plan (mid-level plan), but costs slightly less. Here’s how much PureVPN charges:

Max

Lastly, the Max plan offers the additional Personal Privacy Manager that checks for potential personal information leaks. We recommend it if you have no plans of getting identity monitoring from an identity protection service, because it can at least alert you to online identity theft.

Extras

Some people may want to get the same IP address every time, port forwarding, or DDoS protection. If that’s the case, you can add on these services. However, note that they’ll only work on Windows, Android, and iOS devices or routers, and some of the add-ons only work on a portion of PureVPN’s server locations.

What do these services entail exactly?

• Dedicated IP: A dedicated IP address means that only you will use the IP address that PureVPN assigned you. Typically, PureVPN has users share IP addresses, which makes them less easy to trace. We prefer shared IP addresses, actually, and ideally, the IP addresses are also dynamic, meaning we get a new one every time we connect. However, if you need a fixed IP address to access confidential work files, for example, PureVPN’s dedicated IP addresses will do the trick.
• Port forwarding: Imagine data heading straight to your router, firewall, or proxy server. With port forwarding, PureVPN will redirect this data to a different port or IP address to provide an extra layer of digital security.
• DDoS protection: DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attacks is when hackers try to send a bunch of traffic to a web page to disrupt its service. Using malware or botnets, hackers may use your computer or phone to perform DDoS attacks. PureVPN’s DDoS Protection add-on can provide protection against that.

Business

Remote working has its advantages, one of them being a 30-second commute to your home office. However, with almost 40 percent of Americans working remotely from a personal computer, digital security risks abound, especially for those that handle personal business or customer information, according to our study on remote work digital security.

And shockingly, only 24 percent of Americans use VPNs, which means that over 75 percent of Americans working remotely aren’t protecting their web traffic or IP addresses. If you want to protect your business, PureVPN has options.

As you can see, the monthly cost per user is either $5 or $8.45, depending on if you pay annually or monthly. If you want more security and a server for your team only, that’s a flat rate starting at $399. These prices are as reasonable as the personal prices, and slightly less confusing.

Deals and Discounts

There are a couple of ways to save on PureVPN; one of them is signing up for two whole years. However, depending on the season, there are more deals available.2

Student Discounts

Students can get 15 percent off of subscriptions from PureVPN from Student Beans. We’re not students so we can’t see the coupon code, but if you log into Student Beans, you can copy and paste it before you purchase PureVPN for some savings. As with most VPNs, though, expect the discount to be good only for the longest subscription available, namely, the two-year plan.

General Discounts

Every now and then, PureVPN provides limited-time deals, particularly around the holidays.

Also, look out for a special five-year plan deal with a monthly rate of $1.49. That rate is not available all the time, so if you’re on the lookout for a VPN you can use long-term, it’s a great deal. That is, if you believe PureVPN is the right option for you.

Holiday and Special Discounts

Throughout the year, PureVPN offers a slew of different discounts, so if you’re looking to save, just wait until the next holiday. Here are the deals we’ve seen throughout the years:

• Special Anniversary deal (May)
• Halloween deal (October)
• Click Frenzy deal (October to November)
• Black Friday deal (November)
• Cyber Monday deal (November)
• Christmas deal (December)
• New Year’s deal (December to January)

Bug Bounty Program

There is one way to actually make money from PureVPN, but only if you’re well-versed in information technology and quality assurance. In a partnership with BugCrowd,2 a network of over 90,000 white hat or ethical hackers, if you find a bug or vulnerability within PureVPN and report it to the program, you can get anywhere from $50 to $1,500. Yes, you read that right!

Our Favorite Features

Of course, pricing is all relative; even a monthly price under a dollar wouldn’t be worth it for an unsafe VPN. But we think PureVPN is worth its pricing, and here’s why:

• No surveillance: With a headquarters in Hong Kong, PureVPN won’t hand the government over any of our data (or at least, governments can’t force it, legally).
• No data logging: PureVPN only kept our basic information like our names, email addresses, and payment information, along with the total bandwidth we consumed while connected. However, PureVPN didn’t log our IP addresses, browsing activity, DNS requests, or timestamps.
• Kill switch: When we accidentally spilled orange juice on our keyboard, somehow killing our VPN, our web browsers closed, too, protecting our web activity. Think of a kill switch like burning a house down in order to hide evidence of a crime (which by the way, we don’t recommend, although it’s a useful metaphor).

• Split tunneling: Business-related users will appreciate the fact that they’ll be able to access their private office network from the public network at the coffee shop they spend eight hours a day at.
• Netflix access: After the day is done, you can keep PureVPN on to watch Netflix.
• Server count: With over 6,500 servers and counting, PureVPN has one of the most expansive fleet of servers among the VPNs we’ve tested. Not only that, but its servers are spread across the globe in 140 physical and virtual locations.

• AES-256: PureVPN encrypted our web traffic and IP addresses using AES-256, which is what the military and banks use, so you know it’s secure.
• Fair prices: Especially if you sign up for two years, PureVPN can cost as little as $2.04 a month, or less if you take advantage of the student discount.
• Money-back guarantee: Not in love with PureVPN? Cancel within 31 days of purchase to receive a full refund, no matter what subscription you signed up for.

How To Cancel

To cancel your VPN client subscription from PureVPN:

• Go to https://my.purevpn.com/refundrequest.
• Fill out the cancellation form.
• Click Submit.

Again, if this is within 31 days of your original purchase, you’ll get a full refund; otherwise, you’ll just stop your subscription from renewing automatically. Having said that, you probably won’t want to cancel PureVPN. Read our PureVPN review to learn why.

How To Upgrade

If you want to upgrade to a longer-term length to lock in savings, or downgrade if you won’t need your VPN for as long as you originally thought, changing your subscription is as easy as asking PureVPN’s support staff over live chat. Alternatively, you can email PureVPN at help@purevpn.com; it’s the same process if you accidentally canceled your subscription and want to undo the cancellation.

Payment Methods

Strangely, we could only pay with PayPal or credit cards with the personal plans, but the business plans opened up a slew of payment options.

We wish PureVPN would open up all its payment methods to all subscriptions, but this isn’t a dealbreaker by any means.

Compatibility

But wait! Does PureVPN work with the device you want to protect? Check out compatible devices as well as browser extensions below.

Devices

• Android
• Android TV
• Boxee box
• Firestick TV
• Fire TV Stick
• iOS
• Kodi
• Linux
• Mac
• Microsoft Surface
• Now TV Box
• PlayStation
• Raspberry Pi
• Roku
• Routers
• Windows
• Xbox

Browsers

• Chrome
• Firefox

Recap

Despite its somewhat confusing pricing and auto-renewal rates, PureVPN is a good choice for its Netflix access, speed, split tunneling, privacy policy, and logging policy. However, if you want a VPN with phone support, we’d recommend either HideMyAss or Norton Secure VPN; to learn more, read our HMA review as well as our Norton Secure VPN review.