Free VPN

Which free VPNs still work, what each one limits, and what it costs you. Measured results for Proton, Windscribe, hide.me and WARP, plus why they fail in China.

• Free VPNs that still work in 2026, and their real costI installed fourteen free VPNs over six months. Proton, Windscribe, hide.me, TunnelBear and WARP — what you get, what you give up, and which ones I deleted within a fortnight.2026-08-26
• Do free VPNs work in China? I tested eight of themProton, Windscribe, hide.me, TunnelBear, WARP and three app-store specials, tried from a residential line in mainland China. Zero connected. Here is why, and what people there actually use.2026-08-24
• Using ChatGPT over a free VPN: why it half-worksAI tools stress a connection differently from browsing. Why free nodes fail at login, throw Access denied, and cut out mid-answer — plus a three-step test for whether your line is good enough.2026-08-28
• How free VPNs make money — four answers, and a checklistServers and bandwidth cost real money, so "unlimited and free" has to be paid for somehow. The four business models behind free VPNs, and four questions that tell you which one you are looking at.2026-08-20
• Free VPN vs paid: same day, same line, seven testsOne free subscription and one paid subscription, benchmarked on the same machine over the same connection on the same day. Latency, bandwidth, packet loss, peak hours, streaming, AI tools, uptime. All numbers included.2026-08-25