To protect our privacy and security on the Internet, the most recommended method is to always use a VPN. Currently there are a large number of paid VPN providers, which, for a small monthly price, allow us to connect and have unlimited bandwidth. However, there are also several free VPNs where we don’t have to shell out any money. Today we are going to show you which are the best free VPNs that exist.
Although we will focus on the free VPN options later, it should be noted that what costs nothing is not always the best. Using a paid VPN is usually a more interesting option in almost any aspect since it will provide us with things such as a speed guarantee, a technical service, the possibility of choosing dedicated servers, and a long etcetera. It is true that it involves a cost, but with some offers like NordVPN it will barely cost us about 3 euros per month.
What should we take into account when choosing a free VPN?
When VPN servers are free, it is very possible that the speed of our connection is very low, and even that the latency of our connection is high, because these services are normally collapsed, since many people use them, and being free, even more so.
It is essential that a VPN is fast and has low latency, so that the user experience when using it is perfect. Another very important detail is knowing who is behind a VPN server, because all traffic will be tunnelled through it, and the VPN server could capture all our data and use it. Today, the vast majority of connections we make on the Internet travel through HTTPS, so it would be much more difficult for them to spy on our communications, although they could see our DNS queries and which websites we visit, but not the content.
Another important aspect is to know how to connect to said VPN server, since the payment services provide us with the necessary software for this, and even an app for our smartphone.
Therefore, before connecting to a free VPN we must take into account several factors:
- Connection speed
- Connection latency
- Ease of connecting to the VPN
- Who is behind a free VPN service?
We have tested a large number of free VPNs, and we are going to recommend the best ones according to our experience.
The best free VPNs you can connect to to protect your privacy
Cloudflare WARP
WARP is a Cloudflare project to provide free VPN connections to any user, in order to protect their privacy and security on the network. Some of its main features are that it speeds up wireless connections to the maximum, so it is ideal to use it if we have an unstable connection through 3G / 4G networks with our smartphone. This VPN uses the new WireGuard VPN using the UDP transport layer protocol, therefore it is fast, very fast. With this VPN, not only DNS queries will be encrypted, but all traffic. A very important detail is that it is currently only available for mobile operating systems, that is, for Android and iOS. Therefore, if you want to use it on a computer, you will not be able at the moment, although Cloudflare has indicated that they are working on a desktop client.
The speed of this VPN in its free version (WARP + is paid) is about 50Mbps download and 250Mbps upload, with a latency of about 8ms additional to our Internet connection. Therefore, the performance of this free VPN service is excellent, and it is also endorsed by Cloudflare which is one of the “greats” on the Internet. The VPN WARP + version of Cloudflare is paid, however, you can share a Cloudflare affiliate link to your contacts to proceed with their installation, and they will give you 1GB for each user who downloads the app and uses it.
We recommend you visit our complete analysis of WARP and WARP + from Cloudflare, where you will find all the features in detail and our tests of real performance in various scenarios.
Opera VPN
The Opera web browser incorporates a VPN service built into it, this is ideal for use on our desktop computer. Actually this Opera VPN as they have called it, is a proxy, that is, it is not a VPN that routes all the traffic from our computer through the VPN server, but only the web traffic that we carry out with Opera’s own browser, you will be anonymized behind your free VPN.
The speed of this VPN, or, rather, the speed of this SSL / TLS Proxy is around 300Mbps symmetric, with an additional latency to your connection of around 60ms. The performance of this service is also really good, we will have higher download and upload speeds than WARP, but in return, we will have higher connection latency. We must remember
that we can use this on our desktop computer, and not only on the smartphone as is currently the case with WARP.
We recommend you visit our complete Opera VPN review, where you will find all the features in detail and our actual performance tests in various scenarios.
FreeOpenVPN: Free OpenVPN Servers
If you want to have access to several free OpenVPN servers, you can see and download the configuration files for OpenVPN on the official website of FreeOpenVPN.org. What we have to do is enter the web, look for an OpenVPN server to which we want to connect, currently we find servers from the following countries:
- USA
- England
- Russia
- Germany
- Holland
- Japan
- South Korea
- Thailand
To connect we simply have to download the OpenVPN software for the different operating systems, be it Windows, Linux Mac, and even for Android or iOS. The most important thing is to download the configuration file of this website, and use the access credentials that they provide us completely free of charge.
The speed of these free VPN servers is not as high as the previous ones, in our tests we have achieved around 30Mbps symmetric, and an increase in latency of + 60ms, however, we must take into account which server (from which country) we are we are connecting. The further away it is, the worse our Internet connection will work. If you have a router with a VPN client, you can use these services so that all traffic goes through them.
Freevpn4you: More Free OpenVPN Servers
Another website that gives us access to different OpenVPN servers for free is freevpn4you, the system is exactly the same as FreeOpenVPN, we will need to download the OpenVPN client on our computer, download the configuration files from the website, and enter the access credentials to access remotely. Depending on the server to which we connect, we will have higher or lower performance.
OpenInternetAccess (OIA)
OIA is a free VPN service, we only need to install a software called Pritunl which is free, and is compatible with Windows, Linux and MacOS operating systems. But we will also be able to use any OpenVPN client since it uses this VPN protocol. On the OIA official website we can download the configuration file, to later connect with our VPN client that we have installed on the computer or on our smartphone.
Once we have downloaded the configuration file, we will have to import it into OpenVPN or the software you are using. Finally, we will click on «Connect» to proceed with the free VPN connection with OIA.
The speed of this free VPN server is not as high as the previous ones, since the server is located in Canada, and, therefore, from Spain it is really far, and all traffic must go through there and then return to Spain if we are visiting websites hosted here. In our tests, we have used the Masmovil speed test server, and we have obtained a speed of 15Mbps download and 80Mbps upload, with a latency of about 220ms, something completely normal since we are connecting to Canada and then “back” . If you have a router with a VPN client, you can also use this service with all your computers, but the user experience will not be adequate due to the location of this server.
Other configurations that OIA allows us is to use the TCP protocol instead of UDP by default, downloading a specific configuration, and we can even use Tor VPN using OpenVPN.
Try2Catch
Finally, Try2catch is a specific service for Android and iOS, which will allow us to connect to different VPN servers spread throughout the world. The free version of this service will allow us to connect to several VPN servers around the world, including the US, Turkey, Russia and others, but you must bear in mind that, if you want to obtain the best speed and user experience, you will have to pay for said service. We will not be able to connect to all servers with the free version, but it is an interesting alternative. You can download the app directly from the official Google Play and App Store stores:
As you have seen, we have the possibility to connect to many free VPN services, we have ranked them from best to worst according to their performance. Above all, you must take into account where they are located, since the further they are geographically from your Internet connection, the higher latency we will have and surely also a lower speed.
Possible negatives of using a free VPN
Although enjoying a free VPN is a very good point, we must take into account some of the negative points we have:
- Low speed of connections. Compared to paid VPNs, these free VPNs may have speed limitations, although this will depend on the provider of the free VPN.
- High latency: it is possible that if many VPN clients connect to the same server, it is not able to support so many VPN connections and we have high connection latency.
- Security risks: we must bear in mind that the data with a VPN is encrypted and authenticated from the client to the server, but once it passes through the server, all communication is decrypted, unless we use secure protocols such as HTTPS or SSH to carry out communications. It is always recommended to have several layers of encryption to maintain our security and privacy.
- Difficulty of use: using the VPN from Cloudflare or Opera is very simple, however, using VPNs based on OpenVPN can be a somewhat more complicated task, and there could be certain users who do not know very well how to make it work.
We have to take all these negative points into account, to decide which free VPN we should choose, and if it is really reliable.
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