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Best Free VPNs 2022: Our Experts Show You How to Avoid Shady Services and Get Premium Protection

Care enough about your privacy to avoid the malware, ad tracking and slow connections that come with free VPN options.

A free and well-tested virtual private network for your computer and other devices is hard to find. Even the best free VPNs usually limit the amount of data you can use, and may not be as fast as premium services. But when you’re browsing on a budget and want to avoid shady free services that could be loaded with malware, there are a few solid VPN providers that stand up to our rigorous testing.

The idea of using a 100% free VPN might be tempting, especially if you’re on a tight budget and don’t want to cough up the cash for a monthly or yearly subscription fee. But as frequent security issues prove, using even the best free VPN comes with risks. That’s why it’s safer to make use of the free trials or introductory versions available from our list of trusted VPN providers.

Yes, you read that right: If you absolutely must use a free VPN service, your safest bet is to test-drive a free trial or take advantage of a money-back guarantee on a trusted paid VPN service. When choosing a VPN service, quality and your online safety should always come before cost. It’s not worth it to settle for an unsafe free VPN just to save a few bucks every month. With that in mind, all of our top recommended VPN services offer either a free version of the paid service or a 30-day assessment period. Here are the best contenders we’ve found:

  • NordVPN offers a risk-free 30-day trial period. It’s one of the best free VPN services to use for 30 days.
  • ExpressVPN is our current Editors’ Choice VPN. While it doesn’t have a standard trial period, it does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. It also currently has an offer for three months free with a one-year plan, or 15 months for the price of 12. However, there’s an exception: If you sign up for ExpressVPN by downloading the app on an Android or iOS device, you’ll be offered a seven-day free trial. But this only works in certain countries, including the US.
  • If ExpressVPN isn’t in your budget, check out Surfshark’s $2.30 a month offer on its two-year plan.
  • ProtonVPN offers a limited free version of its service (one device only, limited download speeds) as a way of giving people a free test drive of the product. It’s the one narrow exception to the «avoid free VPNs» rule (see below).

Free VPN FAQs

5 reasons why you should never use a free VPN

1. Free VPNs simply aren’t as safe

Free VPNs can be very dangerous. Why? Because to maintain the hardware and expertise needed for large networks and secure users, VPN services have expensive bills to pay. As a VPN customer, you either pay for a premium VPN service with your dollars or you pay for free services with your data. If you aren’t ordering at the table, you’re on the menu.

Some 86% of free iOS and Android VPN apps — accounting for millions of installs — have unacceptable privacy policies, ranging from a simple lack of transparency to explicitly sharing user data with Chinese authorities, according to two independent 2018 investigations into free VPN apps from Top10VPN. Another 64% of free VPN app offerings had no web presence outside of their app store pages, and only 17% responded to customer support emails.

In June 2019, Apple reportedly brought the hammer down on apps that share user data with third parties. But 80% of the top 20 free VPN apps in Apple’s App Store appear to be breaking those rules, according to a June update on the Top10VPN investigation.

Also in June last year, 77% of apps were flagged as potentially unsafe in the Top10VPN VPN Ownership Investigation — and 90% of those flagged as potentially unsafe in the Free VPN Risk Index — still posed a risk.

«Google Play downloads of apps we flagged as potentially unsafe have soared to 214 million in total, rocketing by 85% in six months,» the report reads. «Monthly installs from the App Store held steady at around 3.8 million, which represents a relative increase as this total was generated by 20% fewer apps than at the start of the year as a number of apps are no longer available.»

On Android, 214 million downloads represent a lot of user login data, culled from unwitting volunteers. And what’s one of the most profitable things one can do with large swaths of user login data?

2. You can catch malware

Let’s get this out of the way right now: 38% of free Android VPNs contain malware — despite the security features on offer, a CSIRO study found. And yes, many of those free VPNs were highly rated apps with millions of downloads. If you’re a free user, your odds of catching a nasty bug are greater than 1 in 3.

So ask yourself which costs less: a secure VPN service for about $100 a year, or hiring an identity theft recovery firm after some chump steals your bank account login and Social Security number?

But it couldn’t happen to you, right? Wrong. Mobile ransomware attacks are skyrocketing. Symantec detected more than 18 million mobile malware instances in 2018 alone, constituting a 54% year-over-year increase in variants. And in 2019, Kaspersky noted a 60% spike in password-stealing Trojans.

But malware isn’t the only way to make money if you’re running a free VPN service. There’s an even easier way.

3. The ad-valanche

Aggressive advertising practices from a free plan can go beyond getting hit with a few annoying pop-ups and quickly veer into dangerous territory. Some VPNs sneak ad-serving trackers through the loopholes in your browser’s media-reading features, which then stay on your digital trail like a prison warden in a B-grade remake of Escape from Alcatraz.

HotSpot Shield VPN earned some painful notoriety for such allegations in 2017, when it was hit with a Federal Trade Commission complaint (PDF) for over-the-top privacy violations in serving ads. Carnegie Mellon University researchers found the company not only had a baked-in backdoor used to secretly sell data to third-party advertising networks, but it also employed five different tracking libraries and actually redirected user traffic to secret servers.

When the story broke, HotSpot parent company AnchorFree denied the researchers’ findings in an email to Ars Technica: «We never redirect our users’ traffic to any third-party resources instead of the websites they intended to visit. The free version of our Hotspot Shield solution openly and clearly states that it is funded by ads, however, we intercept no traffic with neither the free nor the premium version of our solutions.»

AnchorFree has since offered annual transparency reports, although their value is still up to the reader. More recently, however, HotSpot Shield was among just a handful of VPN apps found to respect users’ refusal to permit ad-tracking. In a November 2021 study from Top10VPN, just 15% of free VPN apps respected iOS users’ choices when they declined voluntary ad-tracking. The rest of the free VPN apps tested by Top10VPN simply ignored users’ Do Not Track requests.

Even if possible credit card fraud isn’t a concern, you don’t need pop-ups and ad-lag weighing you down when you’ve already got to deal with another major problem with free VPNs.

4. Buffering… buffering… buffering

One of the top reasons people get a VPN is to access their favorite subscription services or streaming site — Hulu, HBO, Netflix — when they travel to countries where those companies block access based on your location. But what’s the point in accessing the geo-blocked video content you’ve paid for if the free VPN service you’re using is so slow you can’t watch it, despite a good internet connection?

Some free VPNs have been known to sell your bandwidth, potentially putting you on the legal hook for whatever they do with it. The most famous case of this was Hola VPN, which was caught in 2015 quietly stealing users’ bandwidth and selling it, mercenary-style, to whatever group wanted to deploy the user base as a botnet.

Back then, Hola CEO Ofer Vilenski admitted they’d been had by a «spammer» but contended in a lengthy defense that this harvesting of bandwidth was typical for this type of technology.

«We assumed that by stating that Hola is a [peer-to-peer] network, it was clear that people were sharing their bandwidth with the community network in return for their free service,» he wrote.

If being pressed into service as part of a botnet isn’t enough to slow you down, free VPN services also usually pay for fewer VPN server options. That means your traffic is generally bouncing around longer between distant, overcrowded servers, or even waiting behind the traffic of paid users.

To top it off, subscription streaming sites are savvy to those who try to sneak into their video services for free. These services routinely block large numbers of IP addresses they’ve identified as belonging to turnstile-jumping freeloaders. Free VPNs can’t afford to invest in a long list of fresh IP addresses for users the way a paid VPN service can.

That means you may not even be able to log into a streaming service you’ve paid for if your free VPN is using a stale batch of IPs. Good luck getting HBO Max to load over that VPN connection.

5. Paid options get better all the time

The good news is that there are a lot of solid VPNs on the market that offer a range of features, depending on your needs and budget. You can browse our ratings and reviews to find the right VPN software for you. If you’re looking for something mobile-specific, we’ve rounded up our favorite mobile VPNs for 2022.

If you’d like a primer before deciding which service to drop the cash on, we have a VPN buyer’s guide to help you get a handle on the basics of VPNs and what to look for when choosing a VPN service.

More VPN advice

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Technologies

See Ya, Siri: Why Apple Might Make Third-Party Voice Assistants Available in Europe

When given the choice, iPhone owners might opt for alternatives given the delayed rollout of Siri’s AI revamp.

Apple is reportedly working on changes to the iPhone’s operating system that will make it possible to choose an alternative voice assistant to Siri.

The ability to switch from Siri to another voice assistant, potentially powered by third-party companies including OpenAI, Google or Meta, could be a reality in the near future, but only for iPhone owners in Europe, Bloomberg reports. Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Apple is preparing the changes to Siri in anticipation of the European Union demanding the company allow European users a choice of voice assistants, according to Bloomberg. It would be similar to the policy shift Apple has already made in allowing rival app stores onto the iPhone, which was sparked by Europe’s Digital Markets Act.

Apple has faced many regulatory hurdles with the EU in recent years, largely in the form of challenges to its proprietary technology and walled-garden ecosystem, which provide Apple device owners with high levels of consistency, privacy and security, but often make it difficult for smaller companies to compete.

These regulatory challenges often leave Apple with little choice but to make significant changes to the way its tech works. Some of these changes — such as switching from Lightning connectors to the universal standard of USB-C — affect Apple device owners globally. Others affect only those who live within the EU.

Siri’s AI troubles

Siri has been available on iPhones since 2011 and has spawned many copycats. But the advent of generative AI over the last few years has brought about a number of chatbots, most notably OpenAI’s ChatGPT, that rival and surpass Siri’s capabilities, to the point where Apple is now seen as lagging behind competitors.

Apple announced an AI revamp of Siri last year at WWDC, its June developer conference, but the company delayed its rollout. Apple Intelligence-powered Siri is still nowhere to be seen, and may not even make an appearance at this year’s WWDC, per Bloomberg.

In light of this, it may be possible that European iPhone owners, when given the option, choose an alternative voice assistant. Unless Apple’s hand is forced, there’s currently no indication that people elsewhere will be given the same choice.

But Thomas Husson, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, doesn’t believe the AI overhaul of Siri is Apple’s main challenge.

«Is Siri’s revamp well overdue? Yes. Does Apple give the impression that they have an AI issue? Yes. It is too late for them? I don’t think so,» he said. Instead, Husson said what’s really at stake for the company is its ability to invent a user interface adapted to the AI era and create an ecosystem with companies and developers that will allow for new experiences within existing apps.

«Meeting the EU regulations and especially the DMA makes things more complex,» he added, but that’s the case for any digital platform operating in Europe.

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Technologies

I’ve Been Tracking Tariff Price Impacts Every Day: Here’s the Latest News

CNET’s tariff impact tracker is keeping tabs on price moves for several popular products, and while things seem steady, problems could be coming this summer.

President Donald Trump’s tariff policies could be leading to a rough summer for a lot of US consumers, as Walmart, the largest grocery store chain in the country, has become the latest company, and perhaps the most impactful, to warn of impending price hikes due to the administration’s import taxes. The company said that these increases are «inevitable» due to the circumstances.

«We will do our best to keep our prices as low as possible,» CEO Doug McMillon said during an earnings call for the country’s largest grocery chain. «But given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren’t able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins.»

This prompted a heated response from the president, who said in a post to Truth Social that the chain should eat the costs of the tariffs instead of passing them onto consumers, a tactic that’s not likely to gain much ground with most businesses, even Goliaths like Walmart. The administration previously lashed out at Amazon over reports that they were considering a plan to show consumers what portion of their purchase prices were caused by tariffs, calling the idea a «hostile and political act.» The Trump White House has by and large been extremely combative over the notion that companies might admit that the president’s tariffs have caused price inflations, which as I’ve explained in the past on CNET, is absolutely the case.

In this article, I’ve been tracking the daily effect of Trump’s tariffs on the prices of 11 popular products you might want or need to buy, whether it be a new phone, laptop or your daily coffee. So far, we’ve seen notable price hikes for the flagship Xbox game console, while everything else has either remained steady aside from occasional fluctuations that might not be tariff-related. That sort of consistency is far from certain, however, especially with new reports emerging that Apple might be looking to make iPhones more expensive this year.

Below, you can check out a chart with the average price of the 11 included items over the course of 2025. This will help give you a sense of the overall price changes and fluctuations going on. Further down, you’ll be able to check out charts for each individual product being tracked.

The recent tariff agreement with China, much-hyped by the White House, did significantly cut tariff rates against the US’s biggest trading partner. The new 30% rate is only temporary, however, and still historically high. It just looks more reasonable next to the ludicrous 145% rate that was previously in place. As those negotiations move along, companies continue to warn of impending price hikes in order to deal with the new tariffs, including Sony, which could potentially mean a price hike for its ever-popular PlayStation 5 consoles.

We’ll be updating this article regularly as prices change. It’s all in the name of helping you make sense of things, so be sure to check back every so often. For more, check out CNET’s guide to whether you should wait to make big purchases or buy them now and get expert tips about how to prepare for a recession.

Methodology

We’re checking prices daily and will update the article and the relevant charts right away to reflect any changes. The following charts show a single bullet point for each month, with the most recent one labeled «Now» and showing the current price. For the past months, we’ve gone with what was the most common price for each item in the given month. 

In most cases, the price stats used in these graphs were pulled from Amazon using the historical price tracker tool Keepa. For the iPhones, the prices come from Apple’s official materials and are based on the 128-gigabyte base model of the latest offering for each year: the iPhone 14, iPhone 15 and iPhone 16. For the Xbox Series X, the prices were sourced from Best Buy using the tool PriceTracker. If any of these products happen to be on sale at a given time, we’ll be sure to let you know and explain how those price drops differ from longer-term pricing trends that tariffs can cause.

The 11 products we’re tracking

Mostly what we’re tracking in this article are electronic devices and digital items that CNET covers in depth, like iPhones and affordable 4K TVs — along with a typical bag of coffee, a more humble product that isn’t produced in the US to any significant degree. 

The products featured were chosen for a few reasons: Some of them are popular and/or affordable representatives for major consumer tech categories, like smartphones, TVs and game consoles. Others are meant to represent things that consumers might buy more frequently, like printer ink or coffee beans. Some products were chosen over others because they are likely more susceptible to tariffs. Some of these products have been reviewed by CNET or have been featured in some of our best lists.

Below, we’ll get into more about each individual product.

iPhone 16

The iPhone is the most popular smartphone brand in the US, so this was a clear priority for price tracking. The iPhone has also emerged as a major focal point for conversations about tariffs, given its popularity and its susceptibility to import taxes because of its overseas production, largely in China. Trump has reportedly been fixated on the idea that the iPhone can and should be manufactured in the US, an idea that experts have dismissed as a fantasy. Estimates have also suggested that a US-made iPhone would cost as much as $3,500.

Apple has made several moves this year to protect its prices in the US as much as possible, like flying in bulk shipments of product ahead of the tariffs taking effect and working to move production for the American market from China to India, where tariff rates are less severe. This latter move provoked a response from Trump, given his noted fixation on the iPhone, saying on Thursday that he «had a little problem» with Tim Cook over the move, claiming without evidence that the Apple CEO pledged to bring more manufacturing to the US. Cook and others close to the company for years say that the supply chains for its products are too complex to move manufacturing entirely to the US.

Duracell AA batteries

A lot of the tech products in your home might boast a rechargeable energy source but individual batteries are still an everyday essential and I can tell you from experience that as soon as you forget about them, you’ll be needing to restock. The Duracell AAs we’re tracking are some of the bestselling batteries on Amazon.

Samsung DU7200 TV

Alongside smartphones, televisions are some of the most popular tech products out there, even if they’re an infrequent purchase. This particular product is a popular entry-level 4K TV and was CNET’s pick for best overall budget TV for 2025. Unlike a lot of tech products that have key supply lines in China, Samsung is a South Korean company, so it might have some measure of tariff resistance. In recent days, this model has fluctuated from $400, where its been for most of the year so far, and $470, where it sits today. These fluctuations don’t seem to be influenced by tariffs, at least for the time being.

Xbox Series X

Video game software and hardware are a market segment expected to be hit hard by the Trump tariffs. Microsoft’s Xbox is the first console brand to see price hikes — the company cited «market conditions» along with the rising cost of development. Most notably, this included an increase in the price of the flagship Xbox Series X, up from $500 to $600. Numerous Xbox accessories were also affected, and the company also said that «certain» games will eventually see a price hike from $70 to $80.

Initially, we were tracking the price of the much more popular Nintendo Switch as a representative of the gaming market. Nintendo has not yet hiked the price of its handheld-console hybrid and stressed that the $450 price tag of the upcoming Switch 2 has not yet been inflated because of tariffs. Sony, meanwhile, has so far only increased prices on its PlayStation hardware in markets outside the US.

AirPods Pro 2

The latest iteration of Apple’s wildly popular true-wireless earbuds are here to represent the headphone market. Much to the chagrin of the audiophiles out there, a quick look at sales charts on Amazon shows you just how much the brand dominates all headphone sales. The AirPods Pro 2 have hovered steadily around $200 on Amazon in 2025, but were on sale for $169 the first few days of May before jumping back up.

HP 962 CMY printer ink

This HP printer ink includes cyan, magenta and yellow all in one product and recently saw its price jump from around $72 — where it stayed for most of 2025 — to $80, which is around its highest price over the last five years. We will be keeping tabs to see if this is a long-term change or a brief uptick.

This product replaced Overture PLA Filament for 3D printers in this piece, but we’re still tracking that item.

Anker 10,000-mAh, 30-watt power bank

Anker’s accessories are perennially popular in the tech space and the company has already announced that some of its products will get more expensive as a direct result of tariffs. This specific product has also been featured in some of CNET’s lists of the best portable chargers. While the price has remained steady throughout the year, it is currently on sale for $16 on Amazon, but only for Prime members.

Bose TV speaker

Soundbars have become important purchases, given the often iffy quality of the speakers built into TVs. While not the biggest or the best offering in the space, the Bose TV Speaker is one of the more affordable soundbar options out there, especially hailing from a brand as popular as Bose.

Oral-B Pro 1000 electric toothbrush

They might be a lot more expensive than their traditional counterparts, but electric toothbrushes remain a popular choice for consumers because of how well they get the job done. I know my dentist won’t let up on how much I need one. This particular Oral-B offering was CNET’s overall choice for the best electric toothbrush for 2025.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook

Lenovo is notable among the big laptop manufacturers for being a Chinese company making its products especially susceptible to Trump’s tariffs.

Starbucks Ground Coffee (28-ounce bag)

Coffee is included in this tracker because of its ubiquity —I’m certainly drinking too much of it these days —and because it’s uniquely susceptible to Trump’s tariff agenda. Famously, coffee beans can only be grown within a certain distance from Earth’s equator, a tropical span largely outside the US and known as the «Coffee Belt.» 

Hawaii is the only part of the US that can produce coffee beans, with data from USAFacts showing that 11.5 million pounds were harvested there in the 2022-23 season — little more than a drop in the mug, as the US consumed 282 times that amount of coffee during that period. Making matters worse, Hawaiian coffee production has declined in the past few years.

All that to say: Americans get almost all of their coffee from overseas, making it one of the most likely products to see price hikes from tariffs.

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Technologies

Preorder a Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge With Free Storage Upgrade and $50 Amazon Gift Card

This new ultra-thin phone can be yours with 512GB of storage for the price of the 256GB model.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is the latest addition to the existing Galaxy S25 lineup, and its main claim to fame is its impossibly thin design. It’s a solid addition, and it’ll officially go on sale on May 30. You can preorder it right now, and if you do it soon, you can pick up the new Galaxy S25 Edge with a free double-storage upgrade and a $50 Amazon gift card thrown in for good measure. The result is a Samsung Galaxy S25 deal that saves you a total of $170 off your order.

This deal is available across three different colors so make sure to pick the one you like best before ordering. You’ll get the 512GB model rather than the entry-level 256GB model with that gift card included all for $1,100.

The first thing you’ll notice about the Galaxy S25 Edge is its thickness. Or rather, it’s thinness. It comes in at just 5.8mm thick at its edge which is less than the 7.2mm Galaxy S25 and the Galaxy S25 Plus at 7.3mm. Despite the design change compared to the rest of the lineup, this model maintains the same IP68 dust and water resistance using a Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 display paired with a Gorilla Glass Victus 2 rear panel.

Hey, did you know? CNET Deals texts are free, easy and save you money.

Up front, you’ll find a 6.7-inch display with a 120Hz refresh rate while the familiar 200-megapixel main camera is joined by a 12-megapixel ultrawide shooter. You’ll also find a 12-megapixel selfie camera hiding towards the top of the display. Other features of note include an under-display fingerprint sensor for biometric authentication, 12GB of RAM, and the fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.

SMARTPHONE DEALS OF THE WEEK

Deals are selected by the CNET Group commerce team, and may be unrelated to this article.

Why this deal matters

Super-thin phones are set to be a real trend for 2025, with Apple expected to launch the iPhone 17 Air later this year. But with this deal, you can get in on the act right now, all while saving some cash. And if you’re in the Android ecosystem, then this is the thin phone to check out, and soon.

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