Free and paid VPN trade-offs

A trial is not a free tier

Three different things get sold as “free”:

1. Documented free plan. available: yes on the stored free-tier row, with a written cap. Proton Free, Windscribe Free, TunnelBear Free, hide.me Free and PrivadoVPN Free are in that class.
2. Trial or refund window. A 7-day Surfshark website trial, ExpressVPN’s 3-day mobile-device trial, PureVPN’s US$0.99 7-day trial that auto-renews, or a 30-day money-back window on a paid purchase. Formula: a trial is not a free tier. Money-back is not a free tier.
3. Unknown. The limits.free_tier key is missing. That is unknown, not “unsupported”.

Proton’s A$1.00 first-month Plus coupon on the Free card is an upsell, not the free plan. Proton VPN review. IVPN Light is a paid Lightning short tunnel, not a free plan. IVPN review.

Caps, countries and devices

ASD’s Australian Cyber Security Centre tells people connecting to public Wi-Fi to consider a VPN and to read the provider’s privacy policy because the operator can see a large amount of user data. A free-server cap does not change that. ACSC, Connecting to public Wi-Fi and hotspots (last updated 11 Apr 2023; fetched 12 Sep 2026).

Stored personal-VPN free caps used here: Proton Free is 1 device and 10 randomly selected countries that do not include Australia. Windscribe is 2 GB/month without email and 10 GB/month with a confirmed email on ten countries; Australia is Pro-only; hand check 2+8=10. TunnelBear is 2 GB/month; country selection and SplitBear became Paid-only (3 Dec 2025 blog). PrivadoVPN is 10 GB every 30 days on 1 device; the Free location list does not include Australia. hide.me’s Free API lists 7 hosts, none in Australia, while the pricing comparison prints 8 Locations — 7≠8, dual public, unresolved.

Dual public copy is unresolved

hide.me’s pricing comparison prints unlimited data on Free; homepage and Australia FAQs print 10 GB/month. That is not a resolved cap and not a ranking of the two pages. Inference: do not budget either figure as the other. hide.me review.

Support and who pays

Proton’s stored support note: live chat is for paid plans; Free users are not included. TunnelBear’s contact form requires login. Cloudflare One Free is community forums and Discord. Twingate Starter is community. Those are support limits, not a privacy grade.

Business free plans are a different product. Tailscale Personal is US$0 for up to 6 users, non-commercial — an overlay, not a public-internet exit. Twingate Starter is US$0 / 5 users. Cloudflare One Free is US$0 / 50 users. NordLayer has no free plan. A consumer VPN is not private-resource access. Business remote access.

NIST SP 800-77 Rev. 1 describes IPsec as network-layer encryption of packets. That is confidentiality on a path, not anonymity, and not a reason to treat a free exit as equivalent to a paid one. NIST SP 800-77 Rev. 1 (June 2020; fetched 12 Sep 2026).

ACSC’s October 2021 Using Virtual Private Networks publication is about organisational site-to-site and remote-access VPNs. It is not a consumer free-tier shopping list. ACSC Using VPNs (October 2021 PDF). Essential Eight still expects organisations to patch, MFA and log. Essential Eight explained.

Worked example: classify stored rows

Independent count over records already on this site. Hand checks: 5+7=12 personal (five documented free plans, seven no-free), 3+1=4 business (three free overlays / ZTNA seats, NordLayer none), 2+8=10 Windscribe GB with email, 7≠8 hide.me API Free hosts versus pricing locations. Same class on two products is not a ranking. Caps are integers, not billed totals.

Café-Wi-Fi on Free filter: personal VPN, documented free plan, documented Australian free-server exit. Unknown cannot satisfy. Dual public is not a resolved AU exit. Country selection that is Paid-only is not an AU free exit. Result on this dataset: 0 pass. An advertised Australian city on a paid grid is not data residency and is not a Free country.

Caps on documented free plans

Machine-readable formula and counts: classify.json. Method: How we test.

Decision checklist

• Separate a documented free plan from a trial, a coupon and a money-back window.
• Read the Free country list. None of the personal free plans stored here document an Australian Free exit.
• Read the device and GB cap. Proton Free is 1 device. Windscribe’s 10 GB needs a confirmed email; unsubscribing drops the account to 2 GB.
• If two official pages disagree on the cap, leave it unresolved. hide.me is 7≠8 and unlimited versus 10 GB/month.
• Read who can open a support ticket on Free. Proton live chat is paid-plan only.
• For company apps, a consumer free VPN is the wrong product. Business remote access.

Sources

• ASD’s ACSC, Connecting to public Wi-Fi and hotspots checked 2026-09-12
• ASD’s ACSC, Using Virtual Private Networks (October 2021) checked 2026-09-12
• ASD’s ACSC, Essential Eight explained checked 2026-09-12
• NIST SP 800-77 Rev. 1, Guide to IPsec VPNs checked 2026-09-12
• Proton VPN, plans (Free: 1 device, 10 countries) checked 2026-09-12
• Windscribe, use for free (2 GB / 10 GB, ten countries) checked 2026-09-12
• TunnelBear, changes to Free accounts (3 Dec 2025) checked 2026-09-12
• hide.me pricing (Free comparison card; dual public caps) checked 2026-09-12
• PrivadoVPN Free (10 GB / 30 days; no Australia on the list) checked 2026-09-12
• ExpressVPN FAQ (not free; 3-day mobile trial is not a website free tier) checked 2026-09-11
• Tailscale pricing (Personal US$0, non-commercial, 6 users) checked 2026-09-12
• Twingate pricing (Starter US$0 / 5 users) checked 2026-09-12
• Cloudflare Access pricing (Free US$0 / 50 users) checked 2026-09-12