🌹Best Free VPN Providers To Use 2022🌹

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Today we are going to look at the five best free vpn providers this way if you're in China, Russia or Turkey you'll still be able to browse the net for free.

 

 To come up with this list i installed just about every single free vpn provider out there and some are definitely better than others.

 

First we'll look at what even is a vpn, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages and if there are some definite drawbacks then we'll look at who some of the best free providers are. All right let's check this out so first off what even is vpn? Vpn stands for virtual private network and at a very simple level when you use a vpn, your internet service provider so let's say a Comcast or Verizon, MTN or Vodafone, they no longer know what websites you're visiting.

 

 Also the websites that you visit they now only know the location of the vpn server they can no longer see what your actual city and country is that you're visiting from.

 

Okay but why well there are three main benefits to using a vpn and first off it may give you access to additional entertainment content.

 Here just as an example you can see how much content is available in various Netflix markets so here you see in Slovakia you get over 7 000 movies and tv shows compared to the us where you get under 6 000. So if you could fake your location to connect through Slovakia you can watch more movies and tv shows.

 

 Secondly, you can also get around local censorship just as an example if you happen to live in China you don't have access to YouTube, the New York Times or even Facebook messenger but if you connect to a vpn the government only knows that you're connecting to a vpn and you can now use all of those different services.

 Thirdly, you also get some security and privacy benefits. Your internet service provider no longer knows what websites you're visiting but doesn't the vpn know what websites you're visiting?

 

Most vpns claim that they don't keep any logs however this could be changing just as an example in India, the government is now mandating that vpn services keep logs so depending on your market this may change. It sounds like there are some good benefits out there.

 

 Any downsides to using a vpn? Yeah there are a few first off you have to install an app on your computer and that's going to consume some system resources. Also because you've now introduced an extra step every single time you say head to a website it's going to slow things down there's going to be a little bit more latency. 

Your upload and download speeds won't be quite as fast now. That we know what a vpn is and also what some of the benefits are let's take a look at some of the free options.

 

 At number one we have the opera web browser.

DOWNLOAD Opera browser with free vpn

 This is a chromium-based browser just like google chrome or Microsoft edge and it has a vpn built directly into it and it's entirely free to use. Now funny enough opera is now owned by a consortium of Chinese investors, a country where people don't have internet freedom but yet they made a vpn for their browser.

 

 Once you finish installing opera you'll click on the settings icon in the top right hand corner. When you scroll down a little bit you'll see a button that allows you to enable vpn in settings.

 

  This opens up a prompt warning us that this may affect your connection speed. Here you'll see a toggle to either enable or disable the vpn once you enable it you can now type in a website address and this will use the vpn.

 

 Right up here in the address field you'll see an icon that says vpn and it'll be blue indicating that it's currently active if you click on this you can confirm that it is active. You can also see how much data has been transferred through the vpn and down at the very bottom you can also choose your vpn server location.

 

 In the top right hand corner you can click on the settings gear and this will once again bring you back to the vpn settings. Opera also offers a pro version that gives you access to even more servers.

 

 Now you might be thinking how they could possibly offer this for free there is a cost involved in first off making a browser and then also offering free vpn.

 

 Well most browsers make money off search engine agreements so whenever people launch browsers there's a default search engine set and search engine companies pay a significant amount of money for that traffic.

 

So by adding this feature into opera it makes a browser more attractive so you get more people using it and the more people who use it the more money they can make off these search engine agreements.

 

 Interestingly some other browsers are also looking at adding free vpn for example Microsoft recently posted a support article that shows you how to turn on vpn within the edge browser. It's not available yet but when it is they're going to give you one gigabyte of data per month.

 

 Now overall having it built into your web browser is a pretty nice option since that's where you tend to spend most of your time online but once again it requires that you change your default browser so if you're already using opera or you're already using edge this may be a good option but if you're not there are some other options that may be better.

 

 And number two we have the app syphon and this was originally developed in the citizen lab at the University of Toronto.

DOWLOAD Psyphon free vpn

 Its main goal is to help you get around internet censorship on the website.

 Click on get siphon and you can install it on pretty much any major platform.

 Download an exe file when you click on it it'll simply run it and it doesn't install anything on your computer so it's very lightweight.

 

Once you launch the app it'll automatically connect to one of their servers you'll also see a pop-up browser window with ads on it so this is one of the ways that they monetize their traffic but once you close that out you'll no longer see any ads.

 

At number three we have one of my favourite free vpn providers. It's proton vpn. 

DOWNLOAD Proton free vpn

This is owned by a Switzerland-based company. Proton technologies ag you might have heard of them before.

 It's the same company behind protonmail a very popular end-to-end encrypted email service. On their website you'll see the free plan alongside several premium paid plans so why do they offer a free plan and how do they make money on it.

 

 Well it's kind of like a sales funnel their belief is that some percentage of users who sign up for a free plan will then go on and purchase a premium plan.

 

Once you sign up over on the left hand side you can click on downloads and you can download their vpn on pretty much all of the major platforms. Once you finish downloading you'll see an interface that you can choose the server that you want to connect to.

 Also you'll see that there's quite a bit of functionality here but when you click on a lot of it you'll be reminded that there are premium options available.

 

Now out of all of the different free vpn services this is one of my favourite they're one of the most generous where you get unlimited data but once again you'll be reminded that there are premium features that you could be taking advantage of.

 

 At number four we have provado vpn. 

DOWNLOAD Provado free vpn

I guess a play on private this is another Switzerland based company. I guess Switzerland just has really solid privacy laws that attracts companies like this.

 Bravado vpn is a relatively young company they started in 2019 but they have a very nice free offering on their website. You can click on get bravado and here this will show you all the different plans similar to proton vpn.

 

 The hope here is that some number of people who choose the free plan will end up upgrading and go with the premium plans.

 

Once you sign up you can then download the vpn on any of the major platforms just like with proton and some of the other options that we have looked at once you launch the app you can connect to the vpn and here you can choose what server you want to connect to for free you get 12 different servers.

 Now all in all this is a pretty good option you get 10 gigabytes of data per month so compared to proton.

 

 You don't get quite as much data transfer and you also can only connect up to 12 servers so it's a little bit more limited but what i do like though is for those 10 gigabytes you get the full speed of the premium service and this brings us

 To number five. This is the last free vpn service that we're looking at today and it's hot spot shield. 

Add Hot spot shield extension to your chrome browser

This is owned by a boston-based company called aura when you land on their home page up on the top navigation bar click on pricing and here you'll see the free plan alongside their premium plans.

 

 And here too the hope is that some users will decide to upgrade to premium.  Click on try now once you finish downloading and installing you'll see an interface that looks like this now with this app.

 

 This is probably my least favourite of the bunch you only get 500 megabytes of data per day which works out to 15 gigabytes per month but I don't like the daily restriction.

 

You also only get speeds up to 2 megabits per second and especially if you're trying to stream content that's just not very much and worst of all you can only connect to one server so it tends to be the server that's closest to you so if you're say trying to watch Netflix content in another market you won't be able to do that but all in all if you just want to browse the web and get some of those privacy benefits this is an okay option.

 

 All right well that was a quick look at some of my favourite free vpn providers let me know if I missed any good free providers down below.

Also i'd love to hear why are you using a vpn, what is the main motivating factor to read more articles like this.