It’s so difficult with so many options and all these bullshit “discounts”, coupled with the fact that different VPNs charge different prices based on what country you’re connecting from…
What is the cheapest functional VPN you’ve come across? Bonus points if it supports IPv6.
Imho, ‘cheapest’ and ‘useful’ are rarely a great combo for a VPN.
I mho, Mullvad is the best available, at 5€/month.
Close second, I would place Proton VPN.Most of the others are just, well, I don’t care much about their existence.
Popular VPNs like Mullvad are banned in some authoritorian countries
That’s a good sign
Mullvad accepts cash in envelopes as payment. That’s a good sign they care about privacy.
Imho, ‘cheapest’ and ‘useful’ are rarely a great combo for a VPN.
Yeah I never understood why people have this mindset.
Like looking for security, but then buying the cheapest option?
People have limited funds. It’s as simple as that.
Personnaly I would recommend pia for VPN torrenting, it’s not private but it’s good for this use case
Why do you say PIA isn’t private?
I’m not really an expert but it not known to be private, it’s almost like when using any mainstream VPNs
Mullvad. It does not not really get cheaper if you want something reliable.
Been using Air/Eddie for a while, it’s been solid… Not the best interface perhaps, but a wide selection of servers globally…
Another vote for Mullvad, here. It’s arguably one of the best VPNs out there and at 5 bucks a month, you really can’t go wrong. If you want cheaper than that, you have bigger problems than a VPN.
Mullvad no longer has port forwarding.
I think Proton has a free tier. It would be the most legit free one. Otherwise the best VPNs would be Proton, Mullvad, and IVPN with their no log policies, anonymous account creation and payment methods, audit history, and legal track records
Tailscale.
Surprised this isn’t at the top. Perhaps I’m too used to r/selfhosted
I’m surprised too. Since it’s a mesh VPN, you can set up your exit node anywhere you like.
I assume you need to pay for exit node hosting + traffic, right? Which would be comparable to the price of a classic VPN.
Agreed. I have a VPS exit node for 4$/month, took an hour to set up, never once come within a mile of hitting my bandwidth cap on it.
The clients run on everything.
i’d say Mullvad is the better choice, Surfshark if you want better speeds (from my personal experience, also depending on location)
Have a look at https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/
Proton has a free package with unlimited bandwidth. It doesn’t offer as many countries or advanced features but it works just fine.
PIA is $40/yr and if you’re just dodging hollywood lawyers, it is perfect for that. I can easily saturate my 1Gbps connection. It’s a well known service so some companies block their IPs and you’ll get captchas but I think that’s unavoidable.
If you have state actors interested in your activities, keep shopping.
I think they just jumped about $10 a year, I was just renewed for $50 a few weeks ago.
Maybe it’s a cyber Monday deal, they’re advertising 3.33/mo
Son of a… Yeah probably new users or something. I’m ok with losing $10 this year though.
Most VPN software is free. OpenVPN is FOSS and a popular product.
What are you trying to achieve?
It’s no use. “VPN” means gateway/MITM service, just like “crypto” means digital tulip mania.
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Tor. Or use gnunet’s ‘vpn’ function with friends in other countries.