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.
this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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Privacy
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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.
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
You are spreading disinformation.
PIA has stood up in court multiple times previously: https://torrentfreak.com/private-internet-access-no-logging-claims-proven-true-again-in-court-180606/.
So unless you have a reliable source, you are wrong.
I wouldn't say that pia is the worst in term of "privacy" but you will agree with me that it's not a recommended VPN when talking about his category. Maybe it's just a really bad misconception and I'm sorry. But I would not really recommend this VPN if any.
(But you shouldn't justify yourself by using a 2018 article, and even more when talking about "no logging") Indeed, I'm wrong.
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.
Mullvad. It does not not really get cheaper if you want something reliable.
Mullvad is fairly expensive though. If you want cheaper slightly cheaper go with a 1 or 2 year subscription of Proton VPN.
Proton has a free package with unlimited bandwidth. It doesn't offer as many countries or advanced features but it works just fine.
AirVPN has a pretty good reputation AKAIK, and their 2-year plans are cheaper than Mullvad and Proton.
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
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 $10 this year though.
Buy the deal and have them merge it into your account. It’s what I did.
Note that PIA has extremely limited options if you want to be connectable on private trackers
Their port forwarding works for me, but you're right. It takes some knowledge to make it work.
The real issue is that they only allow port forwarding on certain endpoints (and when I was still using them, none of the endpoints that supported port forwarding were in the US which is a headache)
Mullvad. Supports IPv6, €5/month no matter how long you pay for or from what country.
i'd say Mullvad is the better choice, Surfshark if you want better speeds (from my personal experience, also depending on location)
Have a look at https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/
Most VPN software is free. OpenVPN is FOSS and a popular product.
What are you trying to achieve?
Excuse me for digressing, but I think it's no coincidence that the OP wanted a "cheap" VPN, not a "free" one. If the OP wanted something like privacy. If so, then a free VPN is a bad choice.
Honestly, I don’t believe that free VPNs will protect your privacy. If you just need something like unblocking websites, you can use a free VPN. If you care about privacy, do the opposite—pay for a VPN.
It's no use. "VPN" means gateway/MITM service, just like "crypto" means digital tulip mania.
Today's episode brought to you by our friends CoinSkank™ and EchelonVPN.
Been using Air/Eddie for a while, it's been solid... Not the best interface perhaps, but a wide selection of servers globally..
Tor. Or use gnunet's 'vpn' function with friends in other countries.
Tailscale.
Agreed. I have a VPS exit node for 4$/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.
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.
If you have it at home, you have to only pay for the bandwidth you're using.
for what purpose? if it's just bypassing your ISP, a free VPS + wireguard and you're golden.
A car with a thumbstick, I guess.