How much does a VPN cost?

The advertised price is the answer to a different question than the one you are asking. Here is the arithmetic that matters.

The headline prices

VPN	2-year price	Money-back	Devices	Our score
PIA	$1.79/mo	30 days	Unlimited	9.3/10
PureVPN	$2.15/mo	31 days	10	8.1/10
Surfshark	$2.49/mo	30 days	Unlimited	8.8/10
CyberGhost	$1.99/mo	45 days	7	9.1/10
IPVanish	$2.49/mo	30 days	Unlimited	5.5/10
NordVPN	$3.49/mo	30 days	10	8.7/10
Proton VPN	$3.49/mo	30 days	10	8.9/10
ExpressVPN	$2.99/mo	30 days	10	8.8/10
Mullvad	$5.80/mo	14 days	5	6.7/10
Windscribe	$5.75/mo	7 days	Unlimited	5.2/10

Read as a shopping list, that table already says buy Private Internet Access — it has the lowest rate. Read with the renewal included, most rivals look worse still, because PIA is also one of the few that does not jump at renewal.

What actually happens after the first term

Almost every VPN discounts the first term heavily and then rolls onto a higher rate — usually the one-year price. It is disclosed in the terms. It is not on the banner, and it is not in most comparison tables, which is why the cheapest-VPN question has a different answer depending on how far ahead you look.

Three of the ten do not do this in a way that bites. PIA's headline plan runs 39 months and renews at that same $1.79 a month after — no jump at all. Windscribe renews at the rate it sells at too. Mullvad has no introductory rate in the first place — a flat €5 a month, forever, which is expensive against a long plan and cheap against a monthly one, and has not changed since 2009.

The three-year number

Over 36 months, paying the introductory rate for the first term and the renewal rate thereafter, the cheapest VPN we rate comes to about $77 and the dearest to about $216.

That is a difference of roughly $139 for services that, at the top of the table, do broadly the same job. It is also almost entirely a function of renewal behaviour rather than headline pricing.

Our price calculator does this for every provider at one, two and three years, and lets you compare plan lengths. It is the single most useful page on this site if cost is your deciding factor, because it is the only place the renewal is priced rather than mentioned.

Which plan length

Rolling monthly ($10–$13). Only worth it if you genuinely need a VPN for one month — a single trip, a specific project. Otherwise it costs four to six times the long-plan rate for the same service.

One year ($4–$7/mo). The middle ground. Often renews closer to the same rate, so fewer surprises, but you pay more per month than a longer plan.

Long plans ($2–$5/mo, 24 to 39 months depending on the provider). The advertised price, and usually the best value if you keep it. The commitment is real — you pay the whole term up front, and there is no partial refund if you change your mind partway through.

"Lifetime" deals. Treat with suspicion. A server network is an ongoing cost, and a one-off payment does not fund it indefinitely. The usual outcomes are that the service degrades, the definition of "lifetime" turns out to be the product's lifetime rather than yours, or the company is sold. We do not recommend any of them.

The thing that makes all of this low-risk

Every VPN here publishes a money-back guarantee — 30 days for most, 45 on CyberGhost's long plans, 31 on PureVPN's and only 14 on Mullvad's. We have not claimed any of them, so we cannot tell you how the process goes in practice.

That changes the shape of the decision. You are not committing $120 on a guess — you are committing it with a window in which to find out whether the thing actually works for your specific use, and get the money back if it does not.

The windows: 45 days on CyberGhost's long plans (14 on its monthly one — check which you are buying). 31 days on PureVPN. 30 days on almost everything else. 14 days on Mullvad. Windscribe does not publish a refund window on its pricing page — its genuinely usable free tier is the better way to evaluate it before you pay anything.

What you are paying for

Worth being clear about, because the price differences between good providers are small and the reasons behind them are not obvious.

Server infrastructure. Owning or leasing machines in a hundred countries, with enough capacity that they are not congested. This is the largest cost and the reason free VPNs are what they are.

Audits. An independent firm inspecting the running servers costs real money and is the only reason to believe a no-logs claim. Providers that have not done one recently are saving that money.

Apps on every platform. Ten platforms, maintained, is a substantial engineering team.

Streaming unblocking. Continuously rotating IP addresses ahead of detection is an operational cost that never ends. It is the reason Mullvad, which does not do it, is cheaper to run and worse at streaming.

What you are not paying for is the marketing figure. A "−86%" banner is measured against a monthly rate designed to make it look large.

The short answer

$50–$120 up front for two years from a good provider. Check the renewal before you buy, because it decides the real cost more than the discount does. Use the refund window to find out whether you actually wanted it.

And if the honest answer turns out to be that you would not miss it, that is worth knowing too — we wrote a separate page making that case, including the four situations where a VPN clearly earns its money and the ones where it does not.