How much does a VPN cost?
- Author
- By Amelia Ame
- Last checked
- Updated September 10, 2026
- Reading time
- 5 min read
$2 to $5 a month on a long plan — but the introductory rate covers one term. We priced all ten across three years including the renewal, and it reorders the answer.
- Priced all ten providers across one, two and three years including renewals
- Read each provider's published renewal terms rather than assuming
- Claimed the money-back guarantee on all ten and timed each refund
The VPN with the lowest banner price is not the one that wins this.
- Biggest jump
- +64%
- No jump at all
- 2 of 10
- Monthly plans
- $10–13
Priced from each provider's own checkout and published renewal terms
The short answer
Between $2 and $5 a month on a two-year plan, or $10 to $13 rolling monthly. But the advertised rate covers the first term only, and most plans then renew at a much higher price — one by 64%. Priced across three years including renewals, the cheapest VPN we rate costs about $77 and the dearest about $216.
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 | $2.03/mo | 30 days | Unlimited | 8.3/10 |
 PureVPN | $2.14/mo | 31 days | 10 | 8.4/10 |
 Surfshark | $2.19/mo | 30 days | Unlimited | 9.4/10 |
 CyberGhost | $2.19/mo | 45 days | 7 | 8.1/10 |
 IPVanish | $2.19/mo | 30 days | Unlimited | 7.6/10 |
 NordVPN | $3.39/mo | 30 days | 10 | 9.7/10 |
 Proton VPN | $4.49/mo | 30 days | 10 | 8.9/10 |
 ExpressVPN | $4.99/mo | 30 days | 8 | 9.1/10 |
 Mullvad | $5.40/mo | 30 days | 5 | 8.0/10 |
 Windscribe | $5.75/mo | 3 days | Unlimited | 7.8/10 |
Read as a shopping list, that table says buy Private Internet Access. Read with the renewal included, it says something different.
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.
Two of the ten do not do this. PureVPN renews close to what it started at, which is the entire reason it wins over three years despite not having the lowest opening price. Mullvad has no introductory rate at all — a flat €5 a month, forever, which is expensive against a two-year plan and cheap against a monthly one, and never changes.
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. Usually renews at the same rate, so no nasty surprise, but you pay more per month than a two-year plan.
Two years ($2–$5/mo). The advertised price, and the best value if you keep it. The commitment is real — you pay 24 months up front, and there is no partial refund if you change your mind in month fourteen.
"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 we rate has a money-back guarantee, and we have claimed every one of them to check it is honoured. All ten were.
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, the longest we rate. 31 days on PureVPN. 30 days on almost everything else. 3 days on Windscribe, which is the outlier by a factor of ten and the one to be careful about — its free tier is the better way to evaluate it.
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.
Common questions
How much should a VPN cost?
Between $2 and $5 a month on a two-year plan, which is $50 to $120 paid up front. Rolling monthly runs $10 to $13 and is poor value unless you genuinely need one month. Anything advertising a lifetime licence for a one-off fee is worth treating with suspicion — running a server network is an ongoing cost, and a one-time payment does not cover it.
Why is the two-year plan so much cheaper than monthly?
Because the two-year plan is the product and the monthly rate largely exists to make it look cheap. Providers discount heavily up front to acquire you, then recover it at renewal. That is not dishonest, but it does mean the banner price is a customer-acquisition number rather than what the service costs to run.
What happens when my VPN subscription renews?
For most providers, the price rises — usually to the one-year rate, sometimes higher. It is in the terms rather than on the banner. Set a calendar reminder for a week before your term ends and you can renegotiate, switch, or accept it knowingly. Two of the ten we rate renew at the same rate they started.
Which VPN is cheapest?
It depends entirely on the horizon. Over one year, Private Internet Access at about $2.03 a month. Over three years, PureVPN, because PIA's introductory price rises about 64% at renewal while PureVPN's barely moves. Our price calculator runs both numbers across every provider.
Are free VPNs worth using?
One is: Proton VPN's free tier, which has no data cap and the same audited no-logs policy as its paid plans, funded by a paid business. Most others cap data so low they are useless for streaming, and a service with no revenue from you is earning it somewhere — several have been caught logging or reselling users' bandwidth.
Is a VPN worth paying for at all?
It depends on why you want one — public Wi-Fi, ISP throttling, travel and torrenting are the four cases where the answer is clearly yes. If you bought the idea that a VPN makes you generally secure online, it does not, and a password manager would do more for the money. We wrote a separate page on exactly that question.
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