Are free VPNs illegal?
Short answer
Free VPNs are legal in most countries — but several major free providers have been caught logging, selling user data, or shipping malware. The legal question is the wrong one; the trustworthiness question is what matters. If you can't pay, ProtonVPN's free tier is the only one we recommend.
VPN use itself is restricted or illegal in a small set of countries (China, Russia, UAE, Iran, North Korea, Belarus). Free or paid, that restriction applies equally.
Legal does not mean trustworthy
The legality of free VPNs is a non-question in nearly every country with a free press. The real question is what the provider does with your traffic when you're not paying for the service. The default answer for most free VPNs is: they sell it, log it, or inject ads.
Hola VPN turned its users into a botnet, renting their bandwidth to a sister company. Hotspot Shield was the subject of an FTC complaint over data collection. Onavo (Facebook-owned) was pulled from app stores after it was revealed to be data-harvesting infrastructure dressed up as a VPN.
ProtonVPN's free tier is the exception
ProtonVPN offers a no-strings free tier: no ads, no logs, no bandwidth caps. It's slower and limited to three server countries, but the privacy posture is the same as their paid plan. It's the only free VPN we recommend without qualification.
If your reason for going free is budget rather than philosophy, paid plans drop to $2-3/month on long-term contracts. Mullvad is a flat €5/month with no long-term lock-in.
Last verified: 2026-05-05
Related questions