hide.me
A rare genuinely usable free plan (no card, P2P allowed on the 10 GB free tier) plus audited no-logs claims twice over - DefenseCode 2015 and Securitum 2024…
audited crypto accepted
intro €2.69/mo (about $3.04/mo)
the honest vpn comparison
The VPN market runs on affiliate money.
We show you the receipts.
Every VPN compared - commercial, free, decentralized, self-hosted - with dated evidence: who owns whom, whose "no-logs" survived a court case, what subscriptions really cost after the intro term, and which free paths get you the same result for nothing.
Our promise: rankings are provisions-blind (a test in our codebase enforces that scores cannot read affiliate data), every source carries an evidence class [A]-[D], and where you do not need a commercial VPN we say so.
evidence-classed facts [A]-[D] ownership graph + incident timeline we disclose every dollar
Start with the honest question
Do you need a commercial VPN at all? We compare every kind on its own terms - a self-hosted WireGuard tunnel is never scored against a free app, and a free app is judged harder than a paid service because the incentives are worse.
Rent privacy36
Commercial VPNs
Paid services: the convenient default, judged on evidence, not marketing.
36 tracked
all 36 →
Rent privacy9
Free VPNs
Free apps - a few are fine, most are the product. We name the difference.
9 tracked
all 9 →
Beyond VPNs4
Decentralized VPNs
Bandwidth markets where strangers route your traffic - real censorship value, real trade-offs.
4 tracked
all 4 →
Beyond VPNs5
Proxies
HTTP/SOCKS proxies: lighter than a VPN, weaker on almost everything else.
5 tracked
all 5 →
Beyond VPNs4
Smart DNS
Location spoofing for streaming only - zero encryption, zero privacy.
4 tracked
all 4 →
Build it3
Self-hosted
Your own WireGuard on a 5-dollar server: best privacy per dollar, you are the provider.
3 tracked
all 3 →
Hard truths before you pay
Three things the affiliate-funded review industry will not tell you. Every provider page on this site carries the same honesty boxes.
- A VPN does not make you anonymous. You move trust from your ISP to the VPN company - whose "no logs" promise is only as good as its evidence.
- The $2.99 price is bait. Intro rates run 2-3 years, then renew at 3-4x. Only a few providers (Mullvad, IVPN) price flat and honestly.
- Several top reviewers are owned by VPN companies. Kape owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, PIA - and vpnMentor + WizCase. Ziff Davis owns PCMag and IPVanish. Check who reviewed your "independent" source.
Find by requirement
Cross-kind filters - each list only contains tools that can honestly compete.
What changed
Price, status and privacy-evidence changes we logged. Full log →
- privacy VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment) · logging evidence: ? → policy-only
- price VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment) · ? → 0
- facts VPN Gate (public volunteer relay experiment) · facts
- privacy Calyx VPN · logging evidence: ? → policy-only
- price Calyx VPN · ? → 0
- price Calyx VPN · ? → 0
Top pick in each kind
Provisional fact-driven scores - performance is unscored until our own tests run. One pick per kind: a free app is never ranked against a commercial VPN, and a self-hosted tunnel is never ranked against a free app.
Riseup VPN
The most trustworthy free VPN on structural grounds: an anarchist Seattle collective that has run since 1999, funds itself by donations, asks no account…
canary open source community-owned crypto accepted
free
Sentinel dVPN (Cosmos bandwidth marketplace, token P2P)
Sentinel is real decentralized-VPN infrastructure - an open-source Cosmos chain with on-chain sessions, Wallet-only signup and per-gigabyte pricing that…
open source crypto accepted
intro $1 /mo
IPRoyal
A serious budget proxy provider - and this dossier says plainly what that means: IPRoyal is not a consumer privacy VPN. It sells access to a 64M+ IP pool of…
crypto accepted
intro $7 /GB
CactusVPN Smart DNS
CactusVPN is the bundle case in the Smart DNS vertical: a 2011 Moldovan three-friends shop that once sold Smart DNS as its own product line and has now folded…
audited
intro $3.96 /mo
Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation)
The most credible self-hosting on-ramp in the VPN space, built by and for people inside the censorship: the app is free and open source, you connect it to your…
audited open source
intro $5 /mo
Tools that answer the real questions
No sign-up - the math runs in your browser; nothing you type leaves the page.
Find your answer
VPN finder
Five questions, honest shortlist - hard requirements enforced, unknowns flagged.
Do I need a VPN?
Five honest questions - sometimes the answer is "no VPN needed" or "a DNS blocker is enough".
Guides: navigate the market without the noise
Source-backed, no hype - from "do I need a VPN" to building your own for $5/month.
Do You Actually Need a VPN?
Most people buying a VPN do not need one for their actual threat. This guide sorts real use cases from marketing fear - and names the free option for each.
The Free VPN Trap - Which Free VPNs Are Honest
The big free apps monetize your data, your attention or your bandwidth. The business models, the documented leaks, and the few honest free options.
Your Own VPN Server for Five Dollars a Month
A rented VPS with WireGuard beats most paid VPNs on privacy per dollar - when a single exit is enough. Setup paths and honest trade-offs.
VPN Alternatives - Tor, dVPNs, WARP and Self-Hosting
Tor, decentralized VPNs, WARP, browser relays or a five-dollar server - which alternative fits which goal, with the dead and the hype named.
VPN FAQ - the honest version
Do I actually need a VPN?
Often, no. If your traffic is HTTPS (the padlock), your ISP sees domains - not content - and a VPN does not make you anonymous, stop ads or prevent hacking. A VPN is the right tool when you want to hide your browsing from your ISP or the network you are on, avoid IP-based geo-blocking, or use public Wi-Fi safely. If you only need ad/tracker blocking, DNS-level tools do that cheaper. Work through the "Do I need a VPN?" check for a straight answer. Facts 2026-11-03.
Are free VPNs safe?
Most are not - but not all. The free app giants (SuperVPN, VPN Proxy Master, Turbo VPN and friends) monetize your data or your attention, and several have leaked millions of records. The honest free options are RiseupVPN (donation-funded, no accounts) plus the free tiers of Proton VPN and Windscribe - funded by their paid plans, not by selling you. The difference is the business model, not the price tag. See the free VPN hub for the full picture.
What does "no-logs" actually mean?
Nothing, by itself. It is a marketing claim unless it has been tested: either by a court case (police asked, nothing to hand over - Mullvad 2023, PIA twice) or by an independent audit of the specific claim. We grade every provider: court-proven, audited, promise-only, or contradicted (logs existed despite the claim - IPVanish 2016, PureVPN 2017, HideMyAss 2011).
Why do all "top 10 VPN" lists recommend the same five brands?
Because the affiliate market pays $50-150+ per signup and up to 100% of the first payment. The same five brands bid the most, so the same five brands top the lists - and several review sites are literally owned by VPN companies (Kape owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, PIA... and vpnMentor/WizCase). We publish every commission we can find and keep rankings affiliate-blind by design. See how we make money.
Which VPN works in China / Russia / Iran?
The protocol matters more than the brand. In China (2025-2026 state of the block): VLESS/Reality, AmneziaWG and Shadowsocks-2022 keep working; plain WireGuard and OpenVPN are detected and cut. In Russia, TSPU DPI kills unobfuscated protocols. Check the country pages for what works where - and assume any single tool can stop working within days during crackdowns.
Is a decentralized VPN (dVPN) better for privacy?
Usually not. A dVPN replaces one operator with many strangers - some of whom you must still trust - and payment often requires a token with its own privacy footprint. dVPNs are interesting for censorship resistance and payment privacy, but they are not a shortcut past the trust problem. We compare them honestly, including the dead ones.