VPN pricing without the intro-rate tricks
VPN marketing leads with 27-month teaser rates. Compared on honest steady-state prices, the cheapest credible VPNs run $2-6/month.
Updated 2026-08-28 · prices verified against official pages
The teaser-rate problem
VPNs advertise prices like $2.49/month that only exist inside a 27-month prepaid intro deal, then renew much higher. We store the honest numbers instead: the monthly-billed price and the real renewal rate. Monthly-billed, the big names cost real money — NordVPN $14.99, Surfshark $16.45, ExpressVPN about $8.33/month equivalent on its $99.95/year Basic renewal.
That reframing changes the ranking completely, which is exactly why vendors avoid it.
The honest cheap tier
Mullvad charges a flat $5.84/month (5 euro) — same price monthly or yearly, forever, no accounts games; it deliberately runs no affiliate program either, which says something about how the rest of the market works. IVPN Standard is $6/month or $60/year. Windscribe runs $9 monthly, $69/year, a generous free tier, and a build-a-plan option from $1/location. Private Internet Access lands at $3.33/month equivalent — but only on the yearly commitment.
If you just need a trustworthy VPN and hate pricing games: Mullvad or IVPN. If you want the feature bundles (antivirus, alerts, identity tools), Surfshark One at $18.95 monthly is the comparison to run — and our capability matrix shows what each bundle actually contains.
Every claim above links back to computed comparisons with sourced, dated pricing.
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