Free VPNs for PC, without the malware

Proton VPN Free, for Windows 11 and 10: no data cap, no ads, a kill switch, and a no-logs policy Securitum audited in May 2026. Its limits are one device at a time and a server Proton assigns from 10 free countries. If you need a laptop and a phone connected together, Windscribe Free covers several devices within 10 GB a month.

Yes, from a provider you can name: Proton VPN Free has no data cap and no time limit, paid for by the people on its paid plans. Be wary of other "unlimited" free VPNs. When an app has no paid plan and no company behind it, the data you send through it is usually what pays.

No. An extension covers only the browser it is installed in, so Windows apps such as Teams, OneDrive or Steam keep using your normal connection. Use the provider's desktop app to cover the whole PC, and treat the extension as an extra.

Some are; many are not. The freemium tiers of audited providers — Proton VPN and Windscribe among them — are safe to run. But independent research has repeatedly found that a large share of no-name free VPN apps carry trackers, leak traffic or sell data: a 2016 CSIRO study of 283 Android VPN apps found 38% contained malware or malvertising. The safe move is to pick a free tier from a provider with a name, a jurisdiction and a published audit.

For most people it is Proton VPN's free plan: it is the only major free tier with unlimited data and no ads, and it runs on the same independently audited no-logs network as Proton's paid plans. Its limits are 1 device and a small set of free-server countries. Windscribe (10GB a month) and PrivadoVPN (10GB) are the strongest capped alternatives.

Legitimate free VPNs are loss leaders: the free tier is a funnel to paid subscriptions, so the provider makes money when free users upgrade. The dangerous ones monetise you directly — through ads, embedded trackers, or by logging and selling browsing data. If a "completely free, unlimited" VPN has no paid plan and no named company behind it, you are usually the product.

Rarely and unreliably. Streaming services actively block VPN server IPs, and free tiers get the least effort spent on staying unblocked. Data caps make it worse: 10GB is roughly 3–4 hours of HD video a month. A free VPN can occasionally work for a specific library, but no honest reviewer can promise it will keep working.

No — and neither does a paid one. A VPN encrypts your traffic to the VPN server and hides your IP from the sites you visit, but it moves your trust to the VPN provider, who can see what a passive network could. That is exactly why who runs the VPN, and whether their no-logs claim has been independently audited, matters more than the price.