The Best Cheap VPNs Overall & Best Cheap Pay Monthly VPN (2024)

The cheap (and safe) VPNs we recommend in this guide ranked the highest based on our price-quality assessments.

After testing and reviewing 65 VPNs, a few very popular ones didn’t make the cut, often because of how much they cost.

Below are five popular VPNs we don’t consider affordable enough to qualify as highly-rated cheap VPNs.

ExpressVPN: Too Expensive

ExpressVPN is the best VPN we’ve tested overall, with very intuitive apps that are formidable at unblocking geo-restricted websites and apps. Sadly, it’s also expensive compared to the likes of Private Internet Access and Surfshark.

Atlas VPN: Not Private Enough

Atlas VPN is certainly very affordable on multi-year subscription. What drags it outside of our recommendations is its less than pristine privacy and logging policy.

IPVanish: Unblocking Shortcomings

IPVanish is a very good VPN with excellent speed and security qualities. Unfortunately, it doesn’t unblock streaming platforms as effectively as the higher-rated cheap VPNs.

ProtonVPN: Lacks Important Features

Similary to ExpressVPN, Proton VPN is not affordable enough for most users. It’s relatively expensive on longer-term plan, and it also lacks important product features like 24/7 live chat and a Smart DNS solution.

PureVPN: Underwhelming Experience

PureVPN is a mediocre VPN which collects too much data, suffers from software malfunctions, and disappointed us in our latest unblocking tests.

The longer you subscribe to a subscription-based VPN, the greater the monthly saving.

But maybe you only want a VPN for a short period of time, for instance, if you’re traveling abroad.

The table below shows the cheapest pay-monthly VPN plans currently available, all priced $10.00 or under.

Analyzing the one-month subscriptions of the top 35 VPNs, we calculated the average cost as $11.77 per month. This is substantially higher than the cheapest prices you can get from multi-year subscriptions.

Having said that, Mullvad (ranked #15) and IVPN (ranked #23) cost less than $6.00 per month.

Mullvad VPN: Best Cheap Pay Monthly VPN

Highly secure yet affordable VPN that costs only $5.50/month.

Mullvad VPN is the best cheapest pay monthly VPN we’ve reviewed. It’s a good VPN to keep your internet connections private and secure.

For years, Mullvad has delivered strong results in our security tests. We’ve particularly enjoyed using the VPN’s multi-hop servers to encrypt our data transfers twice.

Uniquely, Mullvad’s kill switch is built-in and can’t be turned off. It’s always running, and always protecting your VPN connection from unexpected interruptions.

Also, Mullvad’s apps look good and work well, with settings easy to find and customize. Despite the presence of many preferences, the nice design makes these apps easy to use.

The area Mullvad disappointed us in is unblocking, whether it’s bypassing strict internet filters or streaming geo-blocks.

The VPN provider has never focused on bypassing video geo-restrictions and it’s no surprise it can’t unblock Disney+, Max (HBO), Hulu, US Netflix, and many more popular services.

And despite having developed an anti-censorship technology called Bridge Mode, Mullvad often doesn’t work in our China-specific tests.

Outside of our rankings, the absolute cheapest (safe) VPN is FastestVPN. It only costs $1.11 per month over three years ($39.95 upfront), for a saving of 75%.

FastestVPN even offers a lifetime VPN subscription plan for just $40.00.

While these VPNs cost much less than $2.00 per month (on longer-term plans), they significantly under-perform the cheap VPNs we recommend in this guide.

Price does not always indicate better VPN security, speed, or streaming capabilities.

In fact, we’ve given low ratings to some of the most expensive VPNs on the market. On the flip side, many cheap VPNs are amongst the best we’ve tested.

In the chart below, we’ve compared the cheapest monthly price of each top-rated VPN against its overall rating.

The VPNs towards the top-left of the chart provide the worst value, whilst those towards the bottom-right offer the best value. You can use it to see how a VPN’s price corresponds to its quality.

Though it’s not always the case, our analysis does reveal a strong relationship between price and performance. Generally speaking, the more expensive the VPN, the better it performs in our testing overall.

To identify the best cheap VPNs, we test each VPN’s performance in a number of key areas related to affordability, value, and overall capabilities.

We reward the VPNs that offer the highest quality service for the lowest price. The quality-price ratio is crucial to determine the best cheap VPNs.

We give every VPN a rating out of ten in each of the key areas, and then combine those ratings to calculate an overall ‘cheapness’ rating.

The table below shows how the five best cheap VPNs performed in each key testing category:

Here’s a more detailed look at our key decision-making areas, what goes into them, and how they’re weighted:

1. Price & Value: 40%

Minimum Requirement: A monthly price of $3.50 or less.
We Recommend: $2.50 a month or less.

The most important data point for a cheap VPN is the lowest price per month you can buy it for.

We work out the monthly price based on the VPNs best deal, which most often come with longer-term subscriptions.

Some VPNs charge as much as $10.00 a month for a subscription, even on multi-year deals. When it comes to our cheap VPN recommendations, we’re looking for a maximum of $3.00 per month on its best price deal.

The very cheapest VPNs on the market get the highest rating, irrespective of quality. The more expensive the VPN, the lower the rating.

We’ve researched the prices of all the major VPN services and our team works hard to keep this information up to date.

Alongside the VPNs cheapest monthly cost, we also factor in the length of the subscription, the other available pricing plans, whether there are cost-effective alternate plans like a lifetime offer, and whether the VPN has a money-back guarantee or free trial option.

2. Privacy & Logging Policy: 20%

Minimum Requirement: A plain-language policy with anonymized connection logs only.
We Recommend: A zero-logs policy with strictly no activity or connection logs.

While cost is important, when we recommend the best cheap VPNs we take into account how well it protects your privacy.

We only recommend VPNs that you can trust not to log your personal information. To do this, we conduct a detailed analysis of every VPN’s privacy policy. We read the small print to ensure there are no hidden catches.

The best VPNs don’t keep any connection logs that could be used to identify you. Ideally, the VPN should have a zero-logs policy which has also been verified by an independent third-party audit.

3. Security & Technical Features: 20%

Minimum Requirement: AES-256 encryption, OpenVPN protocol, IP & DNS leak protection.
We Recommend: AES-256 encryption, multiple protocols, leak protection, VPN kill switch.

Any VPN we recommend needs to be secure and safe to use. There’s no point using a VPN just because it’s cheap if it’s going to leak your IP and fail to encrypt your traffic.

We look for secure encryption ciphers like AES-256 and a safe protocol like OpenVPN, WireGuard, or IKEv2. We run regular packet-inspection tests to ensure the VPN isn’t exposing your activity to ISPs, hackers, or other eavesdroppers.

We also conduct IPv4, IPv6, DNS, and WebRTC leak tests to ensure that absolutely no personal information is on show.

The best value VPNs should also include a VPN kill switch. This protects your identity by stopping your internet connections if the VPN connection ever drops, even for a moment.

4. Streaming: 10%

Minimum Requirement: Unblocks Netflix USA.
We Recommend: Unblocks multiple streaming platforms around the world.

We have active subscriptions to many popular streaming services, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Disney+, and BBC iPlayer.

We run weekly tests to see which VPNs can bypass streaming geo-restrictions, and which can’t

Our minimum requirement is that a VPN can unblock the American Netflix library from overseas.

In addition, we test if a VPN can unblock other popular platforms like Disney+, HBO Max, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, and more.

5. Speed: 10%

Minimum Requirement: Local download speeds above 60Mbps and respectable international speeds.
We Recommend: Local download speeds above 80Mbps and fast international connection speeds.

Even cheap VPNs can be fast. All VPNs slow down your connection speed to some degree. But with the best cheap VPNs the speed loss is barely noticeable.

We conduct regular manual speed tests, alongside our automated VPN speed test tool. Taken together, these tests provide us with an accurate picture of how fast the VPN is.

For cheap VPNs, we’re interested in local connection speeds (good for regular browsing and torrenting downloads) and longer-distance speeds (good for unblocking Netflix libraries).

The fastest VPNs won’t reduce you internet speed by much at all. You’ll able to establish international connections with enough bandwidth to stream Netflix in Ultra HD quality.