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If you’re looking for a free VPN, Windscribe is a good option. Based in Canada (which may raise privacy concerns for some people due to local data laws), Windscribe offers 10GB of free data per month if you sign up by email. You can also sign up without entering an email address – this is a rarity among VPN providers – but you’ll be capped at 2GB of data per month, which is still reasonable. While some free VPNs offer more data, few can reliably unblock streaming services abroad – it performed admirably when accessing BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4 and others.
It’s also the only VPN with a sense of humor – it has funny names for its server locations, such as “Custard and Biscuits” for its London data center, making it an easy VPN to fall in love with, even if the user interface feels a little cluttered.
However, Yegor Sak, founder of Windscribe, told me that this is beyond humor. The company intentionally obscures individual servers within its creatively named data centers, allowing users to interact only with the data center as a whole. Although they have not disclosed the exact number of physical servers, they say there are more than 1,000.
Plus, with the exception of fake Antarctica, all of its servers are hosted on location (no weird virtual locations). This is actually great news for those obsessed with privacy. With virtual servers, you don’t know which country your data is being redirected through; The servers may be physically located in China, which is unusable if you’re trying to avoid Chinese censorship. Additionally, physical servers are usually faster and more stable because they are located in the country you want to access rather than somewhere far away.
The free version lets you switch between multiple protocols, including IKEv2, WireGuard, and OpenVPN (TCP and UDP). However, you are limited to servers in 10 countries: US, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Switzerland, UK, and Hong Kong. Like PIA, you use a username instead of an email address to log in, but at least you can customize it.
Windscribe’s “Robert” tool lets users block malware, ads, trackers, gambling sites, social networks, adult content, and even “fake news and clickbait” with customizable filters that you can turn on or off. Free users can create up to three custom rules, while Pro users can set up to 1,000. Other free features include split tunneling support, a kill switch, and a decoy mode to generate fake traffic.
You can also connect an unlimited number of devices, which is rare even among paid VPN services. While Windscribe says it doesn’t store logs, it does keep a record of the last time a user used the service and the total amount of data used over 30 days. The company has also open-sourced its apps and published a third-party independent audit of its service last summer. More importantly, this no-logs claim was proven in court. Sak was taken to court in Greece after a Windscribe user allegedly used the service to commit crimes. When Greek prosecutors asked Windscribe to hand over data logs, it could not do so and the case was dismissed.
The question is – is the Pro version worth the price of admission? Starting at £4.82 per month, it may seem expensive compared to its competitors, but Nord’s renewal rates can increase dramatically, making it more expensive over time. In contrast, Windscribe offers a much cheaper and more consistent monthly price, with Windscribe offering a £2.41 per month Build-A-Plan. And although it doesn’t have as many servers, they’re all physically hosted, which can be risky.
For normal users, the free version offers unlimited speed and generous limits, but the Pro version offers unlimited data and a transparent subscription plan.