The internet is rife with free VPNs. Search the App Store for one, and you'll no doubt be met with a barrage of options promising first-rate security with no strings attached. It's hard to resist the unbeatable price of free, especially in an age when we're more aware of our digital footprint than ever before. Even so, it's critical to acknowledge the reality of any business: running one is anything but cheap. And for subscription-free VPNs, turning a profit almost always involves tracking your activity and selling it to advertising firms.
It should go without saying that an impressive rating on the App Store isn't enough to know whether a provider handles your data responsibly; at a minimum, a good VPN should:
- Encrypt your data reliably
- Have an effective, functional kill switch
- Have clear-cut privacy policies and ethical company practices
While a VPN certainly won't make you anonymous or protect you from every online threat, it can add a welcome layer of privacy on public networks and limit what your ISP can see. To determine the best free VPN for iPhone, we tested more than 20 of the most popular VPNs and evaluated the support and availability of our highest-scoring VPNs on iOS. We believe opting for a free VPN shouldn't come at the cost of your privacy; that's why some popular services don't make our main picks, even if they're fast.
Looking for more recommendations? Take a look at our picks for the best VPNs for Mac, the best VPNs for Android, and the best VPNs overall.
Since 2025, we've published reviews for over 20 different VPN services. These reviews followed months of research, test development, and collaboration among our engineers, testers, writers, photographers, and editors. Our process for each review involves extensive work behind the scenes, including rigorous checks and balances, to deliver the most accurate and useful test results so you can make the right purchasing decisions for your needs.
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Best Free VPN For iPhone
Private Browsing9.2Policies & Practices9.4Security8.6See all our test resultsPlatform Support:Free VPNs tend to make their compromises somewhere, but Windscribe Free avoids the most troubling one: treating your internet activity as a source of revenue. Its privacy and no-logging policies clearly explain what information the company collects and why, and its claims are backed by routinely-commissioned external audits. You can create an account without providing an email address, though doing so limits you to just 2GB of data per month. Confirming your email raises that allowance to 10GB, while their hashed account registration lets you sign up without sharing any personal information.
This VPN covers the essentials well. It keeps your IP address and DNS queries securely encrypted in its tunnel and bundles its suite of obfuscation tools with an effective kill switch that cuts off internet access if your VPN connection is disrupted. You can choose from servers in over 10 countries, and use your account simultaneously across as many devices as you own (which comes in handy if you own an iPad or a Mac). The main drawback is its 10GB data allowance, which can quickly run out if you're streaming video, downloading large files, or leaving the VPN connected all day. Nevertheless, the VPN's usage limit is a modest trade-off for outstanding security and unmatched privacy protections, which earn it our top spot as the best free VPN for iPhone.
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Best Free Unlimited VPN For iPhone
Private Browsing7.5Policies & Practices6.3Security8.6See all our test resultsPlatform Support:Like our top pick, Proton VPN Free gets the fundamentals right: it conceals your IP address and DNS requests, has an effective kill switch, and upholds generally transparent communication with its userbase. Those protections give it a considerable edge over many free offerings on the App Store. Unlike Windscribe Free, this one doesn't place a limit on how much data you can use, making it the better choice if you want to keep your VPN running without rationing your monthly allowance. Its iOS app is polished and functional without an account, though it has a limited selection of protocols compared to Windscribe Free, notably lacking OpenVPN on mobile. Regardless, it covers the basics for most people with WireGuard and Stealth (which is designed to bypass forms of Deep Packet Inspection commonly used in government censorship). Unsure of the differences between protocols? Have a look at our handy comparison article.
Uncapped usage does come at the cost of some flexibility, however: this free plan supports only one device at a time, automatically assigns you a server location based on availability, and reserves official streaming and torrenting support for Proton's paid subscribers. More importantly, the company's privacy policy and terms of service aren't as clear, and clearly permit the company to collect more information than a VPN requires to function. These shortcomings leave some important questions about what personal data Proton collects, how long it retains it, and when it deletes it largely unanswered. Still, it's far and away the best free VPN for iPhone if you need truly unlimited data.
Notable Mentions
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TunnelBear Free:
TunnelBear Free has a simple iPhone app, supports unlimited simultaneous connections, and includes obfuscation tools to combat network-level VPN blocking. However, its 2GB monthly limit is only suitable for occasional browsing, and its privacy practices fall well short of the standards set by our main picks. Its kill switch also leaked unencrypted traffic during some of our tests.
See our review
All Reviews
The recommendations above are the best free VPNs for iPhone among the services we've tested. We prioritize clear privacy policies, ethical company practices, and reliable protection over App Store ratings and promotional claims. We also consider how practical each service is on iPhone, including its data allowance, user feedback, app-specific restrictions, and how aggressively it encourages users to upgrade.
While we generally test VPNs on a Linux-based VPS (Virtual Private Server), we expect our findings to remain largely consistent across platforms. Most websites and apps already encrypt their traffic, and iOS includes its own security safeguards, so most people don't need to keep a VPN connected all the time. If you want to learn more about how we test VPNs, check out our step-by-step breakdown.
You can dive deeper into the industry standard for encryption in our articles on AES-256 encryption and Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA), or read about the methods used to authenticate and secure devices in our Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) primers.
If you'd like to choose for yourself, here's a list of all the VPNs we've tested.