If you’re using a VPN free trial, you need to know if you need to cancel your subscription, or if it will end automatically.
In many cases, if you don’t cancel your trial you may end up in a contract with the VPN service provider.
In this section, we explain how to cancel your free trial depending on which option you’ve taken.
No Payment Details Required
If you’re using a VPN free trial and didn’t submit any payment details on sign-up, you won’t need to do anything to cancel your subscription. The service will stop once the trial period has ended.
There are some VPN free trials that don’t require you do anything to cancel, but are slightly different in sign-up.
In the case of Proton VPN, you need to sign up to its lifetime free plan before you can access the premium free trial. Once the trial ends, you’ll return to the free service.
Free Trial with Payment Details Required
Some free trials require you to submit payment information in order to use the service.
Most of these VPNs require you to cancel your trial. The VPNs that offer genuine free trials, but also require payment details, include:
- HideMyAss
- Hotspot Shield
- IPVanish
- Ivacy
- NordVPN
- Surfshark
If you’re using any of the VPN free trials above, you’ll need to contact the VPN service via email or live chat and cancel before the trial period is up.
Some will also allow you to cancel in-app. In almost all cases, the cancellation process is extremely easy and quick.
VPN Subscription with Money-Back Guarantee
If a VPN service takes payment from you in order to use its service within a money-back guarantee period, this is usually called a ‘risk free’ trial.
In this case, remember to contact the VPN service’s support team within the refund period to get your money back.
The refund process is usually straight-forward with most VPN services, although some have specific rules in place.
For example, PrivateVPN won’t refund your initial payment if you’ve used over 100GB of data.
We advise to always check the terms and conditions of a VPN’s refund policy.
While most VPN services do honor money-back guarantees, some can refuse issuing a refund. However, this is a rare occurrence likely caused by serious misuse of the service.