Best VPN for Windows

Yes, you really do. 

That’s because Windows is neither the most private nor the most secure, though it is the most popular.

A VPN gives you all the benefits of Windows without any of its downsides, protecting your information and personal details against hackers and preventing governments and snoopers from infringing on your privacy. 

Why bother paying for a VPN when you can get one for free, right? 

Wrong – it turns out there are a lot of reasons. Free VPNs are often very poor at protecting your privacy and and are even made free to extract information or inject malicious hardware or trackers. Most free VPNs are bad news.

But we get it: the allure of a freebie is irresistible and surely, you ask, there are one or two decent ones out there?

We are here to show you which free VPNs are usable, and ensure you make the right choice for your Windows computer. 

The safest free VPNs available are those offered by:

• Windscribe
• ProtonVPN
• TunnelBear
• Hide.me
• Avira

It’s definitely worth checking out our in-depth list of the best free VPNs, where you can find out each of these services’ strengths and weaknesses. 

But rest assured: none of these VPNs require credit cards or payment information when you sign up – they truly are free. 

We’ve given you our list of the best VPNs for Windows, but it’s worth warning you about the VPNs that you should almost certainly avoid. 

That includes almost all free VPNs. So many are unsafe and designed to do the opposite of a VPN — extract your information or infringe on your privacy.

We recommend the free VPNs in this guide as safe and private, even with various performance limitations.

Here are some more VPNs who scored very poorly in our assessments that are available on Windows:

• SkyVPN
• Betternet free
• Hola VPN
• Touch VPN
• VPN 99
• VPNBook
• SlickVPN

Microsoft Edge is a web browser developed by Microsoft in 2015, designed to replace Internet Explorer.

Since its release it’s been the default browser for Windows, so it’s only natural that you should ask: can I use a VPN while using Microsoft Edge?

The answer is yes.

But which VPN should you use?

Well, you can use any VPN that you like as long as you are running the service while browsing via Microsoft Edge.

Seeing as Microsoft Edge supports some browser extensions, we recommend that you choose a VPN from this list that also come included with this feature. 

This excludes only two VPNs on this list: IPVanish and PrivateVPN. 

So we say ExpressVPN, NordVPN, or CyberGhost are great choices for Microsoft Edge. 

Even if you’re just using a browser, we recommend that you use the full-on VPN service alongside the VPN extension.

Freegate is a free anti-censorship software. It’s the most popular circumvention proxy anonymity software used in China and is very easily added to Windows PCs.

The thing to remember about Freegate is that it’s just an anonymizer proxy and it’s not guaranteed to work all the time.

A VPN is designed to encrypt your data and protect all your information through a secure network. 

 

For this reason, we recommend you consider a VPN as your chief software for privacy and anti-censorship. 

Also, Freegate is far less user-friendly than VPNs, with an incredibly outdated look, which is bad when you want to make privacy simple for everyone. Most VPNs are consumer products designed to make everything as easy as possible for you, but losing nothing in effectiveness.

There are a lot of Windows users in China and many of them are tired of the harsh censorship imposed by the CCP. 

The best way to undermine this censorship is through VPNs, but only some work in China. From our list of the best VPNs for Windows, these are:

• ExpressVPN
• NordVPN
• PrivateVPN

From these, we’d recommend ExpressVPN or PrivateVPN, which have proven to be slightly more reliable than NordVPN.

PrivateVPN comes with a Stealth VPN Protocol, and ExpressVPN dedicates a lot of time and resources into maintaining its service against the odds in China.

These two VPNs make for surefire bets in other restricted countries too, such as Russia, Turkey, Iran, and India. 

PC gaming is more popular than ever – you might be one of the millions playing on their PC every day.

Microsoft knows this, and even introduced ‘Game Mode’ to Windows, which is designed to produce higher frame rates and lower latency.

But it’s not taking into account your privacy and security. 

That’s where we come in.

With all the risks that gaming can pose, such as DDoS attacks, it’s definitely worth looking into a VPN, even while being aware of some drawbacks (likely increase in ping).

We put together a list of the best VPNs for gaming that is well worth checking out if you’re a privacy-conscious gamer. Whether it’s Minecraft, World of Warcraft or Fortnite, this is the list for you.

Don’t worry: setting up a VPN on Windows only takes a few minutes.

All the VPNs we’ve recommended here couldn’t be simpler to use: just download the software, install and run. 

We have a more detailed guide for installing a VPN on Windows that you can read here.

 

There are a few key choices for you to make after your purchase, though.

Choosing the right protocol is important – we recommend OpenVPN in most cases as it strikes the best balance between privacy and performance. Most providers will offer a few others, but unless you have a specific need for them we would advise sticking to OpenVPN.

For the best performance you then need to connect to a server as close as possible to your physical location. The majority of VPN apps have an option to automatically connect to the ‘best server’, which is usually in the same country as you.

Once you’re connected, the VPN will continue to run in the background and you can just carry on using your Windows device as normal.

You’ve cracked it.

There’s some confusion about whether Windows 10 comes with a built-in VPN.

This is a result of the fact that if you go to Settings > Network & Internet, there’s an option that says VPN.

But let’s be clear: this is not a VPN, it is there to add a VPN connection from an existing provider.

Even more confusion exists because if you click ‘Add a VPN Connection’ it comes up with Windows (built-in). To be clear: this is not a VPN.

You have to add information from your own VPN subscription.

Built-in is merely an indicator that a feature is available within Windows without any extra software, but it’s not a built-in VPN. 

Windows does not come with a VPN. 

But that’s not to say you cannot use a VPN on Windows 10. 

You can connect an existing VPN account that you have using this feature on Windows 10 or simply run a VPN.