Proxy site free of charge: what it costs you instead
A proxy site free of charge is still being paid for by somebody, and on this shelf the funding model is almost never printed anywhere on the page offering it. That single fact explains most of what follows, and it is the difference between a free proxy and a free tier from a company that also sells something.
- median printed entry price, per month
- $2.69
- providers with a verified printed price
- 11
- use cases with measured demand
- 3
Figures on this page come from the VPNCompareHQ price index: 11 providers, median printed entry price $2.69 a month, each quoted from the provider's own page and dated.
- 11 VPN pricing pages verifiedevery figure matched verbatim to the provider's page
- Quoted and dated, never estimatedlast verification pass 2026-09-09
- 3 use cases coveredeach with measured search demand behind it
Printed prices, verified
| Provider | Entry price | Renews at | Prepaid term | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Private Internet Access | $1.79/mo | $69.81/3yr | 39 mo term | privateinternetaccess.com | September 2026 |
| CyberGhost | $1.99/mo | $51.74/yr | 26 mo term | cyberghostvpn.com | September 2026 |
| PureVPN | $2.15/mo | $47.95/yr | 27 mo term | purevpn.com | September 2026 |
| IPVanish | $2.49/mo | $99.99/yr | 24 mo term | ipvanish.com | September 2026 |
| Surfshark | $2.49/mo | 27 mo term | surfshark.com | September 2026 | |
| hide.me | $2.69/mo | $69.99/26mo | 26 mo term | hide.me | September 2026 |
| ExpressVPN | $2.99/mo | $99.95/yr | 28 mo term | expressvpn.com | September 2026 |
| TunnelBear | $3.33/mo | tunnelbear.com | September 2026 | ||
| NordVPN | $3.49/mo | $139/yr | 27 mo term | nordvpn.com | September 2026 |
| Windscribe | $5.75/mo | 12 mo term | windscribe.com | September 2026 | |
| IVPN | $6/mo | 1 mo term | ivpn.net | September 2026 | |
| Mullvad | No printed price on the page; quote or in-app only (checked September 2026) | ||||
| Proton VPN | Pricing page could not be read (checked September 2026) |
Reading a free proxy site honestly
- Ask who pays for the bandwidth. Serving pages costs money. Advertising injected into the pages you view is the visible answer; logging and selling browsing data, and reselling your connection as an exit for other traffic, are the two that are not announced.
- Assume the operator sees everything. The proxy fetches pages on your behalf, so it necessarily sees every address you request and everything you type into those pages. That is the mechanism rather than a vulnerability.
- Expect complex pages to break. Sites that load content from several domains often fetch some of it directly, outside the proxy. That is why videos fail and why a page can appear to work while parts of it do not.
- Use it for the narrow job it suits. Reading one page, once, on a device you do not control, where nothing you type matters. For that it is proportionate and effective.
The free tier alternative, which is accountable
Three providers in this price index publish a free plan on their own sites with the limits written down. hide.me lists a free plan at zero with restricted speeds, eight locations and one connection. Windscribe publishes a build-a-plan tier starting at zero. Proton VPN maintains a dedicated free page.
The difference is not generosity, it is accountability: those are limited versions of a paid product from companies with a published policy and a business model you can see on the pricing page. An anonymous proxy list has neither.
When the job outgrows a proxy site
The moment the requirement covers more than one browser tab, or involves an account, a payment or a habit, the shape of the tool changes: a device-level VPN with a published policy and a price on its own page.
This site exists to say what those cost, and specifically what they cost in year three, after the prepaid term the headline requires has run out. That is the number a free proxy has no equivalent of and the number the paid market prints in the smallest type.
Common questions
- Are free proxy sites safe?
- The operator sees every page you request through them, and most publish nothing about what they retain or how they are funded.
- Why do videos not work through a proxy site?
- Complex pages load media from other domains, and a proxy that cannot rewrite all of them either breaks the page or lets some requests go direct.
- Is a free VPN tier better than a free proxy?
- It is at least accountable: three providers here publish free plans with stated limits, beside a paid plan that funds them.
Not sure which provider you need?
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Cite or embed this figure
The median printed entry price per month in the consumer VPN market was $2.69 in September 2026, across 11 verified provider pricing pages recorded in VPNCompareHQ Consumer VPN Price Index.
Cite as: "VPNCompareHQ Consumer VPN Price Index", updated 2026-09-09, https://vpncomparehq.com/proxy-site-free/.