If you’re after a free VPN, Windscribe is a good option. Based in Canada (which might raise privacy concerns for some due to local data laws), Windscribe offers 10GB of free data per month if you sign up with an email. You can also sign up without entering an email address – 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 more.
It’s also the only VPN with a sense of humour – there are funny names for its server locations, such as “custard and biscuits” for its London data centre, making it an easy VPN to fall in love with, even if the user interface can feel a bit cluttered.
Yegor Sak, founder of Windscribe, tells me that it goes beyond humour, however. The company deliberately obscures the individual servers within its creatively named data centres, with users only interacting with the data centre as a whole. While he doesn’t disclose the exact number of physical servers, he says that there are well over 1,000.
Plus, with the exception of Fake Antarctica, all of its servers are hosted on location (no cheeky virtual locations). That’s great news for the truly privacy-obsessed. With virtual servers, you don’t know which country your data is being rerouted through; the server could be physically located in China, which is unhelpful if you’re trying to avoid Chinese censorship. On top of that, physical servers are usually faster and more stable because they’re located in the country you want to access, instead of somewhere further away.
The free version lets you switch between multiple protocols, including IKEv2, WireGuard, and OpenVPN (TCP and UDP). However, you’re limited to servers in 10 countries: the US, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Switzerland, the UK and Hong Kong. Like PIA, you use a username to log in rather than an email address, but at least you can customise it.
Windscribe’s “R.O.B.E.R.T.” tool lets users block malware, ads, trackers, gambling sites, social networks, adult content and even “fake news and clickbait”, with customisable filters you can toggle 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 tunnelling 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 in 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 when a Windscribe user allegedly used the service to commit a crime. 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 might seem pricey compared to its competitors, but Nord’s renewal rates can jump dramatically, making it far more expensive over time. Windscribe, by contrast, offers much cheaper and more consistent monthly pricing, with Windscribe offering a £2.41 per month Build-a-Plan. And while it doesn’t boast as many servers, all of them are hosted physically, which can be risky.
For casual users, the free version delivers unthrottled speeds and generous limits, but the Pro version offers unlimited data and a transparent subscription plan.
