Private Internet Access takes a variety of gift cards for anonymous payment, but they’re all from US retail companies at this time. You can pay using cryptocurrency, which can help to keep your identity secret as long as it’s carefully used alongside other operational security measures.īetter still, Mullvad allows you to sent an envelope full of cash along with the identifier of the account you wish to add it to. New two-year subscribers also get an extra two months free, but two-year subs renew as one-year subscription at whatever the annual fee is at the time of renewal.īoth offer payment options that can help enhance your online anonymity and privacy. A subscription will cost you £8.99 per month, £32.34 per year, or £43.94 for two years which works out at £2.37 a month. PIA is generally among the cheapest privacy-oriented consumer VPN providers. Private Internet Access actually works out cheaper than this, but only if you commit to a one- or two-year subscription.

You also get a 30-day money-back guarantee. That’s the only option, and it works out a very reasonable £49.80 a year. It costs £4.15 (€5) a month, with no ongoing payment commitment. Mullvad goes out of its way to have the simplest, most approachable pricing scheme on the market.

Mullvad and PIA regularly appear in our best free VPN guide, thanks to competitive competitive pricing that makes them ideal for anyone who just wants a cheap VPN to add extra security, without any need for extras like dedicated endpoints. For more information on how this all works, see our what is a VPN guide. This makes it impossible for your ISP or someone on your local network to see what DNS queries or traffic you’re sending or receiving, hides your real IP address by assigning you one belonging to the VPN provider, and can make you appear to be accessing the internet from an entirely different country. We’re going head-to-head with two low-cost, security-conscious VPN services: Private Internet Access, better known as PIA, and Mullvad.Ī consumer VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a service that provides an extra layer security, encrypting all your online traffic and sending it via the VPN provider’s servers.

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