Best Free VPN for Torrenting in 2024
You probably know that when you torrent, you should always use a VPN. However, since not everybody can afford to subscribe to the best VPNs for torrenting, we’ve put together this list of five services that you can use for free — at least up to a point. Let’s go over our favorite free VPNs for torrenting.
Why should I hide my IP address when torrenting?
Before we kick off, though, you may wonder why it’s even important that you use a VPN when torrenting. While peer-to-peer file sharing via the BitTorrent protocol itself is perfectly legal, many of the files people share, like movies or games, are protected by copyright.
It is very much not legal to share these files without the makers’ permission and as a result many countries the world over have put some kind of torrenting bans in place. These bans are usually enforced by copyright watchdogs who work hand in glove with every large internet service provider (ISP) to report on any torrenting activity.
How a free VPN can help
The best — and for practical purposes, only — way in which you can avoid your ISP and allied copyright watchdogs is by using a virtual private network, or VPN. The way torrents are tracked back to you is usually by figuring out your IP address from your digital traffic. Your IP address is a set of numbers that is a shorthand for your location.
When you use a VPN, your connection is rerouted to a server operated by the company behind the VPN. Through some technomagery you assume the IP address of the VPN server, hiding your real IP address in the process.
On top of that, and this is especially important for torrenters, a good VPN will also encrypt your connection. This means that your ISP can’t figure out who you really are, either, and thus can’t pass that information along to any copyright watchdogs. Using a VPN means you’re protected from both ends, so to speak, no undue luxury for when you torrent.
The best free VPN for torrenting
Now that we have an idea why VPNs are a good idea for torrenters, let’s go over our favorite free VPNs. Note that all of our picks will have bandwidth caps, which are limits on how much you can use the service per month.
The caps are measured in gigabytes, so that means you can transfer up to that many gigabytes before you need to either start paying for the service — truly free VPNs are best avoided, as we’ll explain later — or, a cheaper option, switch to another free VPN.
If you’re not sure how much bandwidth you need, as a rule of thumb you can figure that one torrented movie will be about 1GB if you get a small rip, and most seasons of a larger TV show can be up to 5GB in size.
While there are VPNs that advertise unlimited bandwidth on their free plans, in most cases this is a scam to draw you in and sell your data on to advertisers. The only reputable free VPN with no bandwidth cap is Proton VPN, which expressly asks free users not to torrent files so as not to strain its network.
Windscribe
Windscribe is our favorite free VPN for torrenting, mainly because it has a generous allowance of free bandwidth — 10 GB per month if confirm your email address, 2GB if you don’t — and a solid reputation as a torrenting VPN. This is no part due to its fine security, which defaults to the excellent WireGuard protocol, which offers speed and security both.
One thing that further makes Windscribe stand out in this respect is that if you opt to just use 2GB per month, Windscribe is effectively anonymous as you won’t need to verify your email address. Effectively, you can add any address when prompted. If you’re particularly worried about being tracked, anonymous sign up is a beautiful thing.
That said, what we don’t like as much about Windscribe is its app, which takes a bit of getting used to. While it gets the job done, it has an odd shape that we haven’t see around before. While Windscribe gets points for being unique, it could be a little clearer about where to hit what.
Overall, though, Windscribe is first among free VPNs, whether you use it to download torrents or not. If you like it so much that you would like to become a paying user, you’ll be happy to know premium VPN plans start at a very friendly $69 per year.
Hide.me
Next up is Hide.me, a service we likely wouldn’t recommend you pay for, but we like just fine as a free VPN thanks to it offering eight servers around the globe and 10GB of free bandwidth. These servers are spread around nicely, too, with locations across North America and Europe.
Security-wise, Hide.me seems like a safe bet, too, with all major VPN protocols present and accounted for. Again, WireGuard seems like the best choice to download torrents, though OpenVPN is a solid choice, as well. When we tested Hide.me, we never encountered any leaks, either, so your data is safe.
That said, we’re not quite as confident about Hide.me’s privacy. While its policy covers all its bases, Hide.me makes many exaggerated claims about what its service can do, many of which don’t quite stroke with the truth. For instance, it claims VPNs don’t impact your download speeds, while they, in fact, very much do.
Still, we wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth too much, especially since Hide.me has had no scandals in its past whatsoever and offers a generous 10GB for free. Even better, if you download the app and create an account from there, you get access to a hidden five-day trial with unlimited data.
PrivadoVPN
The next VPN service you should consider if you want a free torrenting VPN is PrivadoVPN, a relatively new provider. Like all the other entries on this list, it offers a free version next to its paid plans, letting you use up to 10GB per month without paying a penny. If you want more, you’ll need to upgrade.
PrivadoVPN has a few interesting things going for it. For one, of the VPN providers we’ve featured on this list, it has the most servers, offering 12 all over the world. These aren’t just in North America and Europe, either, with Latin America in particular being well represented, making PrivadoVPN interesting for people in that part of the world.
On top of that, PrivadoVPN is the easiest free VPN provider to upgrade, too, as it costs just $30 per year. Sure, you don’t get as many bells and whistles as with premium VPNs like ExpressVPN or NordVPN, but at that price, who cares?
That said, PrivadoVPN does have some issues, most notable the fact that it has some performance issues, which are compounded on its free plan. Expect your speeds to be cut in half even on nearby servers at peak times. Still, you can’t argue with free.
Atlas VPN
Our penultimate entry is Atlas VPN, a service that has more restrictions than most other of the other free torrenting VPNs we’ve featured, having only three servers — two in the United States and one in the Netherlands — and capping your free data at a mere 5GB, half of what our top three offers.
Still, if you’re not a heavy torrenter with but still need a secure free VPN, Atlas VPN may be the ticket. It’s easy to use and even with just three servers it may be a good option, especially if you don’t mind that your torrents take a little longer since, with so few server locations, slowdowns are inevitable.
However, the main use for AtlasVPN will likely be as overflow, when you’ve burned through your allowance with better free VPN providers. This isn’t just due to the lowered bandwidth cap, but also because Atlas VPN’s interface is buggy as can be, with regular freezes and restarts.
Still, if want to download just a handful of files and you’re out of bandwidth everywhere else, Atlas VPN will do just fine.
AdGuard
Our final pick is AdGuard, a brand-new VPN from the same company that made the excellent ad-blocking software. When putting together our AdGuard review, we were impressed with its ease of use and performance, but had some questions about how its security worked; hence it’s relatively low position on this list.
Still, AdGuard VPN’s free plan is pretty good, letting you use up to 5GB per month on 10 servers. Most of these are across Europe, with three in the States, as well — though note that AdGuard VPN also caps free users’ speeds at 20Mbps.
Other than that, AdGuard may be interesting for torrenters simply because it offers decent speeds and, thanks to its promotional offers, a decent price. Though, like with other services on this list, you may not be getting the cream of the crop, you will be getting the best price, which for many of us may be worth more.
Free trial vs free VPN
In our opinion, these services are the best free VPNs out there, but there are other ways in which you can use VPNs for free, namely through making use of free trials. All VPN services will offer some kind of money-back guarantee, usually for 30 days, though some have more — CyberGhost offers 45 days on some of its plans, for example.
The trick in this case is to sign on to the service, pay like you would normally, and then cancel the subscription before the refund window closes, preferably a day or two early. You then move on to the next service, and the next, until the cycle starts all over again, preferably with a new email address and a new credit card — we go over it in our guide on getting a NordVPN free trial.
Though it’s cumbersome and you need to figure out a way to keep track of which refund periods you have burned and which not, the upshot is that you get to use premium VPNs as free VPNs, without any bandwidth caps or other limitations.
Risks of using free VPNs for torrenting
Finally, we should point out that there are many more free VPNs out there besides our five picks, but in most cases you want to avoid them. This is because most free VPNs will make money by selling you instead of their services. Examples are hard to name as most of them pop up on app stores and then disappear within a few weeks, but generally you want to distrust any VPN that isn’t the free version of an otherwise paid app.
Selling your data isn’t your only concern, either, especially if you’re a torrenter: many free VPNs won’t be VPNs at all, but glorified proxies instead. The main difference between VPNs and proxies is that while both spoof your IP address, VPNs will also secure your internet connection, making it impossible for anybody to track you. Proxies don’t do this.
For torrenters this is a vital issue, since an unsecured connection means you can be tracked by copyright watchdogs who will come bearing lawsuits. Whatever you do, if you download torrent files, make sure you do so on a bonafide VPN connection.
If you need a VPN for a short while when traveling for example, you can get our top ranked VPN free of charge. NordVPN includes a 30-day money-back guarantee. You will need to pay for the subscription, that’s a fact, but it allows full access for 30 days and then you cancel for a full refund. Their no-questions-asked cancellation policy lives up to its name.