VPNs are great privacy and security tools for general browsing, streaming, and torrenting, but they can also be useful for gamers. If you’re wanting to keep your IP address private or if you’re wanting to game on servers locked to other regions, a VPN can be just the tool you need. A lot of free VPNs suffer from slow speeds, very limited data, or actively sell your usage data. To avoid this what you want is a reliable product from a respected VPN provider.
You should be aware that playing games through a VPN will always increase your ping, this is especially important in high-speed shooter games where your reaction times can be critical.
Tip: Ping is a measure of delay between your device sending a message and the game server receiving it. Ping is measured in milliseconds and smaller is better.
Ideally, you should always connect to a VPN server and game server as close to you as possible for the best experience. If you want to play on foreign servers, your best bet is to choose a VPN provider that offers a server in the region you want to connect to. Free VPNs may have very limited server choices and inconsistent performance, if you run into issues it may be best to try a paid service, most offer some sort of money-back guarantee so you can try it out risk-free.
Windscribe
Windscribe offers up to 15GB of unthrottled, free monthly data for users that confirm their email address and tweet at its twitter account. This should be more than enough data for even a household of gamers.
Tip: Unthrottled means your connection speed is not artificially reduced.
Ten servers are available to free tier users, located in the US, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania. Switzerland, the UK, and Hong Kong. For those gamers in these countries, this service is ideal as ping times should be relatively low.
Paid plans are also available starting from just $2 a month if you build your own plan with a reduced feature set.
Hide.me
Hide.me offers 10GB of unthrottled, monthly free data, which should be more than enough for heavy gaming usage.
Five locations are available to free tier users: US East, US West, Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany. This VPN offers plenty of options for users based in or wanting to play in North America, but only limited support for the rest of the world.
Paid plans are also available starting from $4.99 a month for a two-year plan covering up to 10 devices.
ProtonVPN
ProtonVPN offers unlimited data but throttles your connection, your experience may vary with the free tier from this provider, depending on which games you’re playing. For something high-speed and ping-sensitive it may not be suitable, but it should suffice for less intense multiplayer games.
Only three locations are available to free users: the US, the Netherlands, and Japan. This lack of choice isn’t great, but this is one of the few free VPNs offering a free server outside of North America or Europe.
Paid plans are also available starting from $3.29 a month for a two-year plan covering 2 devices.
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