Using a VPN is a great way to access region-blocked content from other countries without ever having to leave your home. What this means is you can get your hands on new streaming content and ad-free YouTube, for instance, with some VPN services even letting you access US Netflix. But what are the cheapest and best VPN services on offer in 2016?
Not worried about the price? Check out the best VPN services in 2016
While there are a bunch of free VPN services out there, I’d advise steering clear. Sometimes these free VPN services aren’t encrypted, which means your ISP can still trace your traffic while you’re using it, and some may even sell your bandwidth while you use it.
It’s always best to stick with a paid-for VPN service for peace of mind, so here’s the definitive list of the cheapest VPN services available in 2016.
1. Hotspot Shield:£19 per year (£8 per month)
The cheapest VPN on this list – provided you opt for the 12-month price – Hotspot Shield is also one of the fastest. Connecting via the US, we could download at 78% our usual speeds, which makes it a great choice for those looking at downloading huge files. Sadly, US Netflix is blocked, but the VPNs that fall in the unblocked list are falling dramatically anyway.
2. TunnelBear:£37 per year (£3 per month)
The Canadian-based VPN service, TunnelBear is a great choice for your average internet user, with an easy-to-use interface. It’s super-cheap, equating to just over £3 a month. Both Netflix and BitTorrent are blocked, though, so you’ll have to fork out a bit more for services that have a workaround. Performance is speedy, giving us 79% of the bandwidth we’d normally see in the UK when connecting via the US. It’s also free if you use less than 500MB per month.
3. Avast SecureLine:£45 per year (£3.75 per month)
Just like TunnelBear, SecureLine is very straightforward to use: just pick the country you want to connect to and you’re good to go. Netflix US works with this VPN, but as with any VPN that currently works, you might find it suddenly unable to connect to Netflix US in the near future. Speeds are a little slower than the others, though, at 51% of our usual rate.
4. CyberGhost:£45 per year (£4 per month)
As with most of the cheap VPNs in this list, CyberGhost is incredibly easy to use. Instead of giving you a list of servers to connect to, it does all the legwork for you – just click what you want to do and start doing it. If you’re after something cheap for more than one device, though, you’re better off looking elsewhere, with prices reaching upwards of £70 for five devices. That being said, it does have a speedy performance of 73%.
5. Hide My Ass Pro:£48 per year (£7 per month)
A slight leap up on price is Hide My Ass Pro, which has one of the biggest selection of servers you can connect to. With 190 countries to choose from, you’re spoilt for choice, even if you can only use two devices at once. The interface is super simple and newbie-friendly to use, and speeds aren’t too bad, at 57% of our usual rate.