Every major VPN advertises a monthly price that only exists for the first term. This guide compares NordVPN, Surfshark, ExpressVPN and Proton VPN on the numbers that decide the real cost: the upfront bill, the renewal price when the deal ends, and the total over roughly four years — plus device limits, protocols and published privacy audits.
Starter plan: $67.23 upfront for 27 months, then renews at $79/year (about $6.58/mo).
Basic plan: $94.23 upfront for 27 months, then renews at $139.08/year (about $11.59/mo).
Basic plan: $97.72 upfront for 28 months, then renews at $99.95/year (about $8.33/mo).
VPN Plus: $83.76 upfront for 24 months, then renews at $83.88/year ($6.99/mo).
| NordVPN | Surfshark | ExpressVPN | Proton VPN | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Buyers who value a long, repeated audit record | Households and budget buyers watching total cost | People who want one simple app on every device, incl. TV and router | Privacy-focused users who want proof they can read, and a usable free tier |
| Entry plan | Basic (VPN only; higher tiers add extras) | Starter (the VPN itself is the same on all tiers) | Basic (higher tiers add tools and more devices) | VPN Plus (single VPN plan; Unlimited bundles other Proton apps) |
| Longest intro offer | $3.49/mo equivalent — $94.23 upfront for 27 months (2 years + 3 bonus months) | $2.49/mo equivalent — $67.23 upfront for 27 months (2 years + 3 bonus months) | $3.49/mo equivalent — $97.72 upfront for 28 months (2 years + 4 bonus months) | $3.49/mo equivalent — $83.76 upfront for 24 months (no bonus months) |
| Renewal price | $139.08/year (about $11.59/mo, ~3.3× the intro rate). Renews 1 year at a time | $79/year (about $6.58/mo, ~2.6×). Renews 1 year at a time | $99.95/year (about $8.33/mo, ~2.4×). Renews 1 year at a time | $83.88/year ($6.99/mo, ~2.0×). Renews 1 year at a time |
| Monthly plan | $14.99/mo | $16.45/mo | $14.99/mo | $9.99/mo |
| Simultaneous connections | 10 | Unlimited (as published) | 10 on Basic, 12 on Advanced, 14 on Pro | 10 on paid plans, 1 on the free plan |
| Main protocols (published) | NordLynx (WireGuard-based), OpenVPN, IKEv2 | WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2 | Lightway (in-house), OpenVPN, IKEv2 | WireGuard, Stealth, OpenVPN |
| No-logs policy — third-party checks | Assessed 6 times: PwC (2018, 2020), Deloitte (2022–2025) | Deloitte assurance engagements in 2023 and 2025 (latest full report is customer-facing) | KPMG assessments of the no-logs policy / TrustedServer design (2022, 2023, 2025), plus app and protocol audits | Securitum audits every year since 2022, with reports published openly |
| Free plan | No | No | No | Yes — no data cap, 1 device, server country chosen automatically |
| Based in | Panama | Netherlands | British Virgin Islands | Switzerland |
| Money-back guarantee (published terms) | 30 days, first purchase only — renewals excluded. Request via account / support chat; App Store purchases are Apple's responsibility | 30 days, first purchase only — renewals, prepaid / gift cards and some add-ons excluded. Request via live chat; store purchases follow store rules | 30 days, first purchase on ExpressVPN's own site only — renewals, gift-code and app-store purchases excluded | 30 days on paid plans, once per customer; cash and bank-transfer payments cannot be refunded |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published in November 2026 for each vendor's entry plan on its longest term. The "per month" figures for long plans are the upfront total divided by the months covered — you pay the whole total on day one, not monthly. Bonus months extend the first term only; every plan here then renews one year at a time at the standard rate. Surfshark states that its displayed renewal prices may be subject to A/B price testing, and all vendors can change prices — always confirm the total and the renewal line on the checkout page before you pay.
This is the calculation most VPN pages skip. We added each entry plan's first term to two renewal years, using only the published prices above and assuming renewal prices stay unchanged (vendors do not promise that). Tax is excluded.
| Plan | First term | Plus 2 renewal years | Total period | Total paid | Average / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Surfshark Starter | $67.23 | $79 × 2 = $158 | 51 months | $225.23 | about $4.42 |
| Proton VPN Plus | $83.76 | $83.88 × 2 = $167.76 | 48 months | $251.52 | $5.24 |
| ExpressVPN Basic | $97.72 | $99.95 × 2 = $199.90 | 52 months | $297.62 | about $5.72 |
| NordVPN Basic | $94.23 | $139.08 × 2 = $278.16 | 51 months | $372.39 | about $7.30 |
Two things stand out. First, the headline ranking (Surfshark at $2.49, the other three tied at $3.49) is not the long-term ranking: NordVPN's high renewal price makes it the most expensive of the four over time, despite an identical headline price to ExpressVPN and Proton. Second, for NordVPN, Surfshark and ExpressVPN, a single renewal year costs more than the entire first term did. If you are searching for a "NordVPN alternative" because a renewal bill surprised you, this table — not the intro offers — is the comparison to make.
About "extra months free": the bonus months at NordVPN (+3), Surfshark (+3) and ExpressVPN (+4) are added to the length of the first term. They are not a separate free period, and they change nothing about the renewal price or the yearly renewal cycle. Proton's standard offer has no bonus months; its discount is applied to the total instead, which makes its pricing the easiest of the four to read.
NordVPN's Basic plan is $3.49/mo as an equivalent, billed as $94.23 upfront for 27 months (a 2-year term plus 3 bonus months), and covers the VPN itself for up to 10 simultaneous connections; higher tiers bundle extras such as threat protection and cloud storage. Its main protocol is NordLynx, built on WireGuard with a double-NAT design intended to avoid storing user IPs against tunnel identities. The published privacy evidence is the strongest habit in this group: the no-logs policy has been through six independent assurance engagements — PwC in 2018 and 2020, Deloitte in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 — and the company is based in Panama. The catch is purely financial: Basic renews at $139.08/year, about 3.3 times the intro monthly rate, and one renewal year costs more than the whole 27-month first term.
Surfshark's Starter plan is $2.49/mo as an equivalent, billed as $67.23 upfront for 27 months (2 years plus 3 bonus months), and the VPN itself is identical across its Starter, One and One+ tiers — the higher tiers add antivirus and data-removal services rather than a "better" VPN. Its defining published spec is unlimited simultaneous connections: where rivals cap how many devices can be connected at once, Surfshark publishes no cap. It runs WireGuard, OpenVPN and IKEv2, states a no-logs policy with Deloitte assurance engagements in 2023 and 2025, and is based in the Netherlands. It renews at $79/year (about $6.58/mo) — still the lowest renewal bill here, though about 2.6 times the intro rate, and Surfshark itself notes renewal figures may be subject to A/B price testing.
ExpressVPN's Basic plan is $3.49/mo as an equivalent, billed as $97.72 upfront for 28 months (2 years plus 4 bonus months), renewing at $99.95/year (about $8.33/mo). Instead of WireGuard it uses its own Lightway protocol, and its published design centres on TrustedServer — servers that run only in RAM, with the whole stack reinstalled at each reboot. Simultaneous connections scale with the tier: 10 on Basic, 12 on Advanced, 14 on Pro, with the upper tiers adding tools such as a password manager and identity features. Its privacy claims have been examined repeatedly, including KPMG assessments of its no-logs policy and TrustedServer design in 2022, 2023 and 2025, and the company is registered in the British Virgin Islands. There is no free plan; the 30-day guarantee is the trial — and it only covers first purchases made on ExpressVPN's own website.
Proton VPN keeps the lineup simple: one VPN plan, VPN Plus at $3.49/mo as an equivalent, billed as $83.76 upfront for 24 months — no bonus months, so the arithmetic is exactly what it looks like — renewing at $83.88/year ($6.99/mo), the gentlest jump here at about 2×. (One renewal year costs almost exactly what the two-year first term cost, for half the time.) Paid plans allow 10 simultaneous connections, use WireGuard and a Stealth protocol for restrictive networks, and include Secure Core multi-hop routing via Switzerland, Iceland or Sweden. The transparency record is distinctive: all apps are open source, the no-logs policy has been audited by Securitum every year since 2022 with the reports published openly, and the provider is Swiss. Its free plan has no data cap — limited to 1 device with the server country chosen for you — which makes it the only service here you can live with before paying.
The advertised monthly price is the first term's total divided by its months — paid upfront, and gone at renewal. Compare the renewal line ($79–$139.08/year here) and the multi-year total before you compare anything else.
"Devices" in VPN marketing means devices connected at the same time, not devices you may install the app on. Count phones, laptops, tablets and TVs that are online together. Installing the VPN on a router counts as one connection and covers the devices behind it; Surfshark is the only one here with no published cap.
Look for what is checkable: a modern protocol (WireGuard-based, Lightway, Stealth), RAM-only server designs, and independent no-logs audits — ideally repeated and publicly readable, as with Proton's, rather than a one-off claim. No VPN makes you anonymous or "completely safe"; it encrypts traffic between you and its server and changes the IP address sites see.
All four guarantees are 30 days and cover first purchases — and app-store subscriptions sit outside the vendors' own refund terms, so buy on the vendor's website if the guarantee matters to you. Then decide today what you'll do at renewal: the guarantees do not refund renewal charges, so put a reminder a month before the first term ends and re-check prices (including a fresh intro deal elsewhere) at that point.
No. That figure is the long plan's upfront total divided by the months it covers (including bonus months at three of the four vendors). You pay the full total — $67.23 to $97.72 on the entry plans here — on the day you sign up. Genuine monthly billing exists, but it costs $9.99–$16.45 a month, several times the headline rate.
Every plan here renews automatically, one year at a time, at the standard rate — not for another two years and not at your intro price. On the entry plans that is $79/year (Surfshark), $83.88/year (Proton VPN), $99.95/year (ExpressVPN) or $139.08/year (NordVPN), before tax. Turning off auto-renewal stops the charge but does not refund anything; and under all four vendors' published terms, a renewal charge that has already happened is not covered by the 30-day money-back guarantee.
On published prices, Surfshark: about $225 over 51 months in our calculation, against about $372 for staying with NordVPN Basic over the same span. Proton VPN is the next cheapest (about $252 over 48 months) and has the smallest renewal jump. Run the same first-term-plus-renewals arithmetic for any other service you consider — headline prices alone will mislead you.
It refers to simultaneous connections — how many devices can be connected to the VPN at the same time — and Surfshark publishes no cap on that number. It is not a licence to share one account without limits: the account is still governed by the vendor's terms of use. At the other three services the cap (10–14) also counts simultaneous connections, not installations; you can generally install the app on more devices than you can connect at once, and a router install counts as a single connection.
We don't publish a speed ranking, because we have not run speed tests — this guide is compiled from publicly available vendor information, not hands-on testing. What can be compared from public specs is the protocol generation (all four use modern protocols designed to be lighter than legacy OpenVPN), the server design, and each vendor's published audit record. Real-world speed depends on your line, distance to the server and time of day, so use the free plan (Proton) or the 30-day guarantee window to test on your own connection.
No, and be wary of any page that promises that. A VPN encrypts the traffic between your device and the VPN server and masks your IP address from the sites you visit. It does not protect you from malware, phishing, account passwords being reused, or tracking by services you are logged into. Treat vendor phrases like "military-grade" or "complete protection" as marketing, and weigh instead the checkable items: protocols, published audits, and what the privacy policy actually says.
Usually not from the VPN vendor. Under the published terms of all four services, subscriptions billed through the Apple App Store or Google Play follow the stores' refund rules, and the vendors' own 30-day guarantees are written around purchases on their own websites (ExpressVPN states this most explicitly). If the money-back guarantee is part of why you're buying, subscribe on the vendor's website.
Because this comparison is built from the vendors' published pricing, specifications and audit documentation, checked in November 2026. Where a judgment appears — for example, that NordVPN's renewal is steep — it is arithmetic on the published prices, shown in the tables so you can verify it yourself.