Best free VPN for Chrome: If you have a Chromebook or don’t want yet another piece of software on your Windows desktop, there is an alternative to a complete VPN: a Chrome extension. Many people are simply looking for best free VPN for Chrome to use with their web browser. So why bother with the complete programme?
With an extension, you may make your browser seem as though it’s someplace else, while the rest of your desktop apps use the local IP address. Even better, depending on your demands, you can obtain this service free with the best free VPN for Chrome.
There are a lot of free “VPN” extensions on the Chrome Web Store. The problem is the same with all other forms of free services by best free VPN for Chrome, though. Namely, which ones do you trust? All of the extension recommendations we have here have been tried by us, and the best free VPN for Chrome have been assessed on Windows.
VPN vs Proxy: Which is faster?
The services suggested here also come as complete VPNs when you download their respective desktop programmes. But as with Chrome extensions, these services are nearly always proxies. What’s the difference?
A VPN links all of your computer’s traffic to the VPN’s servers. When that happens, no matter whether you’re connected using Chrome or the Epic Games Launcher, your computer applications assume they are in whichever location you picked in the Best Free VPN For Chrome.
A proxy using a Chrome extension, though, just routes the traffic for the browser it’s running on. The sole exception to this is on Chrome OS, where Google provides an API that allows Chrome addons to serve as a VPN. That API is not accessible on other operating systems such as Windows or macOS.
In this post, though, we won’t worry about that distinction. With the exception of ZenMate, nearly all of the extensions identify themselves as proxies. We’ve contacted ZenMate to explain our position on Chrome OS, but have yet to hear back.
Best Free VPN For Chrome Extension In 2022
To learn more about Best Free VPN For Chrome Extension, visit our recommendations for the Best Free VPN For Chrome Extension. It can help you decide which VPN is best for usage outside of a browser-based VPN proxy.
1. CyberGhost
CyberGhost best price: $47.88
CyberGhostVPN.com delivers decent speeds, and as with several others on this list, it doesn’t require an account to utilise its free service on Chrome. CyberGhost’s free proxy offers four locations, and that’s about all there is to it. There are no options or extra features. What makes this extension our top option is that it has no bandwidth constraints or usage caps. There are no settings to speak of, but it does offer a little ad for upgrading to its subscription service at the bottom of the extension window.
2. Windscribe
Windscribe best Price: $9.00
Even though Windscribe isn’t at the top of any of our other best VPN rankings, we genuinely appreciate this service. It offers decent speeds and a nice free offering. Usage is limited to 2GB per month, which is very good for ordinary online browsing. It won’t be as useful for streaming at 1080p or higher—you’d max out your bandwidth in less than an hour. You have 14 virtual locations to pick from, but not any of the Netflix streaming specialist servers.
Free users may also use Windscribe’s ad-blocking capabilities, which includes a number of handy enhancements like dismissing all those cookie notice banners (not on by default), and blocking social networking widgets and buttons (also not on by default). You don’t have to provide Windscribe.com with your email address, but you do need to create an account with a username and password. The negative is that you’ll need to remember them both as there will be no possibility of account recovery without an email address.
3. ZenMate
ZenGuard’s best price: $60.00
We haven’t looked at ZenMate in quite some time, but we plan to fix that shortly. Using ZenMate on Chrome is quite straightforward. It provides four areas for free, including the U.S. As with Windscribe, the free servers don’t feature any of the speciality streaming servers.
ZenMate.com also provides a variety of security measures you may enable, including tracker-, cookie-, and malware-blocking. There’s also a safeguard option for when you enter credit cards. ZenMate’s free service doesn’t require a login, but it does include advertisements enticing users to upgrade to its subscription service. It also doesn’t have use constraints, although speeds are restricted to 2 megabytes per second.
4. Hide.me
Hide best price: $100
Hide.me is another nice alternative to the free proxy Chrome plugin. hide.me/en/ doesn’t specify that it has any bandwidth limits—though the free service for Windows maxes out at 10GB—and it doesn’t require an email address. Hide.me offers three server alternatives as well as protection from WebRTC IP leaks in this free service.
What to look for in a free Chrome VPN/proxy addon?
The first thing we’d highly recommend is downloading an extension from a well-known service. Even with proxies, little-known services may be up to no good, and there’s less risk of that from known amounts. Also, watch out for unauthorised applications from reputable VPNs. These are simple to recognise if you look carefully at the “Offered by” line beneath the extension title in the Chrome Web Store. You may also verify whether it’s the real deal by checking out the downloads page on the website of your VPN of choice.
If you merely want to utilise anything short-term, we’d also recommend looking for a service that doesn’t require a login. That said, don’t allow the account to hold you back from utilising Windscribe’s extension if you appreciate the added capabilities. Speeds may also be a problem, but all the VPNs described here are fast enough for uses like web surfing and video streaming, so that shouldn’t be an issue—even with ZenMate’s constraints.
How we tested the best free VPN for Chrome?
We didn’t examine speeds as seriously as we have in prior papers. That’s because the purposes of the browser are more constrained. So, speeds were still an issue, and we relied on the findings from our Windows app testing as a reference. For Windows testing, we test each service over the course of three distinct days. During each test day, we choose five country sites dispersed over the world and test each place three times.
We also take the basic speed—i.e., the speed without a best free VPN for Chrome —on each testing day. We then average the testing speeds with the base speeds to come up with a worldwide average. We then represent that average as a percentage of the basic speed. The aim is to indicate roughly how much of a loss in performance you should expect from a VPN, as opposed to displaying concrete megabytes-per-second values that can change depending on the ISP, devices, and other things.
During our study of the Chrome extensions, we also analysed the number of locations, extension design, and other features. There are a lot of other best free VPN for Chrome extensions available, but if you ask us, these four are your best options.
