The no-logs claim that got tested twice
Every VPN says it keeps no logs. A few pay an auditor to say it too. Windscribe has the best documented record in our comparison of that claim being tested by people trying to get the data out of them.
In April 2025 a Greek criminal case against co-founder Yegor Sak, brought over a server in Finland allegedly used in a breach, was dismissed on the eleventh of the month because Windscribe had no user data to hand over. In February 2026, by the company's account, Dutch authorities physically seized one of its servers from a datacentre. The machine ran entirely in RAM with no hard drives. What they recovered was a stock Ubuntu install.
Those are the vendor's accounts of both incidents and we have not independently verified the Dutch seizure, so read them as such. They are still stronger evidence than a point-in-time assurance engagement, which is what most of this category offers.
On top of that sit real audits: PacketLabs went through the server infrastructure in June 2024, and Leviathan Security audited the desktop apps in 2021 and the mobile apps in 2022. The reports are public.
Windscribe scores 7.9 under how we rate and it is our Best Free pick.
What it costs, and what Build A Plan is
Windscribe is one of two entities here where the price you are quoted and the price you renew at are the same number. Pro is $5.75 a month, billed as $69 every twelve months, and it renews at $69. There is a monthly option at $9.
Then there is the pricing idea nobody else has. Build A Plan charges a dollar per server location per month and gives you unlimited data on whichever locations you picked, with Windscribe advertising plans from $3.
Think about what that means. If you use a VPN to appear in the United States and the United Kingdom and nowhere else, which describes a large share of actual VPN use, your bill is a few dollars a month for an unmetered, fully featured connection. Every other vendor in this comparison sells you the whole network whether you want it or not.
Against the field at renewal: Mullvad is $5.79, Proton VPN is $6.99, ExpressVPN is $8.33 and NordVPN is $11.59.
The free tier
Ten gigabytes a month, indefinitely, once you confirm an email address. No expiry, no card, and you choose your location, which Proton's free plan does not let you do.
Ten gigabytes is roughly a few hours of video or a month of ordinary browsing with the VPN on for the things that matter. That makes it the most useful free tier here for someone who wants a VPN occasionally rather than always, and Proton's uncapped free plan is the better one for someone who wants it always and only needs one device.
Unlimited simultaneous devices applies to every tier including the free one.
Where it falls down
Support is the reason this is not our overall pick. There is no live chat and no phone line. You file a ticket, and a bot handles you first. For a product this technical, aimed at people who will inevitably need to ask about a config file, that is the weakest support story in the comparison and it is not close.
Canada is the second thing. It is a Five Eyes member, and for buyers who rule out that group on principle no court record changes the calculus. The counterweight is that Windscribe has twice been asked for user data by authorities and twice had none, which is more than most jurisdictional arguments can claim in either direction.
The network is smaller than Nord's, Surfshark's or ExpressVPN's. And we could find no published money-back guarantee, where five of the other six publish thirty days and Mullvad publishes fourteen.
The apps are capable, open source, and written by people who find themselves funny, which is either a feature or a reason to buy something else.
Who should buy it
Buy Windscribe if you want a paid VPN for the price of a coffee, and especially if you only need two or three countries, because Build A Plan is the cheapest honest way into a real VPN on this page.
Buy it if a no-logs claim that survived a criminal prosecution and a server seizure carries more weight with you than an annual audit, which is a defensible position.
Do not buy it if you need to reach a human quickly when something breaks. Do not buy it if Five Eyes jurisdiction is a hard filter. And if you want the same flat-price honesty from a company outside that bloc, Mullvad is in Sweden at a comparable rate with five devices instead of unlimited.
Prices, limits, audits and court cases on this page were read from the vendor pricing page and the vendor no-logs page on .
