Proton VPN, my favorite VPN service right now, has expanded its free plan in response to surging demand for free VPNs. As Proton's general manager announced by tweeting in French and later in Norwegian, free users now have access to servers in Canada and Norway, joining the existing locations in the United States, the Netherlands, Japan, Poland, Romania and Singapore. Free servers in all eight countries are now visible on the Proton VPN app.
As I covered in my Proton VPN review, users of the free plan can't select a location for themselves. Instead, the app picks the fastest available free location whenever you connect. So if you were looking forward to using Proton for free to unblock Netflix in Norway, temper your excitement.
Even so, more locations on the free plan still means good news for free users. When a VPN has limited free servers, they get crowded, slowing down speeds for everybody. Adding new locations anywhere should open up some much-needed breathing room. It also means that users living in Canada or northern Europe have access to more free servers nearby — and the closer a VPN server is to you physically, the faster its speeds tend to be.
I'm happy to see top-tier VPN providers stepping up to the plate as the world clamors for more free VPN access. ExpressVPN's launch of EventVPN is another good sign. If you need a free VPN for any reason, whether privacy, entertainment or something else, it's always best to go with the free version of a service supported by paid subscriptions — otherwise you risk becoming the product yourself.