VPNs are great tools, and they are becoming more and more popular for gaming. Gamers around the world are using VPNs to get around regional restrictions for game betas, to protect himself from DDOS attacks, or even just to get around school firewall restrictions. If you’re here looking for the best free VPN for gaming, you’ve come to the right place.
Why use a Free VPN for Gaming?
So there are a lot of benefits to using VPNs for gaming, but not too many when using a VPN. When you use a VPN to game, you need things like high speeds, fast servers, and unlimited data since games take a lot of bandwidth to play and require high speeds to minimize latency and lag during sessions.
Free VPNs often limit speed, bandwidth, and available servers to funnel you to their paid version. Even the best free VPNs can’t compare to paid VPNs. But if you’re dead set on using a free VPN for gaming, the one that I would recommend is Windscribe.
Windscribe VPN is a great free VPN for gaming since it has a bigger bandwidth cap than other free VPNs, better speeds, a great website, and good apps for PC and mobile.
The logging policies and security also seem excellent for a free VPN, whereas some other VPNs force ads on you, collect your data or store data logs in their servers.
Why Use a Paid VPN for Gaming?
Whereas a free VPN limits your download limits, speeds, and available servers, a paid VPN does none of this.
This means you’ll get a very good experience while gaming with no lag, tons of servers to choose from, and overall better service. The downside? You have to pay. But even the best VPNs aren’t that expensive.
Best Paid and Free VPN for Gaming?
The best paid VPN I would recommend is TorGuard. TorGuard has great customer service, tons of servers to choose from, fast speeds, and plenty of extra add-ons you can check out. See our full thoughts in the TorGuard Review.
TorGuard is also an excellent VPN for torrenting since you can use their included proxy within the primary VPN package (my preferred method of torrenting).
The best free VPN I would recommend for gaming is Windscribe, as I already mentioned–it’s quite fast, easy to use, and doesn’t seem inherently designed to collect and sell your data to advertisers. See our full thoughts on Windscribe in the Windscribe review.
Is Tunnelbear a Good VPN for Gaming?
You may have heard of Tunnelbear as a good free VPN option for gaming, but unless you only want to use 500 MB, it’s not really an option.
Overall, it’s not the worst VPN, but you could use this amount of data in minutes! Plus, Tunnelbear doesn’t allow torrenting on any of their servers! For more info on Tunnelbear, see our Tunnelbear Review.
Is Cyberghost a Good VPN for Gaming?
Cyberghost is another popular option I see thrown around. Unlike Tunnelbear which is fairly decent, Cyberghost is much worse with ads and other forms of annoying limitations. However, Cyberghost also has a data cap like Tunnelbear. For more info on Cyberghost, see our Cyberghost Review.
Do VPN Speeds Affect Gaming Speeds?
So the big question a lot of gamers want to know, is does using a VPN affect your speed while gaming? That depends on a lot of factors. For me, if I use TorGuard in the USA and play League of Legends, I don’t notice any increased lag, but I also have fast internet.
However, if you also have fast internet and use a VPN in other locations with TorGuard, you won’t notice much of a difference. In fact, some competitive game teams are forced to use VPNs since they don’t want to be DDOSed and streamers also frequently use them. We’ve covered guides on how to use VPNs with games like GTA online, and even Destiny.
The main thing to remember is that it depends on your internet speed and the VPN you choose. Not all VPNs give you the same speed. The reason is that each VPN provider has their own servers and connection variables which can influence your speed. The fastest VPNs for gaming are TorGuard and IPVanish.
Are VPNs Good for Anything Else Besides Gaming?
You bet! I don’t torrent without using a VPN since you can get annoying letters from copyright holders or other snoopers. If I’m in a cafe like Starbucks, I also use a VPN every time just in case someone is trying to steal my passwords since most public Wi-Fi hotspots are unsecured. VPNs are also good for a lot of other things, as I mention in this VPN mega guide here.
