Mullvad VPN is fundamentally a paid service that costs a flat rate of €5 per month (approximately $5.50-$5.80 USD), and this pricing has remained unchanged since the company’s founding in 2009. While Mullvad does not offer a traditional free plan or freemium tier, the company does provide limited free trial options and maintains the most affordable single pricing structure among major privacy-focused VPN providers, positioning itself as an economical choice for users prioritizing anonymity over cost. The service deliberately rejects a free model based on its philosophical commitment to user privacy, believing that truly free services inevitably compromise user data through various monetization schemes, advertisements, or limited functionality that undermine the fundamental purpose of a VPN.
Understanding Mullvad’s Intentional Pricing Strategy
The Philosophy Behind Rejecting a Free Model
Mullvad’s decision to eschew a free tier or freemium model represents a deliberate philosophical stance rooted in privacy advocacy. The company explicitly addresses this question on its pricing page, stating that “Free services nearly always come at some cost, whether that be the time you spend watching an intro ad, the collection of your data, or by limiting the functionality of the service. We don’t operate that way – at all.” This statement reflects a fundamental belief that the economic model underlying a service determines its relationship to user privacy. When a company offers a service without charging users directly, it must generate revenue through alternative mechanisms, and historically these mechanisms have proven incompatible with genuine privacy protection.
Research supports Mullvad’s perspective on this issue. A comprehensive study analyzing 283 Android VPN applications found alarming patterns of data exploitation among free VPN services. The research revealed that 67 percent of free VPN apps contained one or more third-party tracking libraries in their source code, while 16 percent deployed non-transparent proxies that were sometimes used to inject JavaScript into users’ traffic for advertising and tracking purposes. Even more concerning, four of the analyzed applications used TLS interception techniques that may have allowed them to inspect users’ encrypted browsing traffic. Additionally, 82 percent of the free VPN apps requested permissions to access sensitive Android device data, including user accounts, text messages, and system logs. These statistics underscore why Mullvad maintains that accepting payment from users is actually a prerequisite for maintaining authentic privacy protections.
The Sustainability Argument
Mullvad’s pricing philosophy also incorporates a sustainability argument that distinguishes it from competitors. The company explicitly states on its pricing page that “with a sustainable payment model, we can invest in quality development and bandwidth. No €1/month rate or lifetime membership could ever support that.” This argument reflects economic realities in VPN operations. Maintaining a global network of servers, ensuring continuous security updates, conducting regular independent security audits, and providing customer support requires substantial ongoing investment. By maintaining a modest but consistent monthly fee without entering into the race to the bottom on pricing, Mullvad can allocate resources toward actual security and privacy improvements rather than toward marketing and user acquisition schemes.
The company’s track record supports this claim. Since its founding in 2009, Mullvad has conducted multiple independent security audits of its infrastructure and applications. Most recently, in October 2025, Assured completed an independent security assessment of Mullvad’s web app that found no critical, high, or medium-severity security issues. The company also released security audit results for its Android app in March 2025. These ongoing security assessments represent the kind of investment that a sustainable business model makes possible.
Mullvad’s Pricing Structure and Payment Flexibility
The Flat-Rate Pricing Model
Mullvad operates with perhaps the most straightforward pricing structure in the VPN industry. The service costs exactly €5 per month—approximately $5.44 to $5.80 USD depending on current exchange rates—regardless of subscription length. This means whether a user pays for one month, one year, or even a decade of service, the monthly cost remains constant at €5. This represents a radical departure from industry norms where providers typically offer introductory rates that increase substantially upon renewal, or where annual commitments receive significant discounts compared to monthly payments.
To contextualize this pricing within the competitive landscape, consider that NordVPN costs $12.99 per month when paying monthly, but drops to approximately $5 per month when committing to annual payments and $3 per month for two-year commitments. Surfshark’s pricing starts from $15.45 plus VAT when paying monthly, while Proton charges $9.99. Mullvad’s consistent €5 monthly rate therefore offers both transparency and flexibility compared to these competitors’ complex pricing tiers. However, when users commit to multi-year subscriptions with competitors, they may ultimately pay less overall than Mullvad’s non-discounted rate, making Mullvad more expensive for long-term commitments despite being cheaper for short-term or month-to-month usage.
The company takes pride in this pricing stability as a demonstration of its business practices and values. The phrase “Our price hasn’t changed since, well, ever!” appears prominently on Mullvad’s pricing page, and the company explicitly notes that it has maintained this €5 monthly rate since launching in 2009—a period spanning sixteen years during which inflation has significantly eroded currency values. This commitment to stable pricing demonstrates consistency and suggests that Mullvad prioritizes user retention and trust over maximizing revenue through price increases.
Diverse Payment Methods and Anonymous Options
To complement its commitment to user privacy and anonymity, Mullvad accepts an unusually diverse array of payment methods. These payment options range from conventional methods to highly anonymous alternatives, allowing users to select the approach that best aligns with their personal privacy preferences and threat models. The accepted payment methods include credit card, PayPal, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, bank wire, cash sent via mail, and various regional payment systems including Swish, EPS transfer, Bancontact, iDEAL, and Przelewy24.
The availability of truly anonymous payment methods distinguishes Mullvad from most competitors. Users who mail cash to Mullvad’s Swedish office can do so with just a randomly generated payment token, creating a transaction with no traceable link to their identity. This option takes approximately seven to fourteen business days to process, but it provides what Mullvad describes as “maximum” anonymity. For users unwilling to wait nearly two weeks, Mullvad offers faster cryptocurrency payment options. Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash payments typically process within sixty minutes, while Monero payments—the most privacy-focused cryptocurrency—process within twenty minutes. Additionally, Mullvad incentivizes cryptocurrency payments by offering a 10 percent discount on the €5 monthly rate when users pay with accepted cryptocurrencies, reducing the effective cost to €4.50 (approximately $4.90 USD).
This multi-layered payment approach reflects Mullvad’s understanding that different users have different anonymity requirements. Some users may be comfortable paying with a credit card and accepting that their payment provider will have a record of the transaction. Others may prefer to compartmentalize their financial information and use cryptocurrency. Still others may be in jurisdictions or circumstances where maximum anonymity is essential for their security. By supporting all these approaches equally, Mullvad enables users to select payment methods appropriate to their individual threat models.
Limited Free Trial Options
Three-Hour Trial Accounts
While Mullvad does not offer a comprehensive free tier or extended free trial in the traditional sense, the company does provide a limited free trial mechanism that allows prospective users to test the service before committing financially. When users create a new Mullvad account, the account comes preloaded with three hours of VPN time that expires after that period passes. This three-hour trial window allows users to download the application, install it on their devices, connect to various servers, test speeds, and evaluate whether Mullvad’s interface and performance meet their needs.
This approach differs significantly from competitors’ trial offerings. Some VPN providers offer seven-day or thirty-day trials, while others provide no trial at all. Mullvad’s three-hour trial is deliberately limited—it allows genuine testing but does not provide enough time for sustained usage. However, the crucial advantage of Mullvad’s trial is that it requires absolutely no commitment whatsoever. Users can create an account and access the three-hour trial without providing an email address, a credit card, or any personal information whatsoever. The account is identified solely by a randomly generated 16-digit account number. This means users can test Mullvad with zero friction and zero risk of subsequent charges, making it functionally equivalent to a true free trial from a user accessibility perspective.
Extended Money-Back Guarantee
For users willing to make a financial commitment, Mullvad offers a money-back guarantee that provides a longer testing window than the three-hour trial. However, this guarantee applies differently depending on payment method. Users who pay via credit card, PayPal, or Google in-app purchases have fourteen days from their purchase date to request a refund if unsatisfied with the service. This relatively short refund window has recently become even shorter—the company adjusted its policy from thirty days to fourteen days in 2023 as part of efforts to minimize the amount of payment-related data stored about users.
It is important to note that certain payment methods are explicitly non-refundable. Cash payments cannot be refunded due to anti-money laundering regulations, and cryptocurrency payments (Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Monero) are also non-refundable. These restrictions reflect the inherent challenges of refunding truly anonymous payments. When a user has paid entirely anonymously through cash or cryptocurrency, there exists no reliable mechanism for Mullvad to verify which account should receive the refund, making refund processing impossible.
Compared to industry standards, Mullvad’s fourteen-day refund window is shorter than many competitors. NordVPN and Surfshark both offer thirty-day money-back guarantees, while CyberGhost permits refund requests for up to forty-five days. This shorter window reflects Mullvad’s prioritization of minimizing data retention over consumer convenience—the company explicitly changed its policy to reduce the duration it must retain payment data. For users accustomed to longer trial periods, this represents a trade-off: shorter testing window in exchange for stronger privacy protections.
Mullvad’s Commitment to Data Minimization
The Numbered Account System
Understanding Mullvad’s pricing model requires understanding the unique numbered account system that underpins its entire service architecture. Rather than requiring users to create accounts with usernames, passwords, and email addresses like conventional VPN services, Mullvad generates a random 16-digit account number that serves as both the username and password. Users never provide any personal information whatsoever—not a name, not an email address, not a phone number.
This system has profound implications for Mullvad’s operational model and pricing structure. Because Mullvad does not collect or store email addresses, it cannot conduct email-based marketing campaigns or re-engagement initiatives commonly used by other VPN providers to reduce churn and encourage account upgrades. This eliminates an entire category of revenue-enhancing business practices that depend on maintaining detailed user profiles. Furthermore, the inability to link account numbers to identifiable individuals means that even if a government were to attempt to compel user information from Mullvad, the company could provide nothing meaningful. As Mullvad has previously stated in response to questions about surveillance: “In our case, it would be impossible for any government to attain data logs from us because we have none to give.”
The account number system also affects refund administration and payment data retention. When users contact Mullvad for refunds, the company cannot simply email them at a registered address—there is no registered address. All communication must occur via explicit user request. Similarly, when a user pays by credit card or PayPal, Mullvad must temporarily store minimal identifying information to process the payment and handle potential disputes or refunds. However, Mullvad has stated that its long-term goal is to not even store payment details, reflecting an ultimate vision of complete transactional anonymity.
No-Logs Policy and Server Architecture
Mullvad’s commitment to data minimization extends far beyond account creation to encompass its entire server infrastructure and traffic handling procedures. The company maintains a strict no-logs policy that goes significantly further than most competitor claims. While many VPN providers assert that they do not log user activity, Mullvad’s policy is radical in its scope: the company logs absolutely nothing that can be connected to any numbered account’s activity.
Specifically, Mullvad does not log traffic, DNS requests, connection timing information, connection duration, IP addresses, user bandwidth, or any timestamp data related to VPN usage. The only account-level information Mullvad tracks relates to enforcing its five-simultaneous-connection limit—the system monitors the real-time number of concurrent connections per account but discards this information and does not maintain historical records. This means Mullvad cannot answer questions like “how many connections did account X have one hour ago?”—the information simply does not exist within the system.
To implement this no-logs architecture, Mullvad operates all VPN servers exclusively using RAM memory rather than persistent storage drives. When a server reboots, all data in RAM is erased, and the server boots fresh from immutable ROM that Mullvad controls. This technical architecture makes it mathematically impossible for Mullvad to retain logs even if the company wanted to do so—the servers have no mechanism for persistent storage of any kind. Furthermore, Mullvad actively manages remote access to its servers through isolated bastion hosts, and external peripherals including USB devices are disabled via kernel configuration. This comprehensive technical hardening prevents unauthorized access or data extraction even in hypothetical scenarios where a hosting provider or bad actor gained physical access to hardware.
This architecture and policy approach has been independently verified. Consumer Reports’ evaluation of VPN services explicitly noted that Mullvad is one of only three VPNs they would recommend using based on privacy and security testing. The evaluation highlighted that Mullvad maintains open-source code with reproducible builds, meaning independent security researchers can verify that the software running on Mullvad servers matches the published source code. Mullvad also publishes its policy documents transparently, subjecting itself to regular independent security audits.
Comparative Analysis: Mullvad Against Free and Freemium Alternatives
The Reality of “Free” VPN Services
To properly contextualize Mullvad’s decision to charge a modest subscription fee, it is essential to understand the documented problems with free VPN services. The earlier-mentioned research analyzing 283 Android VPN applications found systematic patterns of abuse and exploitation among free offerings. Beyond the tracking libraries and data collection documented in that study, other research has identified even more egregious practices.
The fundamental economic reality is that operating a global VPN network requires substantial capital investment. Servers, bandwidth, security infrastructure, and developer time are not free. When a company offers VPN services without charging users, it must generate revenue through alternative means. While some companies use advertising, others engage in more problematic practices including selling user data to third parties, inserting tracking code into user traffic, or worse. Some free VPN services have been documented actually distributing malware to users, converting user devices into botnets that can be rented out for other purposes.
Mullvad’s modest €5 monthly fee, by contrast, allows the company to operate entirely on user subscriptions without requiring supplementary revenue streams that could compromise privacy. The company explicitly states this philosophy on its pricing page, arguing that alternative revenue models inevitably come at the cost of user privacy. This represents not merely a pricing choice but rather a fundamental architectural decision about how the business model aligns with privacy protection.
Comparison to Competitors’ Pricing Models
Situating Mullvad within the competitive VPN landscape reveals both advantages and trade-offs. For users seeking short-term or month-to-month VPN access, Mullvad’s €5 monthly rate offers excellent value. The service costs approximately the same as a fancy coffee drink yet provides comprehensive privacy protection with all features included. Users pay the same price regardless of how many simultaneous connections they use (up to the limit of five) or which features they access. There are no “premium” tiers of Mullvad service or additional costs for advanced features like multihop, DNS blocking, or quantum-resistant tunnels—all features are included for every subscriber.
However, for users willing to make longer-term commitments, competing services may ultimately offer lower effective monthly costs. NordVPN charges $12.99 monthly but offers two-year plans at approximately $3 per month. Surfshark similarly offers steep discounts for longer commitments. These competitors employ a tiered pricing model where the monthly rate decreases substantially with longer commitments. This strategy incentivizes users to commit to longer contracts, which provides the VPN company with greater revenue certainty and reduced churn.
Mullvad deliberately rejects this pricing model. By maintaining identical €5 monthly pricing regardless of commitment length, Mullvad eliminates lock-in effects and allows users complete flexibility. Users can pay month-to-month without penalty or can purchase credits for an entire year at the same per-month rate. A user who commits to twelve months with Mullvad pays €60 total—the same effective per-month rate as someone paying for a single month. This approach trades maximum long-term revenue for user convenience and demonstrates that Mullvad prioritizes user autonomy over extracting maximum lifetime value.
The Paradox of Pricing and Privacy
Economic Incentives and Privacy Alignment
Mullvad’s refusal to offer a free tier or apply discounting strategies reflects a sophisticated understanding of how economic incentives shape company behavior. When a VPN company charges users directly for subscriptions and derives its entire revenue from this source, the company’s financial incentives align with user privacy. The company cannot monetize user data because doing so would violate the privacy promise that justified the subscription payment. The company cannot reduce costs through advertising or tracking infrastructure because those would consume resources and potentially degrade performance. The company must actually invest in security, privacy, and performance to retain paying customers.
By contrast, when a VPN company offers free services, its incentives become misaligned with user interests. The company must find alternative revenue sources, and every plausible alternative involves exploiting user data or attention. Even companies that begin with genuine privacy intentions face pressure to monetize free users as venture capital funding dries up or investor expectations demand growth. The structural inevitability of this dynamic explains why nearly all “free” VPN services eventually demonstrate privacy-compromising behavior—the business model demands it.
Mullvad’s pricing model therefore represents not merely a commercial decision but rather an architectural choice designed to ensure that privacy protection remains the company’s primary product rather than a secondary concern. By collecting fees from users, Mullvad ensures that user privacy remains the service being paid for, and that privacy compromises would constitute breach of contract and fraud rather than merely a change in business model.
Transparency About Limitations
Mullvad’s approach to pricing and privacy also extends to transparent communication about what the service can and cannot protect against. The company acknowledges forthrightly that a VPN alone is insufficient for comprehensive privacy. For this reason, Mullvad developed the Mullvad Browser—a separate privacy-focused application built in collaboration with the Tor Project. The browser incorporates strong anti-fingerprinting protections, blocks third-party tracking cookies, and disables telemetry.
This commitment to transparency about limitations distinguishes Mullvad from competitors that make exaggerated privacy and security claims. Many VPN providers market their services as complete security solutions that protect users against hackers and malware, claims that overstate what VPNs actually accomplish. Mullvad explicitly states that “if you have targeted monitoring aimed at you, for example if the government is using advanced spy tools such as Pegasus, then a VPN won’t help. If somebody hacked your hardware, a VPN won’t help either.” The company further notes that VPNs cannot “prevent you from things like clicking on suspicious links, downloading malware, or being victimized by email fraud. You still need to practice good habits to stay safe online.”
This willingness to articulate the boundaries of what Mullvad protects reflects the company’s orientation toward providing genuine privacy services rather than marketing privacy theater. Users who pay for Mullvad’s service receive a service that actually delivers what it promises rather than overstated marketing claims. This integrity contributes to user trust and retention even without the artificial lock-in mechanisms that other VPN providers employ.
Practical Implications and User Considerations
Affordability Within Global Context
Mullvad’s €5 monthly pricing must be understood within global economic context. In wealthy developed nations like the United States, Western Europe, and Australia, €5 monthly ($60 annually) represents a modest expense comparable to a streaming subscription or several cups of coffee. For users in these contexts, Mullvad’s pricing presents no barrier to access and represents excellent value for comprehensive privacy protection.
However, in less wealthy nations, €5 monthly may represent a more significant expense relative to typical income. For users in developing economies, this price point may exceed what they can reasonably afford for a VPN service. This reality illuminates a legitimate criticism of Mullvad’s pricing model: the company’s commitment to refusing free tiers and discounting structures, while philosophically consistent, does create barriers to privacy access for economically disadvantaged users worldwide.
Some VPN providers address this concern through regional pricing or tiered service models that offer free versions with limited functionality. Mullvad’s refusal to implement such approaches reflects its belief that compromised privacy services—whether through data collection, limited functionality, or advertising—are worse than no service at all. Whether this principle-driven stance is correct or whether some compromise might better serve global users remains a matter of perspective.
Device Limitations and Simultaneous Connections
Mullvad’s pricing model includes the ability to use a single account on up to five devices simultaneously. This policy permits users to protect multiple devices under one subscription, whether those devices are computers, tablets, or smartphones. From a pricing perspective, this compares favorably to some competitors. Proton VPN’s higher-tier plans permit ten simultaneous connections while Surfshark offers unlimited connections. ExpressVPN permits eight simultaneous connections. However, several free or lower-cost VPNs may offer unlimited connections or higher numbers of simultaneous connections, making Mullvad’s five-device limit a potential drawback for households with many devices.
The five-device limit reflects Mullvad’s architectural choices and operational constraints. The company maintains a no-logs policy that tracks real-time simultaneous connections per account to enforce this limit but preserves no historical connection data. Increasing the limit would require greater server resources to track concurrent connections and potentially more complex logging infrastructure, which could complicate Mullvad’s privacy guarantees.
The True Cost of Mullvad VPN
Mullvad VPN is fundamentally not a free service—it costs €5 per month and provides no free plan or freemium tier. However, the company does provide a three-hour free trial that requires zero financial commitment or personal information, and it offers a fourteen-day money-back guarantee for certain payment methods. The service combines this modest pricing with an exceptionally transparent business model, a strict no-logs policy verified through independent audits, and a commitment to user anonymity through numbered accounts and diverse anonymous payment methods including cash and cryptocurrency.
Mullvad’s deliberate rejection of a free model reflects philosophical conviction that genuine privacy protection is incompatible with business models that require monetizing user data or imposing artificial limitations. This stance is supported by extensive research documenting how free VPN services systematically exploit user data and compromise privacy. By charging users directly, Mullvad ensures that user privacy remains the product being paid for rather than a secondary concern subordinate to advertising revenue or data sales.
For users seeking affordable month-to-month VPN access without long-term commitment, Mullvad’s €5 monthly pricing offers exceptional value and aligns user privacy interests with company financial incentives in a way that free alternatives cannot match. The service includes all privacy and security features at this single price point with no tiered feature access, and users enjoy the flexibility to cancel at any time without penalty. However, users willing to commit to longer subscriptions may find competing services offer lower effective monthly costs through discounting, and users in developing economies may find the €5 monthly cost more significant relative to their income. Within its intended market of privacy-conscious users in wealthy nations seeking genuine privacy without compromise, Mullvad’s non-free but modestly-priced model represents a coherent and principled approach to delivering privacy as a service rather than privacy theater.
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