In short
- All of a device's traffic goes through a VPN: DNS queries, the addresses of sites and apps. That calls for more trust than an ordinary app.
- Servers, bandwidth and development cost money. If you are not paying with a subscription, the income comes from somewhere else.
- Common models for free services are bundled advertising with trackers, selling behavioural data, affiliate traffic substitution and reselling the connection.
- Cutting costs on infrastructure shows up as low speed, overloaded servers, DNS leaks and abandoned apps that stop getting updates.
- A paid subscription is no guarantee of good behaviour on its own, but it makes the business model visible and checkable.
Why a VPN needs more trust than an ordinary app
An ordinary app only sees its own data: your notes, the conversations in one messenger, the photos in a gallery. A VPN is different — every bit of a device's internet traffic goes through it.
That means the service can see the addresses of the sites you reach, your DNS queries, the timing and volume of connections, and for unencrypted protocols some of the content as well.
Modern HTTPS closes off the contents of most pages, but the list of domains, apps and services still passes through the VPN. To anyone looking to monetise it, that is valuable data.
So the question "how does this service make money" matters more for a VPN than for almost any other app on your phone.
Someone still pays for a free service
VPN infrastructure costs money continuously: server rental, bandwidth, building and updating apps, support. Those costs do not disappear because there is no subscription.
It does not follow that every free VPN is dangerous. Sometimes free access is a limited tier of a paid service, a university or non-profit project, or a trial period.
But if a service has no paid plan, no visible sponsor and no transparent organisation behind it, it is worth working out what keeps it running.
The answer to that question is usually what determines how risky the service is for you.
The usual business models
Advertising inside the app. Not a catastrophe in itself, but ad modules often carry trackers that collect device identifiers and activity data.
Selling behavioural data. The list of domains visited, along with the timing and frequency of connections, can be passed to partners in aggregated or near-raw form.
Affiliate traffic substitution. An app can quietly redirect requests, insert its own affiliate links into purchases, or alter what you are shown.
Reselling the connection. Some free services route other people's traffic through their users' devices, making a person part of a network they know nothing about.
Where free services cut corners
Infrastructure. A small number of servers for a large number of users means queues, low speed and an unstable connection at peak times.
App quality. A weak client can allow DNS or IPv6 leaks: traffic nominally goes through the VPN, but some queries slip past it straight to your provider.
Support. When something breaks, there is usually nowhere to turn.
Updates. An abandoned app stops receiving security fixes while keeping access to all of a device's traffic.
How to assess a specific service
Look at who publishes the app and which country the company is registered in. An anonymous developer with no contact details is a reason for caution.
Read the privacy policy and find the sections on sharing data with third parties and on advertising. Vague wording about "partners" and "improving the service" often means data collection.
Check whether the service has a paid tier. A clear paid plan is a visible source of income.
See how recently the app was updated, and run a leak test: it will show whether DNS queries are travelling outside the connection.
Paid subscriptions and MaskNet
A paid subscription does not make a service honest automatically, but it removes the central question: it is clear where the money comes from. The service earns when the connection is fast and people renew.
MaskNet works that way: the subscription is the only source of income. There is no advertising in the apps, no record of the sites you visit is kept or sold, and there is no affiliate traffic substitution.
How that works financially is set out in detail on the about page, in the section on how MaskNet makes money.
Choosing a service is first of all choosing a business model you trust. Free access can be fine for a one-off task, but for everyday use it is worth understanding the economics in advance.
What to remember
- All of a device's traffic passes through a VPN, so the provider's business model matters more than for an ordinary app.
- Free access is not always dangerous, but it needs a clear answer to how the service stays alive.
- Common income sources are advertising with trackers, selling behavioural data, and substituting or reselling traffic.
- Cutting corners on infrastructure and development leads to low speed, leaks and abandoned apps.
- A paid subscription makes the source of income visible and checkable.