What a VPN costs a year, and what it costs after the first term
Two of the five biggest names in this category will not tell you what you pay in year three. One has charged the same €5 a month since 2009. Here is the ledger, dated.
Surfshark
Vendor pricing page, surfshark.com/pricing — read on 22 August 2026.
$67.23 one-off · list price
Not published renewal price
- Billed
- $67.23 once
- Renews at
- Not published
- Free tier
- None. A 30-day money-back guarantee, which is a refund window rather than a plan.
- Price read from
- Vendor pricing page, surfshark.com/pricing
- Checked
- Vendor
- surfshark.com
“Not published” means we did not find a renewal price stated by the vendor on the date we checked. It is not a claim that the price changes on renewal, and it is not a claim that it doesn’t.
Surfshark sells its Starter tier at $2.49 a month on the 24-month plan, with three extra months on top. In practice that is a single charge of $67.23 covering 27 months, against a struck-through price of $444.15. Surfshark One is $75.33 for the same 27 months, One+ is $121.23.
What the page does not carry is a second number. Its own FAQ says the two-year plan is billed once at the start and then annually after it expires, and that on renewal you are charged the applicable renewal price. The applicable renewal price is not stated anywhere on the page we read.
So the first term annualises to $29.88 a year, and the figure that follows it is the one you cannot look up before you buy. That is why the renewal cell here reads Not published — it describes our check on 22 August 2026, not Surfshark’s intentions.
Where we have written about this
This is a price record, not a review. We do not rate the product, we track what it charges. The method is on how we check prices; mistakes end up in the corrections log.