What a VPN costs a year, and what it costs after the first term

A VPN costs somewhere between $5.78 a month and $99.99 a year, and which end you land on has very little to do with the product. It depends on whether you are in the first term or the second. All figures below were read on 21 August 2026. ExpressVPN sells 28 months for $83.72 and then charges $99.95 a year, which is 2.8 times the rate it advertised. Surfshark sells 27 months for $67.23 and does not publish what comes after. NordVPN’s own website would not show us a price at all. The two exceptions are Proton VPN, at $83.88 a year or $119.76 for two years with no introductory discount to expire, and Mullvad, which has charged the same €5 a month since 2009 and has never run a sale. Over five years, the two that never discount are the two cheapest on this page.

How to read the ledger above

Each row prices the entry tier, in the shape the vendor actually sells it, which is why the periods do not match. ExpressVPN and Proton VPN publish annual figures, so they get annual figures. Surfshark sells one charge covering 27 months and says nothing about what follows, so its row is that single charge. Mullvad only sells months. NordVPN’s row is the twelve-month in-app purchase on Apple’s US listing, because that is the only NordVPN price we were able to read.

The individual price records carry the mechanics for each one, including the tiers above the entry tier.

The advertised rate, and the one that follows it

Prices read on 21 August 2026 from each vendor’s own pages, except NordVPN, which is from Apple’s US App Store listing. The ratio column is our arithmetic: the stated renewal price divided by the first term annualised. Mullvad’s dollar figure is the conversion printed on its own page and moves with the exchange rate.

ExpressVPN prints the gap, which puts it ahead of most of the category

The headline on ExpressVPN’s order page is $2.99 a month. Directly beneath it, in the small grey line under the button, is the whole story: billed $83.72 for the first 28 months, then autorenews at $99.95 annually.

Annualise the first term and it runs at $35.88 a year. The renewal is $99.95. You will pay 2.8 times as much in month 29 as you did in month 28, for the same service, and the only thing that changed is that the promotion ended.

The structure repeats up the range and the multiple actually narrows. Advanced is $4.49 a month, billed $125.72 for 28 months, then $119.95 a year — 2.2 times. Express Pro is $7.49 a month, billed $209.72, then $199.95 a year — also 2.2 times. In each case the advertised monthly rate times 28 gives the first-term total to the cent, so nothing is being hidden in the arithmetic.

None of that is a compliment to the pricing. It is a compliment to the disclosure. ExpressVPN tells you the number before you type a card in, and on this desk that counts for a great deal, because two of the other four here do not.

Surfshark’s 27 months, and then silence

Surfshark Starter is $2.49 a month on the 24-month plan with three months added, which is one charge of $67.23 covering 27 months, set against a struck-through $444.15. Surfshark One is $75.33 for the same 27 months and One+ is $121.23.

Annualised, $67.23 over 27 months is $29.88 a year, the cheapest first-term rate on this page by some distance. It is also the last figure you get. The page confirms the plan converts to annual billing when the first term ends but does not say at what price, and the FAQ that appears to address it does not.

This matters more than it sounds, because a first term of 27 months means the renewal arrives more than two years after you last thought about it, on a card you may have replaced, at a price you were never quoted. That is not a claim that Surfshark’s renewal is high. It is a claim that you cannot find out what it is before you buy, and the entire reason this desk exists is that those two statements are different.

NordVPN would not show us a price

There is not much to add to the note above. The biggest name in the category returned an error to every request we made on the day we checked, so the ledger carries the only NordVPN figure we saw with our own eyes: $99.99 for twelve months on Apple’s US listing, sitting next to a second twelve-month purchase at $83.99. Apple’s page describes the $99.99 one as the one-year plan at the best price, which is a striking way to label the more expensive of the two twelve-month options on the same screen.

We will price NordVPN from its own site the moment we can load it, and the record will be updated with the date.

Proton VPN has no first term

Proton VPN Plus is $83.88 for twelve months, $9.99 month to month, or $119.76 for twenty-four months, which works out at $59.88 a year and is the cheapest steady-state price on this page.

The reason it is on the honest side of this comparison is structural. Proton’s pricing page pulls its numbers from a public plan feed that carries two prices for every term: the one currently offered and the standard one. On 21 August 2026 those two numbers were identical at one month, twelve months and twenty-four months, and the promotions list was empty. The renewal sentence Proton renders on the page has the form “billed at X for the first period, then renews at Y”, and here X and Y are the same figure.

There is also a free tier: one device, servers in ten countries, no card. In a category where the free option is usually a countdown, that is worth noting as a price fact rather than a product one.

Mullvad, which has never had a discount to expire

Mullvad charges €5 a month. Not €5 a month on the two-year plan. The pricing page lists one month, one year and one decade in a row, at €5 a month each, and converts that to $5.78. Twelve months comes to $69.36 at that conversion.

Mullvad states the rate has not changed since it launched in 2009, that it runs no seasonal sales, and — unusually — explains why there is no free plan rather than pretending the question was not asked. Paying in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash or Monero takes 10% off. There is a 14-day money-back guarantee. That is the whole pricing page.

Here is the part worth sitting with. Mullvad is more expensive than every introductory rate on this page and cheaper than the renewal on the two we could compare. A reader shopping on the first screen of a comparison table will see $5.78 next to $2.49 and conclude Mullvad is the expensive one. Over any period longer than the promotion, they will have that backwards.

Five years, which is longer than any of these promotions

Our arithmetic on the prices read 21 August 2026, assuming nothing changes, which it will. ExpressVPN’s $383.57 is $83.72 plus three renewals at $99.95 and actually pays through month 64; there is no way to buy exactly 60 months. Mullvad’s total moves with the euro. Surfshark cannot be completed because no renewal price is published.

The two products that never advertise a discount finish first and second. The one advertising 80% off finishes third, and the one we could not get a website out of finishes last on the only price it would show us.

What to do about it, in three lines

Put the renewal date in a calendar the day you buy, with the renewal price in the entry. A 27- or 28-month first term is designed to outlive your memory of buying it.

Buy the cycle you will actually keep. On the two flat-priced services here the cycle changes nothing at all, and on the discounted ones the longest term is only a bargain until it isn’t.

And if a pricing page will not tell you what year three costs, treat that as information. It is the cheapest thing you will learn about a VPN before you pay for it.

The verdict

On the one axis this desk measures — what it costs to keep, not what it costs to start — Proton VPN is the cheapest at $119.76 every two years, and Mullvad is the only price here with no first term to expire. Between them they take the top two places over five years while running the two least aggressive promotions on the page, which is not a coincidence.

ExpressVPN earns real credit for printing its renewal price under the button, and then charges 2.8 times the advertised rate for it. Surfshark has the cheapest first term on the page and the emptiest renewal column. NordVPN could not be priced from its own site on the day we checked, and we would rather say that than fill the cell in from memory.

Speed, jurisdiction, audits and whether any of this actually protects you: not our department, and there are people who test it properly. We only counted what leaves your account, and in this category the honest number is the second one.