Free VPN for India: Free Plans, Trials and Clients for Travellers

Three kinds of free, three different deals

An ongoing free plan never expires, but the provider cuts something: device count, speed, server choice or monthly data. A time-limited trial is the paid product for a few days, then it stops. A free client, the third kind, is an app with no servers at all; you paste in a key or subscription link from someone else, and without it the app does nothing.

The scoring leans hard on getting past censorship (40%), with privacy at 21%, security 14%, value 11% and network and apps at 7% each. That weighting is why a small provider with strong stealth protocols can outrank a household name.

The top three for India, compared

Where each of the three falls short

CitadelVPN's trial ends after five days and five gigabytes, which covers a long weekend, not a month abroad. Proton's free tier gives unlimited data on one device, yet its bypass score sits at 2.4: Stealth and alternative routing are the whole toolkit, and the free countries are chosen for you. X-VPN funds its free plan with advertising, names no countries where it claims to work, and publishes none of the standard stealth protocols. StelsVPN, fourth at 4.79, pairs a bypass score of 7.1 with a privacy score of 1.3; read that as a warning.

What a free tier quietly charges you

Advertising is the common business model: 50 of the 111 admit to ads in the free plan, 16 say no, 44 stay silent, which rarely means anything good. Silence runs deeper. Only 37 publish any free data allowance, 52 never state the company's home country, and just 44 confirm a kill switch. Independent no-logs audits exist for 12 of 111. A 2016 CSIRO-led study of 283 Android VPN apps (paper) found tracking libraries in 75% of free and paid apps alike and malware signals in 38%, so treat any ad-funded VPN as a potential tracker carrier.

Free stealth clients: strong bypass, empty app

Hiddify, V2Box and v2rayNG all post bypass scores of 6.7 (Karing 5.7) because they speak the protocols that get through filtering: VLESS, Trojan, Shadowsocks, Hysteria2. None sells access. All four publish too little data to enter the main ranking, and the same thinness means you must trust whoever issued your key. One wrong character in that link and the connection never starts, so test it before you fly.

Setting it up before you land

Install before departure. Some VPN apps have been pulled from Indian app stores after government pressure, so on Android an APK straight from the provider's site is the usual fix, while an iPhone user either installs at home or switches App Store region. Turn on the kill switch where offered: on hotel Wi-Fi it is what stops traffic leaking when a free server drops, and free capacity is the first thing to vanish at busy hours, so keep a second app as backup. Legality details and the CERT-In logging rules live on our main India page, which also covers paid options; readers who need an Indian IP from abroad belong on the India servers list. To test the full product first, see our no-card trial list.

FAQ

Short answer: which one to pack

Short trip: CitadelVPN's five-day, no-card, no-email trial, then the 24-month PRO plan paid once at €1.38 a month if you stay. Longer stay on zero budget: Proton VPN's free plan, unlimited data on one device, accepting a weak bypass score and random free countries. No sign-up and no problem with ads: X-VPN's free Basic plan. Already have a server key: Hiddify or v2rayNG cost nothing and bypass well. If the free tier runs out, paid plans across the list start at €0.71 a month with a median of €2.80. One caveat covers all of them: we score published claims, not live blocking tests, so whatever you pick, install a backup before boarding.