VPN refund policies compared: how many days and what they exclude
Refund policies side by side: how many days, and whether the refund covers monthly plans, app-store purchases and unused time.
Refund policies by service
A month is the most common money-back window among VPN services, but the small print decides whether you actually get your money back: the clock starts at payment, renewals are often final, and crypto or store purchases may sit outside the guarantee entirely. The page table covers the 363 services with a refund entry, while every count in the text below is drawn from the main ranking of 377 services. These are two separate samples. Here is what the patterns mean before you pay.
Window length: 30 days is the default, and that tells you little
Across the main ranking of 377 services, 149 promise a 30–31 day window, and 33 of them sit in the top 50. Short windows exist too: 56 providers give between 1 and 7 days, and 38 cut off at 10–15. Sixteen offer 40 days or more, yet the best-placed of them ranks 24th, and none reaches the top 20. A long window on a pricing page says nothing about how good the service is.
The zero-day group (29 services) has none ranked higher than 109th place, so avoiding them is easy. Another 65 publish nothing, and 24 describe conditions only in words like "case by case": treat those as no guarantee until support confirms otherwise.
Count the window from the day you were charged, not from first use. Install the app a week late and you have already lost a quarter of it.
Renewals, monthly plans, crypto: what the guarantee leaves out
The renewal charge is where disputes start. ExpressVPN, PureVPN, FastestVPN and Windscribe exclude second payments from the guarantee; Private Internet Access is an exception that covers renewals for 30 days too. Plan length changes the picture: CyberGhost allows 14 days on monthly billing but stretches to 45 for 6-month and longer plans, while IPVanish auto-refunds yearly and 2-year purchases, and monthly plans there are not refunded automatically. TunnelBear covers only the first annual term.
Payment method decides whether money can return at all. X-VPN, FastestVPN and TorGuard mark crypto as final; LunoVPN sends Monero back in XMR or as account credit. Proton VPN refuses cash and bank transfers, and Mullvad excludes cash the same way, a privacy trade-off worth knowing before you pay anonymously. Many terms also allow one refund per customer, so a second claim on a fresh account gets refused.
Usage caps that void a claim
A handful of providers measure what you did inside the window. Windscribe cuts off at 10 GB within 7 business days, VPNBaron at 10 GB and 50 sessions, DroidVPN at 2 GB transferred, Cryptostorm at half the token time used. If you plan a weekend of 4K streaming, check this line first, because a single evening of video can push you over a tight limit and end the claim.
Apple, Google Play and reading the App stores column
Buy through an in-app subscription and the store holds your money; returning it is outside the VPN's control. File a refund request with Apple, pick the subscription, and expect a reply within 24 to 48 hours, though eligibility varies by country. NordVPN and ExpressVPN state outright that store purchases go to Apple, Google or Amazon.
The App stores tick in the table signals that a policy mentions a store at all, including clauses that push the refund to the store or exclude in-app purchases entirely. Read the linked terms before assuming the VPN itself refunds anything.
How refunds feed the score
The price and terms sub-index carries 15 % of the total. Inside it, the window criterion is worth 1.5 of 12 points, scaled as days divided by 30 and capped: a 14-day window earns roughly half, a 7-day window a quarter, and 45 or 60 days score no better than 30. Half-point extras reward monthly-plan refunds and pro-rata returns of unused time; unpublished terms score zero. Together, refund terms can move the overall 10-point score by up to roughly 0.3 points, which is the most a service with full refund marks can gain.
VPN refund questions
Can I claim after 30 days?
Occasionally. Some brands look at late requests one by one; most refuse.
Does cancelling auto-renewal trigger a refund?
No, it only prevents the next charge.
Can I get money back for unused months?
Only where the terms promise pro-rata refunds of unused time; the Unused time column in the table marks which services do.
Are monthly plans refundable?
Depends on the provider: see the Monthly plans column and the specifics above.
Checklist before you pay
Buy on the provider's own site if you want the provider handling the claim, and pay by card or PayPal rather than crypto if the money might come back. Note when you were charged, try the app on your own hardware in the opening days, keep usage modest if a cap exists, and claim once. For two frequently asked cases, the refund pages for NordVPN and Proton VPN spell out the details.