A VPN means two different things depending on who's asking. If you're a developer working from airports and coffee shops, it usually means encrypting your traffic so the cafe wifi can't see what you're doing. If you're running a small remote team, it can mean something else entirely: a private network connecting your laptops, servers, and databases directly to each other, without exposing any of it to the public internet. Both problems are real, and they're solved by different kinds of tools. Here are 6 real options covering both, pulled from our catalog with actual pricing.
1. ExpressVPN — the reliable default for working on the road
ExpressVPN is the VPN most people have already heard of, covering 94 countries with a strong reputation for speed and a polished app across every platform.
Pricing: $12.95/month, with frequent promotional pricing on longer plans.
Good for: developers who travel often and want a VPN that just works, with fast connections and no configuration.
Watch out for: it's priced at the premium end of the market, and some users report unexpected fees when cancelling — read the cancellation terms before committing to a long plan.
2. ProtonVPN — a usable free tier from a privacy-first Swiss company
ProtonVPN comes from Proton, the Swiss company behind Proton Mail, and is one of the few VPNs with a free tier that's actually usable day to day rather than a crippled trial.
Pricing: free tier available; Plus plan starts around €4/month.
Good for: developers who want to try a VPN with no financial commitment, or who specifically value Swiss privacy law over US/UK jurisdiction.
Watch out for: the free tier has real limits (fewer server locations, capped speed), and even the paid tier can be slower than ExpressVPN on some routes.
3. CyberGhost VPN — aggressive long-term pricing if you commit early
CyberGhost VPN runs a large fleet of servers optimized for streaming and general privacy, and is built around locking in a low price if you're willing to sign up for several years at once.
Pricing: from €12.99/month, with long-term promos down to roughly €2.25/month on a 3-year plan.
Good for: anyone confident they'll want a VPN for years and wants to lock in the lowest per-month rate now.
Watch out for: speed varies noticeably by server, and the eye-catching long-term price can come with renewal terms worth reading closely before you commit for 3 years.
4. IVPN — the ethics-first choice built for IT professionals
IVPN is explicitly positioned around transparency — published ownership, no aggressive marketing, and a stated ethical stance — rather than competing purely on server count or streaming unblocking.
Pricing: from $6.50/month, among the cheaper options here.
Good for: developers and IT professionals who specifically want a provider that doesn't feel like it's optimizing for upsells and affiliate marketing.
Watch out for: it's much less known than the big three, and speed can vary on certain servers — not the pick if you need guaranteed top speed everywhere.
5. VyprVPN — a proprietary protocol built to get past network restrictions
VyprVPN ships its own Chameleon protocol, designed specifically to disguise VPN traffic on networks that actively try to detect and block VPN usage — useful in countries or corporate networks with aggressive filtering.
Pricing: from $12.95/month, with annual-plan discounts.
Good for: developers who regularly work from networks that block standard VPN protocols and need something built to evade that detection.
Watch out for: it's priced at the premium tier, and its logging policy has drawn more scrutiny historically than IVPN's or Proton's — worth reading directly if strict no-logs matters to you.
6. Headscale — skip commercial VPNs entirely and self-host your own mesh network
Headscale is an open-source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server — it lets your laptops, servers, and CI runners join one private WireGuard mesh network using the official Tailscale apps, without ever depending on Tailscale's own commercial servers.
Pricing: completely free and open source (BSD-3-Clause) — you only pay for whatever tiny VM you host the control server on.
Good for: remote teams who want to connect their own infrastructure directly — database on one box, app on another, laptop anywhere — without opening ports to the public internet, and who don't want a third-party company holding the keys to that network. The project is mature: 42,100+ GitHub stars and 4,394+ commits.
Watch out for: this isn't a consumer VPN — it solves a different problem (private team networking, not anonymous browsing), you're responsible for hosting and maintaining the control server yourself, and some Tailscale enterprise features (like a managed ACL UI) aren't available.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| ExpressVPN | No-fuss travel VPN | $12.95/mo | Consumer VPN |
| ProtonVPN | Usable free tier | Free / €4/mo | Consumer VPN |
| CyberGhost VPN | Long-term low price | €12.99/mo | Consumer VPN |
| IVPN | Transparency, ethics-first | $6.50/mo | Consumer VPN |
| VyprVPN | Bypassing VPN blocking | $12.95/mo | Consumer VPN |
| Headscale | Private team mesh network | Free (self-hosted) | Self-hosted mesh VPN |
If you just need to encrypt a laptop's traffic on hotel wifi, any of the first five will do it — ProtonVPN if you want to try before paying, IVPN if the business model itself matters to you, VyprVPN specifically if your network actively blocks VPNs. But if the actual problem is connecting your own team's machines and servers to each other privately, none of those five are really the right tool — that's what Headscale is for, and it's worth the extra half-hour of setup to stop depending on a commercial VPN provider for something as core as your team's internal network.