Windscribe

A freemium VPN anyone can download

Windscribe is a VPN first and foremost, sold on a freemium model: a Free plan and a paid Pro plan. The footer of every page names Windscribe Limited, and the about page says the team has been building internet security and privacy products since 2006. On who can buy it, the pages set no country limits. The apps are offered from the Windscribe website and from app stores, with builds for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Fire TV, Apple TV, Huawei devices and routers, browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Edge, and an F-Droid listing for Android users who avoid Google Play. The about page says a person can sign up without giving a name or email and pay with cryptocurrency ("we prefer DOGE"), and the logs FAQ says an account needs only a username and password. The homepage, on the other hand, says free users should "sign up and confirm your email to get 10GB of data every month", so confirming an email appears to be what brings the full free allowance. The site does not show the Pro plan's price or the currencies it is charged in; the plan pages point to a separate pricing page for that. Windscribe describes itself as self-funded and bootstrapped, with no venture capital and no advertising, and says it grows by word of mouth, with the free tier as its way in.

Audits, logging and the Canadian question

Windscribe's no-logs page carries its audit record. It says Leviathan Security Group audited the desktop apps in 2021 and the mobile apps in 2022. Those were reviews of the client software, not of the servers. The same page says PacketLabs audited the full FreshScribe server infrastructure in June 2024, covering 20 repositories and about 80,000 lines of code with external and internal penetration testing, and that this review "found no intentional subversions of our no-logs policy." That finding is the provider's summary of the PacketLabs work; the page says the full reports are public.

On logging, the provider states it never stores browsing history or DNS queries, the real IP address, the VPN IP assigned to a user, connection timestamps, session duration or per-session bandwidth, or any traffic content. It says it keeps three "operational minimums": the date (not time) of last use, total bandwidth used in the last 30 days, and which app versions an account has activated, used to enforce free plan limits and troubleshoot apps.

The site also leans on legal events, which it calls its track record, and it labels its own privacy "Audited & Court-Proven". Those are Windscribe's words and its accounts. The provider says Dutch authorities physically seized one of its servers from a data center in February 2026 without a warrant and found a stock Ubuntu install running in RAM. It says co-founder Yegor Sak was criminally charged in Greece with INTERPOL assistance after a Windscribe server in Finland was allegedly used in a breach, and that the case was dismissed on April 11, 2025 because there was no user data to provide. It also says two servers were seized in Ukraine in July 2021, where no user data was exposed but an OpenVPN CA key was, since the servers were not encrypted at rest. The provider says that incident led to Operation FreshScribe, its move to RAM-only servers.

On jurisdiction, the no-logs page states that Windscribe is based in Canada and makes its own Five Eyes argument: that Canadian law does not require VPN providers to keep logs, and that intelligence sharing between countries matters only when a provider has data to share. That is the provider's reasoning, not a legal finding.

Apps, protocols and the server network

The homepage says Windscribe offers up to 6 connection protocols, naming WireGuard, IKEv2 and OpenVPN, along with a range of ports. The hotel page adds that switching to TCP port 443 can get past simple VPN blocks, and that a Stealth mode is built to disguise VPN traffic as ordinary web traffic on networks that filter harder. Encryption is described as AES-256-GCM.

The feature list is long. The Firewall, which the site pitches as a replacement for a kill switch, is said to block traffic, DNS and IPv6 leaks if the tunnel drops. Split tunneling picks which apps and websites use the VPN. Port forwarding reaches services on a home network from outside. A network-level blocker filters ads, trackers, malware and chosen websites. The browser extensions add anti-fingerprinting tools: rotating the user agent and spoofing the timezone, language and GPS location. The apps can auto-connect on untrusted networks. Every plan page advertises unlimited connections across devices, and the footer links a free DNS service.

The homepage gives the network as 69+ countries and 135+ cities, and says there is "not a single virtual server in sight." It shows a long list of locations, from Albania and Argentina to Vietnam, plus a joke Antarctica entry. The Free plan is limited to locations in 10 countries. The homepage says the service works in heavily censored parts of the globe, and the travel page names China and Russia as places where a VPN can help, while adding that local laws on VPN use vary. For streaming the claims stay general: the homepage talks about access to sports and entertainment from around the world, and the hotel page names Netflix as a site that hotels block. There is no dated list of services the provider says it works with. Torrenting appears only in the page metadata, not in the visible copy.

Plans, the free tier and what the site promises on billing

The plan pages describe two tiers. The Free plan gives "Locations in 10 countries, 10 GB/month", and the homepage adds that the 10 GB comes after confirming an email. The Pro plan offers "Unlimited data, all locations, no restrictions." The site does not show the Pro price, its plan lengths or a renewal figure; it links out to the pricing page. The travel and hotel pages describe "flexible plans" without "lengthy contracts."

Billing gets one firm promise on the homepage: "The price you signed up for is the price you pay. Forever." The site does not say whether that holds after a cancellation and a new subscription. For payment, the about page names cryptocurrency, and the no-logs page's comparison table lists "Accept cash and crypto?" as one of Windscribe's signup features, without spelling out how cash payment works. The site does not state a refund window or trial terms.

For support, the plan pages mention "friendly and responsive customer support", and the footer links a support section. The provider also says it covered every user of WeVPN, a VPN that shut down, with free Windscribe service for the rest of their subscriptions.

What stays open, and who it fits

The biggest gap for a buyer is price. The site's plan pages never state what Pro costs, for which term, in which currency, or whether there is a refund window. The audit record is also narrower than the "Audited" label suggests: Leviathan Security Group's work covered the apps in 2021 and 2022, and the one server-side review the page describes is the June 2024 PacketLabs audit. The page gives no date for a newer review of the servers. The court case and the seizures are told in the provider's own words; the page lists press outlets as sources but does not quote them. The email question is unclear too: the no-logs FAQ says no email is needed, but the homepage ties the full 10 GB free allowance to a confirmed address.

Windscribe fits someone who wants a free plan to try before paying, reads the logging policy line by line, and values RAM-only servers, open-source clients, a live transparency report and the option to sign up without an email and pay in crypto. The long protocol list, port forwarding and Stealth mode suit people on restrictive networks. People who want a published price before downloading, or a recent audit of the logging policy covering the servers, will need to look at the pricing page and the audit reports themselves.