Get 75 percent off Proton VPN two-year plans

Now is arguably the best time of year to sign up for a VPN, or gift a subscription to someone. Black Friday VPN deals are already out there, with one of the best deals on our favorite VPN overall. Proton VPN offers access to its VPN Plus tier for two years for $59.76, which works out to $2.49 per month.

This represents a 75 percent discount compared to the regular price of $10 per month. Overall, you’ll save $180.

Proton VPN is our pick for the best VPN overall because it checks all the boxes it needs. There is a free plan with unlimited data, but you can only connect to servers in a few countries and the connection may not be fast enough to watch anything from your favorite streaming service’s library in that language. The VPN Plus tier opens up a lot of options, such as the ability to connect to 15,000 servers in over 120 countries and simultaneous protection for up to 15 devices.

The apps are well designed — Proton has clients for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android — and it’s easy to find the feature or setting you’re looking for. In our tests, Proton VPN Plus had relatively little impact on browsing speeds. Our download speeds dropped by 12 percent and uploads by 4 percent, while the average global ping remained under 300 milliseconds (which is especially impressive if you’re connected to a server on the other side of the planet).

Perhaps most importantly, it’s Proton’s commitment to privacy that helps make its VPN an easy recommendation. There is a no-logs policy, which means that it does not record user activity or any identifiable characteristics of devices that connect to the VPN. Proton servers use full disk encryption to enhance privacy as well.

Proton VPN isn’t the only service offering a Black Friday VPN deal this year, of course. There are plenty of other services available in the ones we love. Here are the best of the bunch if you’re looking for an alternative to Proton VPN.

• Surfshark One (24 months + 3 months free) for $59.13 (88 percent off): A VPN is great, but it’s not enough to protect all your data on its own. Surfshark One adds several apps that enhance your security beyond just a VPN service, including Surfshark Antivirus (scans devices and downloads malware) and Surfshark Alert (alerts you when your sensitive information comes up in the event of a data breach), as well as Surfshark Search and a lower-level alternate ID. This super low deal gives you 88 percent off all of these features.

• NordVPN Plus (24 months + 3 free months) for $105.03 (74 percent off): NordVPN took a 74 percent discount on its Plus subscription for Black Friday. For a little extra, you can get a powerful ad and tracking blocker that can also detect malware downloads, as well as access to the NordPass password manager. The Plus plan also adds a data breach scanner that scans the dark web for your sensitive information.

• CyberGhost (24 months + 4 free months) for $56.94 (84 percent off): CyberGhost has some of the best automation you’ll see on any VPN. Thanks to a system of smart rules, you can specify how its apps respond to different types of Wi-Fi networks, with exceptions for certain networks you know by name. Usually, you can set it to automatically connect, disconnect, or send you a message asking what to do. Another best feature of CyberGhost is the streaming servers — I’ve found better video quality and more consistent unblocking when I use it on streaming sites.

• Private Internet Access (36 months + 4 months free) for $79.20 (83 percent off): Private Internet Access (PIA) offers the best price available right now on a VPN that I recommend using. With this deal, you can get 40 months of PIA for just under $2 per month — an 83 percent discount on its monthly price. Despite being very cheap, PIA has a lot of features, coming with its own DNS servers, built-in ad blocker and automation powers to rival CyberGhost. However, internet speeds can fluctuate while connected.