Surfshark offers FREE VPN access for 3 months, but ExpressVPN outflanks its rival with more generous giveaway

To unlock the maximum amount of discount, you'll need to subscribe to a two-year plan. If you're concerned about starting a 24-month subscription with a VPN provider that you haven't used before — don't panic.

Surfshark VPN offers a no-questions-asked 30-day money-back period with its longer subscriptions.

And with 24/7 customer service, you'll be able to speak to someone no matter what timezone you're in to resolve any issues or request a full refund.

At the end of the 30-day period, if you're happy with the selection of VPN server locations, Surfshark VPN's selection of desktop and mobile apps, download speeds, and features... then you'll be able to continue using your subscription at £1.89 a month.

Surfshark doesn't limit the number of devices that you can use its VPN service on at any one time, so you can sign-in on your iPhone, Android, Smart TV, Fire TV Stick, iPad or tablet, Wi-Fi router, and dozens of other popular gadgets with the same subscription details.

Surfshark offers fast RAM-only servers in more than 100 countries, so you can spoof your IP address and browse as if you've visiting dozens of different countries with minimal impact to the broadband speed you pay for at-home. Surfshark also includes its Alternative ID system in every subscription, which generates a separate set of details to sign-up for online accounts without ever using your real name, email, or address.

If you subscribe to the £1.49 a month plan... that's about everything you'll find included. Dubbed Surfshark Starter, this entry-level package is designed for those who only want a VPN to encrypt their online activity and manually change their IP address.

Surfshark offers two other price plans: Surfshark One and Surfshark One+.

As you'd expect, these subscriptions all ship with access to Surfshark's popular VPN, but bundle additional apps and features. With Surfshark One, you'll also gain access to real-time credit card and ID breach alerts from the Dark Web. Surfshark monitors forums and other sites frequented by hackers and will preemptively warn you when your details have been shared in a data breach.

Surfshark One — just £1.89 per month in the latest sale, when you agreed to a two-year plan — also comes equipped with 24/7 antivirus protection, webcam protection to ensure cyber criminals can't peer through your camera and secretly film you — a common tactic in blackmail scams, and malware protection.

And finally, the top-tier Surfshark One+ plan comes with everything already listed, plus a bundled subscription to Incogni. Available as a standalone subscription, this system will pressure data brokers to delete everything that have stored on you.

Everything siphoned by data brokers is publicly available or purchased from other companies, like credit card providers, which package up and anonymise some purchasing data. It can include details like your ethnicity, religion, marital status, hobbies, shows you're watching, online purchases you’ve made, address and phone number, search history, and political affiliation.

This data is then sold to the highest bidder. Thankfully, under privacy laws, data brokers are required to wipe your information from their database when you ask them. If you want to start removing your information from these vast repositories, you’ll need to look-up the data brokers operating in your country and send individual opt-out requests to each one.

Or, with a service like Incogni, it will bombard hundreds of data brokers worldwide with the necessary paperwork to ensure that everything they have stored on you is wiped from their records.

Incogni usually costs $7.49 per month as a standalone service, while Surfshark One+ will set you back £2.99 per month in the extended Black Friday sale. That's an 81% discount and you'll get an extra 6 months access for free.

What about ExpressVPN?

Like Surfshark, ExpressVPN is giving away access to its VPN at no extra cost when you subscribe. You'll need to subscribe to a two-year plan to unlock an extra 4 months of subscription at no cost.

ExpressVPN is one of the best-known VPN brands on the planet — so deserves a place on any list about the best VPN deals. Unfortunately, what ExpressVPN has in name recognition, it lacks in price.

Yes, this is far from the cheapest VPN subscription around, but it's still a good deal as it offers some of the fastest connection speeds and unlimited bandwidth.

Established in 2009 and based in the British Virgin Islands, ExpressVPN boasts over 3,000 servers across 105 countries for extensive global coverage. It also has a dedicated team that ensures these server locations aren't blocked by prominent streamers, like Netflix. As such, it has a reputation as one of the most reliable VPN services when it comes to streaming video with a spoofed IP address.

Other premium features include a kill switch, split tunnelling, and a proprietary Lightway protocol for enhanced speed and reliability. Recognized by CNET as an Editors' Choice award winner, ExpressVPN is praised for its user-friendly interface and robust performance in unblocking streaming services.

Despite some concerns regarding ownership by Kape Technologies, it maintains a strong reputation for security and privacy in the VPN landscape.

If you're concerned at all about making the switch to this company — especially with a longer, two-year contract — then you'll be relieved to hear that ExpressVPN offers a 30-day no-quibbles money-back guarantee.

That means you can treat the first month of your subscription like a free trial and walk away without spending a penny if you're not happy with the VPN service.

With 61% off your two-year plan and 4 months of VPN access at no cost, ExpressVPN's latest offer lets you walk away with 28 months of its award-winning VPN software at a huge discount.

ExpressVPN works across a dizzying number of platforms, including Android, iPhone, iPad, Fire TV Stick, Windows, Linux, Mac, Google Chrome, and dozens more. With a single subscription, you'll have access to its complete line-up of browser extensions, desktop and mobile apps.

You can install ExpressVPN on all of your devices, with a single subscription enabling you to connect to 8x devices at a single time.

What is a VPN?

For those who don’t know, Virtual Private Networks, more often referred to simply as VPNs, create a tunnel for everything you do online, shielding your website history and personal information from prying eyes. Since anything routed through this tunnel is encrypted, it’s impossible for your broadband provider, advertisers, or hackers to keep tabs on what you’re doing.

This unlocks a number of perks. For example, if your broadband supplier restricts your download speeds for certain types of traffic (online gaming, streaming video at peak time), then encrypting everything you're doing online will mean it's impossible for them to impose these limits on you. It also means advertisers won't be able to track your activity to target you with eerily-accurate ads.

It’s the reason that employers usually insist that you switch on a VPN when working remotely on a company laptop. But VPN providers, like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark and others, offer that same enterprise-level protection to your personal devices and web browsing.

Without a VPN, security experts compare browsing online to sending a postcard – your message is easily visible as it passes through the system to get to the intended recipient.

But by switching on a VPN before you do anything, you’re adding a (metaphorical) envelope to that postcard, keeping everything shielded from view until it lands in the right hands. The best VPNs rely on A-256 encryption for everything you do — keeping all of your data safe from prying eyes.

Where these brands do diverge is the protocols used, with ExpressVPN using its proprietary Lightway, while Surfshark leans on WireGuard. For those who don't know, a VPN protocol is a set of rules that dictate how data is transmitted between your device and a VPN server. It determines how your internet data is encrypted and routed, impacting the speed, security, and stability of your connection.

But using a VPN isn’t just about privacy and protection.

Whenever your devices connect to the internet, it's assigned an IP address, which includes information like the name of your broadband supplier and a rough approximation of your location.

This is what enables websites to find the takeaways or stores nearest to your current location. If you're not using a VPN, any website can determine your current location — as demonstrated with this creepy demo at the very top of the NordVPN website.

Several streaming services use this location data to adjust the library of titles available to you (usually based on the licencing deals struck in each country) or block its service entirely.

VPNs allow you to manually change your IP address by routing your traffic via one of thousands of server locations scattered around the globe.

This can change the films, documentaries, and shows available to watch on your Netflix or Prime Video app. It can also unblock the likes of Hulu, Max (née HBO Max), Sky Go, ITVX, and BBC iPlayer when travelling.

For example, if you don't want to wait weeks to watch The Handmaid's Tale season 6 in the UK, you can stream new episodes when they're broadcast in the USA and Australia. You’ll just need to check the small-print of each streamer to make sure you’re not breaking the rules by spoofing your location to unlock more shows to watch.