N.B. Some links in this article are affiliate links, and I may receive a commission for purchases made at no extra cost to you.
Neighboring country Germany is actually quite a popular country for VPN providers to base some of their free servers, but what about France? Are there any VPN providers that offer free servers in France?
You have to do a bit more searching than for some other countries, but there actually are some good free VPN options with French servers, so you can get an IP address in France for free.
Here’s a summary of your main options:
- PrivadoVPN – Free France server, 10 GB monthly data.
- Windscribe – Free France server, 10 GB monthly data
- Tunnelbear – Free France server, 500 MB monthly data
As with most countries with free VPN servers, there are always tradeoffs, whether it be in terms of data limits, or reliability and privacy issues. I couldn’t find a truly unlimited and fully private free VPN with servers in France, but there’s still some good free services you can use.
Let’s look at each option in more detail.
Free Option #1 – PrivadoVPN Free Version (10 GB/month data)
This first option is actually not so well known, since it’s a newer VPN company. But PrivadoVPN are an up-and-coming VPN service that do offer an excellent free version of their product, with one of their free servers located in France.
Here are some features of PrivadoVPN free version:
- 10 GB data use per month on the free plan
- Free servers in 8 countries and 12 locations on the free plan – including Paris (France)
- Other free server locations – USA, (New York, Washington DC, Miami, Los Angeles), UK, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand
- Strict zero logs policy, even on the free version
- Based in Switzerland with strong privacy laws
- 1 connection allowed on free version
- Apps for all major devices.
- Email address only required to get free version.
- Paid plans start at $2.50/month for a 12 month subscription, with servers in 48 countries.
Click here to view a full server list and started with PrivadoVPN – go to their Pricing page and select their Free Plan.
Of course an unlimited data allowance would be better, but this is difficult to get with a free VPN, and 10 GB/month is still a really good allowance, and equates to about 300 MB/day.
Free Option #2 – Windscribe Free Version (10 GB/Month)
This second option is almost identical to PrivadoVPN. Windscribe are a fully free VPN service, who also offer an IP location in France to users free of charge.
Here are some features of Windscribe free version:
- 10 GB data use per month on the free plan
- Free servers in 10 countries including France.
- Other free server locations – USA, UK, Canada, Hong Kong, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Romania.
- Strict zero logs policy, even on the free version
- Canadian based company.
- Unlimited connections allowed even on free version
- Apps for all major devices.
- Only an Email address required to get free version.
- Paid plans start at $4/month for a 12 month subscription.
Click here to get started with Windscribe– go to their Features page and select their Free Plan.
You can easily combine this option with PrivadoVPN above, to get two doses of 10 GB of free data, for a combined total of 20 GB of data per month with a free French IP address. When your allowance on one service runs out, switch to another one.
Free Option #3 – Tunnelbear Free Version (500 MB/Month)
We are now coming to much less favorable options, but Tunnelbear’s free version is still something you can use. But with only 500 MB of free monthly data, it’s much more limited than PrivadoVPN or Windscribe.
Click here to visit Tunnelbear’s site. Click the Tunnelbear logo on the top left to go back to the homepage, and click on “Plans”. If you sign up for the Free account, you get 500 MB of data to use each month.
The Free plan is buried away somewhat in the menus and not heavily promoted, as for obvious reasons, they’d prefer customers used paid plans, but you can still find it by clicking back to the homepage and finding the Plans page.
Tunnelbear’s got servers in 49 countries, including in France so it can be a great option for short term/basic usage.
However, with the free version, you only get 500 MB of data to use per month, which will not go very far at all. You can tweet at them for an extra 1 GB, but this is your main limitation with this service – you don’t get much data/bandwidth to use. Once you open the interface, there is a data counter so you can see how you’ve got left this month.
Some VPNs That DON’T Really Offer Free French Servers
As with many searches on VPNs, the first few pages of the results weren’t great when I searched, with lots of non-relevant, misleading results of companies that DON’T actually free free VPN servers in France.
Let’s clear up some of this confusion by listing some VPN providers that, despite what may appear in online searches, do NOT currently offer free VPN servers in France:
- Hide.me – Again offer a great free version of their service which we’ve covered elsewhere, with free servers in Germany, USA, Canada, Netherlands, but NOT in France. France servers are on their paid plans only.
- ProtonVPN – A great VPN service that is based out of Switzerland, but don’t offer free France servers at the moment. They do have a free version with servers in USA, Japan and Netherlands, but you need their paid plan for France servers.
- PureVPN – Offer excellent value long term subscriptions and a 31 day money back guarantee, but they don’t offer any free plans currently. You need an upfront payment to use all of their servers, including in France.
- NordVPN – A longstanding VPN service that often appears near the top of the search results, but NordVPN don’t offer ANY free servers at all currently. You need to pay to use all their servers, though they do have Premium servers in France.
A lot of VPN marketing and search results equates them having a 30 day money back guarantee to being effectively “free”, because you can pay for a month, and then claim a refund if you don’t like it.
Whilst it’s a nice feature many VPN’s offer now, that’s not my definition of “free”.
In this article I’ve tried to stay fully relevant and helpful, by listing ONLY VPN providers which a) Are 100% free to sign up to and use, ZERO upfront payment, and b) Have 100% free French servers that can be used on their free versions.
Premium VPN Options With Servers in France
All the free French VPN options we’ve covered above have some kind of limitation – either a data cap or privacy/reliability issues.
Therefore if you need a VPN IP address in France longer term, you’re probably better off signing up a Premium VPN, which will always offer unlimited use, access to streaming services like Netflix, and multiple simultaneous connections which you can’t usually get with free VPNs.
However, the good news in that literally ALL Premium VPNs offer at least one server location in France, so you’ve got literally hundreds to choose from.
Firstly, PrivadoVPN and Tunnelbear both offer excellent Premium versions of their product which you can upgrade to if you like their free versions.
Also check out the table below for some good options, both from well established VPN providers, and also from some newer, cheaper services (links are affiliate links):
| Provider | Price (12 months paid in advance) | Number of countries offered | Number of Servers Offered | Main Benefits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AtlasVPN | $3.29/month | 34 | 750 | Cheap price |
| ZoogVPN | $2.99/month | 41 | 70+ | Cheap price |
| TurboVPN | $5/month | 48 | 21,000 | Server choice |
| Hide.me | $5/month | 46 | 160+ | Free version available |
| ExpressVPN | $8/month | 94 | 160+ | Best country choice |
| ProtonVPN | $6 | 63 | 1700+ | Reputable brand |
| Private Internet Access | $3.33/month | 84 | 10,000 | Great value |
| VyprVPN | $5/month | 64 | 700+ | Speed & Privacy |
| NordVPN | $5/month | 60 | 5400+ | Reputable brand. |
