- TunnelBear has announced some changes to its free plan
- Changes include removal server selection and split tunneling support
- The company wants to remain ad-free amid rising operating costs
TunnelBear has announced a number of important changes to its free user accounts, citing rising operating costs and the goal of keeping the service sustainable.
According to TunnelBear’s blog post, existing users of its free VPN service will still be able to connect to servers, but will lose select features such as custom server selection, which will only be available to paid subscribers. However, TunnelBear’s free users will still have access to 2GB of data each month.
The move by TunnelBear underscores a broader industry trend. As more people hunt for the best VPN for their needs, companies are forced to juggle the desire to offer rich, privacy-focused features against the financial realities of maintaining a secure virtual private network.
What’s changing for TunnelBear free users and why
As part of TunnelBear Free’s overhaul, which will not affect paid subscribers, free users will no longer be able to choose the country they connect to. Instead, they become it randomly assigned the best available locationremoves any flexibility to bypass geo-restrictions.
Free users too lose SplitBearTunnelBear’s split tunnel feature prevents them from choosing which apps or websites can bypass the VPN connection. With TunnelBear Free’s very limited data allowance, user data is likely to be used up that much faster.
TunnelBear has been quick to assure users who make up its Bandwidth Program – its initiative to give people in countries with heavy internet censorship extra free VPN data – that they won’t be affected by any changes.
All of these adjustments, TunnelBear said, are driven by rising operating costs for a global server network, the expense of regular third-party VPN audits, and the need to keep the service sustainable without resorting to ads or otherwise selling user data.
TunnelBear hasn’t specified when all of this will take effect, but free users who can’t do without server selection or split tunneling may want to start considering upgrading to TunnelBear Premium or exploring other options.
A wider VPN dilemma
Running a VPN that is truly free to the end user is an expensive proposition. Because a free VPN service cannot charge a subscription fee, providers either trim features, rely on ads or data monetization, or impose strict data caps to stay solvent.
Different VPN providers handle this trade-off in different ways. For example, Proton VPN Free has an unlimited data allowance and premium-level privacy, but offers a smaller selection of servers. Like TunnelBear Free, it doesn’t let you choose the server location.
Windscribe Free and PrivadoVPN Free cap-free data at 10GB, allowing them to offer a solid set of features while still keeping costs manageable. A newer free VPN to emerge, EventVPN, doesn’t throttle your data or speeds at the expense of privacy-preserving in-app ads.
TunnelBear’s latest changes fall between these approaches. By removing country selection and split tunneling, it is able to continue offering its free tier without ads and with the same privacy guarantees as its paid version.
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