Five days free, no card

Free VPNs on Android: a tidy way to try one

The Play Store has hundreds of free VPNs. A one minute check removes nearly all of them from consideration.

No card, no account. The key is cut and delivered in Telegram in about a minute.

  • 60 sfrom the bot to a working key
  • 5devices on one key
  • 6locations, two of them in the UK
  • 0logs kept
Locations · online
  • London9 ms
  • Manchester14 ms
  • Dublin19 ms
  • Amsterdam16 ms
  • Madrid34 ms
  • New York78 ms

Every location runs VLESS over Reality, which reads as ordinary HTTPS on a filtered network.

Hallmarks
  • Fits v2rayNG, Hiddify, V2Box, Streisand
  • No app of ours to lose
  • Five devices on one key
  • Five days free, then a flat price per term
  • No logs, no account

The state of the shelf

Search the Play Store for free VPNs Android users can install, and the shelf looks generous. Look more closely and most of the publishers cannot be traced to a company. Independent researchers keep finding the same faults in free VPNs for Android: advertising libraries, permissions that a tunnel has no use for, and vague owners. The best free VPNs for Android make a short list, and it consists of capped tiers from firms that also sell a paid plan.

The one minute check

Tap the developer's name. Is there a company, a website and a country behind it?
Read the permissions. A VPN needs the VPN permission. It has no need of contacts, SMS or location.
Look for the limit. A free tier with no stated limit is earning its money somewhere else.
Check when it was last updated.
Read the three star reviews. They tend to be the truthful ones.

Software and service are two separate things

Roundups of the best Android VPNs, or of the best VPN software Android owners can download, blur two questions together. One is whether the app can be trusted. The other is whether the servers behind it are any good. You can answer the first by using an open source client. The free VPN software Android users really can inspect includes v2rayNG and Hiddify, since the code of both is public. For the second, no article can help you, which is why searches like Android VPN best free, or best free VPN software for Android, never quite settle the matter. A trial on your own phone settles it.

Setting up

1Install v2rayNG or Hiddify from Google Play.
2In Telegram, open @royalkey_club_bot and ask for the five free days.
3In the client, tap the plus sign and import the key from the QR code or from the clipboard.
4Approve Android's connection request. It asks once only.
5Tap connect. The key icon in the status bar shows that the tunnel is up.

Settings that are worth a minute

Always-on VPN, under Network and internet, then VPN. It brings the tunnel back after a restart.
Block connections without VPN, if you want nothing to go outside the tunnel.
Per-app proxy in v2rayNG, for a banking app that objects to a VPN address.
Battery optimisation: exclude the client, or some phones will shut it overnight.
Your network's content lock, such as EE's or O2's, applies to mobile data. A tunnel passes through it, since it cannot see inside.

Android and VPN apps from outside the store

If your phone has no Google services, take the APK from the project's own page on GitHub and from nowhere else. The phrase VPN Android VPN apk brings up mirrors full of repackaged builds, and a tampered VPN client is about the worst app you could put on a phone. One key covers five devices, so a tablet and an Android TV box can share it.

Try Royal Key free: 5 days, no limits

Start free

Five days, no card

Try the key in your own lock first

Open the Telegram bot and get your personal VLESS key in about 30 seconds.

  • Key in Telegram in under a minute
  • No card, no email, no KYC
  • Fits the client you already have
  • Five devices on one key
Have a key cut

Nothing is charged and nothing renews on its own.

The ledger

We keep no ledger of you, only of the key

There is no account here, so there is nothing to attach a log to. You never give us an email, a phone number or a name. The bot knows a Telegram chat, a key and an expiry date, and that is the whole record. We say so plainly instead of pretending to be beyond every jurisdiction.

Nothing on file
  • No registration, no email, no phone number
  • No browsing history, no connection logs
  • Connection times and IP addresses
  • Card details: payment stays inside Telegram
  • Nothing renews and nothing is charged silently

At the counter

What people ask before the first key is cut

Should I worry about free VPN apps on Android?

About the anonymous ones, yes. A publisher you cannot trace, asking for permissions a tunnel does not need, is reason enough to move on.

Can v2rayNG be trusted?

Its source code is public and it has been in use for years. Get it from the Play Store, or from the 2dust repository on GitHub.

Must the phone be rooted?

No. Android has offered a standard VPN interface for a long time.

My banking app refuses to open. What now?

Add it to the exclusion list under Per-app proxy, and it will bypass the tunnel.

How long do I get for nothing?

Five days, with every location and no cap.

What about a Fire TV stick or an Android TV box?

Both run v2rayNG. Paste the key from a phone, because typing it with a remote is misery.

Still unsure?

Support and your key live in the same Telegram bot. The setup page shows which client to install.

Open the Telegram bot