Black Friday VPN deals 2026 did not wait for the date on the calendar. By the first week of November the discounts were sitting in live checkouts rather than behind an early-access form, so the comparing happens now and not on the 27th.
Finding a discount is easy. Working out which discount leaves less of your money in a provider’s account two years from now is not, and that answer is often the opposite of the banner.
Every figure below was read off a provider’s own page on 7 November 2026, and every division is shown so you can redo it.
The number on the banner is a first-term price
Black Friday VPN deals are intro pricing, as one buyer put it in r/VPN_Question on 2 November after pricing eight providers in a single afternoon: “you pay two or three years upfront and it renews near list”. None of it is hidden. Proton prints both numbers in the same sentence. Almost nobody reads the second one.
So the only rate worth comparing between providers is the one you work out yourself.
Effective monthly price = total initial payment ÷ total months included
Use the total your own cart shows, with tax and any extras you ticked. Count bonus months only when they appear in the order summary. If a provider will not show a total until a plan is selected, select the plan.
Black Friday VPN deals 2026: three providers, measured on one day
| Plan and term | Source page | Upfront payment | Months | Effective monthly | Renews at |
| Proton VPN Plus, Black Friday year | Proton Black Friday | $35.88 | 12 | $2.99 | $83.88 every 12 months |
| Proton VPN Plus, two-year plan | Proton pricing | $83.76 | 24 | $3.49 | $83.88 every 12 months |
| Proton Unlimited, welcome month | Proton Black Friday | $1.00 | 1 | $1.00 | $12.99 every month |
| Proton Unlimited, two-year plan | Proton pricing | $191.76 | 24 | $7.99 | $119.88 every 12 months |
| Surfshark, entry tier | Surfshark pricing | €67.23 | 27 | €2.49 | not stated in that line |
| Surfshark, higher tier | Surfshark pricing | €107.73 | 27 | €3.99 | not stated in that line |
| Mullvad, any term | Mullvad pricing | €5 per month | 1, 12 or 120 | €5 | €5, unchanged |
All seven rows were read on 7 November 2026, and the Surfshark figures carry a “VAT may apply” note. The rows mix dollars and euros on purpose. Keep your own worksheet in one currency.
Proton quotes VPN Plus at $2.99 a month and bills $35.88 for the first 12 months, so advertised and real agree: $35.88 ÷ 12 = $2.99. The same sentence then says the plan renews at $83.88 every 12 months, which is $6.99 a month and roughly 134 percent more than the year you are being sold. That step is the most consequential number on the page. Proton Unlimited is the extreme version of the same shape: $1.00 for the first month, $12.99 after it.
Mullvad refuses to play. It charges €5 a month at one month, one year and one decade, and puts that €5 at about $5.57 itself. Nothing expires, so the row never moves.
### The column people leave blank
Surfshark’s page states a price for the first 27 months. What comes after was not in the line I read, so the worksheet says unknown. Not zero, and not “probably the same”. That blank is a question for the provider before you pay.
Bonus months and the tier the discount is stuck to
Surfshark’s entry plan reads €2.49 a month and bills €67.23 for the first 27 months. The division is exact: €67.23 ÷ 27 = €2.49. But 24 of those months are the plan and three are a gift, so across the months you actually paid for, the rate is €67.23 ÷ 24 = €2.80. Both numbers are true. Only one survives if the bonus months get dropped later.
The tier matters more than the percentage. The higher Surfshark tier bills €107.73 for the same 27 months, or €3.99 a month, and the buyer in that November thread found the biggest discount sat on a mid tier, not the plain VPN plan. A headline percentage can belong to a product you were never shopping for. Read the plan name in the cart back to yourself.
Why does $2.99 a month cost more than $3.49?
Two Proton quotes from the same day answer what no discount percentage can. The Black Friday plan takes $35.88 today and $83.88 at the end of the first year: $119.76 for 24 months of service, or $4.99 a month. The standard two-year plan takes $83.76 for those same 24 months, which is $3.49 a month and $36.00 less in total.
The offer page has the lower headline. The ordinary pricing page has the cheaper purchase. Both are true at once, and that is why the percentage is useless and the division is not.
Two assumptions sit underneath, and both belong in your notes: that you keep it for all 24 months, and that the renewal price holds. Proton Unlimited runs the other way. Its two-year plan bills $191.76 for 24 months, or $7.99 a month, and renews at $119.88 a year, or $9.99 a month. A step of 25 percent, against 134 percent on the discounted VPN Plus year. The deeper the intro discount, the steeper the cliff behind it.
Renewal day, cancellation and refunds
Three facts go in one note: the renewal amount, the period it buys, and the day the card gets charged. The third one catches people out. NordVPN’s subscription terms state that the renewal charge is applied fourteen days before the renewal period begins, so a reminder set for the renewal date itself arrives two weeks late.
A long plan need not renew as a long plan either. Proton’s two-year VPN Plus renews in 12-month blocks, stated in the same breath as the two-year total.
Cancelling automatic billing and asking for money back are separate requests, handled by whoever took the payment. Bought through an app store? Then that is the app store, not the VPN company. Establish which refund window covers your channel before you pay, not after a charge has cleared.
An iPhone shortlist looks nothing like a laptop shortlist
Someone who had just upgraded their phone wanted the best VPN for iPhone and put the deciding factor in their first paragraph: apps that flatten the battery, or slow the connection so badly that the VPN ends up switched off. Public Wi-Fi, travelling, a kill switch that genuinely works on iOS. Thirty-eight replies came in, and one of them split the whole field in six words: budget Surfshark, privacy Proton, speed Nord.
Good shape for a shortlist, poor shape for a decision, because nobody there measured anything. Battery drain is yours to test. Leave the app connected for a day on your own handset, then check the battery screen that evening and how the connection held when you walked out of Wi-Fi onto mobile data. Do that inside the refund window, while the money is still recoverable.
A capability named on a homepage still has to be confirmed for your tier and your device. Device limits are the exception: a phone each plus a television hits them quickly.
The five answers you need before you pay
- Which exact tier and term is this, and does it cover my devices?
- What leaves my account today, including tax and the extras I ticked?
- How many of those months did I pay for, and how many are bonus?
- What is the renewal amount, what period does it buy, and when is the card charged?
- Which refund window applies to the channel I am buying through?
A gap in those five is not a detail. It is the $36.00 you hand over for a lower headline rate, or the charge that lands two weeks early. Fill them in, then buy the plan you can pay for today, for a stretch of time you will realistically use.
Save the order summary. Set the reminder from the billing terms, not the calendar.