RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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The VPN industry has a problem. For a significant number of people, their VPN subscription has quietly auto-renewed, jumped in price, or cost more than they initially bargained for.
The issue is so bad that multiple VPN providers — including ExpressVPN , NordVPN and Surfshark — have faced legal scrutiny over their auto-renewal practices.
This creates a dilemma for us at TechRadar when it comes to recommending VPNs. We are confident these are the best VPNs available — they are the fastest , most secure , and best at streaming — but it's clear that more needs to be done to ensure fair and transparent billing.
To get a better understanding of people's real-world experience using our top-rated VPNs, we analyzed almost 30,000 Android VPN reviews across the 'Big 4' — NordVPN , ExpressVPN , Surfshark & Proton VPN — published on the Play Store since the beginning of the year.
The results are stark. Across the entire Play Store dataset, people are mostly happy with the apps — just 35% of overall written comments are negative. But when we looked at billing and pricing specifically, that figure rose to almost 60%.
Read on to find out which provider performed the best, which you might want to be wary of, and the key practical steps to avoid common VPN issues.
This article is the first in a series investigating real-world customer experience of using major VPN services, inspired by our exclusive analysis of user-generated Android VPN reviews.
Which VPN has the most positive reviews?
The vast majority of written Android reviews offer little insight into how people really feel. There are thousands of generic entries like "top app," "good," "ok," or "bad."
However, once we filtered out the noise, billing and pricing issues emerged as a significant area of frustration, accounting for almost 30% of all categorized feedback.
Because total review counts varied widely between brands, we compared percentages rather than raw numbers. Attitudes were scored using a machine-learning model supported by manual human checks.
Read more about our methodology here .
When it comes to billing and price satisfaction, Proton VPN is the clear winner. Just 35% of billing-related comments were negative. However, that’s in large part because of the free tier it offers.
In fact, if you remove references to the product being 'free,' the rate of negative comments rises to 57%. While that points to significant underlying friction for paid accounts, it’s still better than the rest.
By contrast, the remaining market leaders face significant dissatisfaction:
NordVPN : 83% negative billing sentiment
ExpressVPN : 79% negative billing sentiment
Surfshark : 71% negative billing sentiment
It wasn’t all bad news, though. There was some positive feedback, with one user praising Surfshark for its "outstanding value for money" and another calling NordVPN the "best affordable" VPN. But for the majority of reviewers, issues around free trials, auto-renewals and price hikes dominated.
Of course, all written reviews skew towards negative emotions as consumers seek to fix or change something. However, taken together they demonstrate a comprehensive picture with clear issues at play.
Free trials, auto-renewals, and price hikes
Across all of the reviews analyzed, three distinct issues appeared.
Firstly, it’s clear many people are experiencing issues with free trials. Specifically, people are signing up only to find themselves charged automatically.
As one Surfshark user wrote: “Wanted to try using the free trial, [it] didn’t work and still charged me for a month.” Meanwhile, a NordVPN user reported not being able to “cancel my free trial just days in.”
Another source of friction occurs when automatic renewals are triggered. And it impacts all of the providers mentioned. As one Proton VPN reviewer wrote: "A lot of users would appreciate more transparency before renewals happen.”
One ExpressVPN user wrote: "Of course every time they renewed my subscription they used old prices and never told me about it.” Meanwhile, a Surfshark reviewer put it even more succinctly for others: “Beware of subscription auto renewal.”
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