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.

Mexico is a really popular tourist destination, with it’s relaxed entry rules even with recent global restrictions, great weather and cheap cost of living. But what about browsing online securely there? Are there any free VPN services that have servers in Mexico you can use?

As with most countries, your options for totally free VPN’s with Mexican servers is quite limited. My normal go-to free options would be the VPN built into the Opera browser, or ProtonVPN, but neither of these have Mexican servers for free. The current search results on this are quite poor when I checked, with lots of services titled as “free” that are actually not once you click on the links and check the plans.

So in this post, we’ll answer the exact question asked, going through a couple of options which truly are 100% free (but not always unlimited), before moving onto Premium VPN services, which you’ll realistically need for secure long term use in Mexico.

Here’s a quick summary:

1. PrivadoVPN – 10 GB free data (Best option)
2. Tunnelbear – 500 MB free data
3. UrbanVPN – unlimited but not private

Now let’s go through each one in more detail.

Free Option #1 – PrivadoVPN Free Version (10 GB data – Recommended)

This is a free Mexico VPN option I recently found that is your best bet by far. PrivadoVPN offer a free version of their service, specifically with servers in Mexico.

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 Mexico (Mexico City)
• Other free server locations – USA (New York, Washington DC, Miami, Los Angeles), UK, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, France, Switzerland.
• 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 $5/month for a 12 month subscription.

Click here to get started with the free version of PrivadoVPN – go to their Pricing page and select their Free Plan.

This is the best option for users that specifically want a proper VPN app with a good data allowance, and servers specifically in Mexico. I could not find anything close to PrivadoVPN in terms of quality and features, that also provides a free Mexican IP address.

If would be better if data use was unlimited on the free version, but 10 GB/month is still a really good allowance, and equates to about 300 MB/day.

Here’s what you could realistically do with that sort of data cap:

• For just basic browsing and logging into your emails once or twice daily, plus some social media, it could literally be fine for an entire month. I think you could stay within a 300 MB/day allowance quite easily.
• If you’re also watching YouTube, then it does use a lot more data, but you’ve still got some room with a 10 GB monthly allowance. For example, you could watch one or two 10 minute YouTube videos daily, plus basic browsing, and you’d probably still stay within your limit over a month.
• If you want to watch more or longer YouTube videos, or some other streaming, especially in HD, then you will struggle to stay within the allowance. Consider ProtonVPN (no free Mexico servers) or another unlimited option listed below, or go for a Premium VPN with unlimited use instead.

Free Option #2 – Tunnelbear Free Version

This is an option actually isn’t well known or covered by most VPN review sites, but it falls quite a long way behind PrivadoVPN specifically for Mexican users.

Tunnelbear are a Premium VPN provider primarily, but they do also offer a limited free version of their service, though it isn’t heavily promoted.

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 Mexico City, so it can be a great option for short term/basic usage. I tested the Mexico server from my location in the UK, and it worked fine, with decent page load speeds and videos played fine (though you wouldn’t really want to be using it for this much because of the data cap – see below).

It also feels and works like a proper, secure VPN service, with your own IP and no data logging, unlike some other shared VPN services that I’d never use to enter personal data on.

However, with the free version, you only get 500 MB of data to use per month, much lower than PrivadoVPN’s free version. 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.

For clarity, here’s a quick summary of what you can expect different activities to use in terms of data, given the 500 MB monthly cap with Tunnelbear:

• Basic browsing – Doesn’t use much – 10-20 MB per hour.
• Social media – Uses a bit more – 100-150 MB per hour.
• Multiplayer Online gaming – 50-60 MB per hour.
• YouTube Video (10 minutes):
  • • 480p – 80 MB
    • 720p (HD) – 250 MB
• YouTube video (1 hour)
  • • 480p – 500-700 MB
    • 720p (HD) – 1.5-2 GB
    • You can change YouTube video quality using the settings cog in the bottom right of videos.
• Netflix movie
  • • SD – 700 MB per hour.
    • HD – 3 GB per hour
    • Ultra HD – 7 GB per hour
    • See here for source plus how to change Netflix data usage settings.

Here’s what the Tunnelbear free version could be great for:

• Short term holiday/vacation use visiting Mexico – say just logging into your emails once or twice a day and making some purchases online, booking things, checking directions etc. whilst away there for a week.
• Very basic, light browsing (not video streaming). Just logging into emails and other secure accounts, online payments etc. But 500 MB/month won’t go very far – just 16/17 MB per day – and you’ll quickly see your data allowance drain down even with basic browsing.
• Anything where you’ve having to enter sensitive usernames/passwords or payment details – I’d use Tunnelbear only and not any other free shared VPN.
• You can use it to keep your connection secure whilst signing up for an unlimited, Premium VPN service that’ll serve you better long term (see section at the bottom).

Here’s what you can’t really use Tunnelbear free for:

• Videos/streaming services/YouTube – uses too much data as indicated above. You’ll run out of your allowance very quickly
• Social media – might get away with a really small amount, but again it can use up more than you might think.

Therefore Tunnelbear can be a good backup option to PrivadoVPN, but the data cap is really restrictive, and makes it good only for occasional use. It’s a viable option, but a distant second to PrivadoVPN.

Free Option #3 – UrbanVPN

Now let’s move to the third major free option I could find, that almost like an inverse of the Tunnelbear service in terms of pro’s/cons – it’s got unlimited use, but the server speeds/reliability and privacy are not as good.

UrbanVPN pride themselves on being a totally free, peer to peer VPN service, using the connections of users to re-route traffic. It’s like the users are each acting as VPN’s for the other users, almost like a crowd-funded VPN service.

For this reason, they argue that their service will always be free, with around 80 current server locations worldwide, including Mexico, all with unlimited use.

Click here to get started with UrbanVPN

Here are the main benefits of UrbanVPN:

• Totally free to use
• No need to set up any account or provide any details – just download the program/app and get started.
• Totally free and unlimited server use.
• Available for all major browsers, devices and operating systems.
• Has a server in Mexico

But unfortunately, there are some negatives to the service:

• There are some reviews that report slow and unreliable servers (unfortunately, this is to be expected on free services)
• An ambiguous privacy policy that doesn’t make it exactly clear how your data is collected, used or stored.
• Zero customer support if the service goes down or you have difficulties (again to be expected with a free service)
• It’s just difficult to know exactly how secure your data is, or where it’s going. Ultimately, security and privacy and too much up-in-the-air with a peer to peer service like this.

Here’s what UrbanVPN could be good for:

• Video streaming on sites like YouTube (because bandwidth is unlimited), as long as your connection is good enough for it.
• Possibly logging into streaming services that require a Mexico IP address, provided you are happy entering login details on a shared/P2P VPN.
• Social media account possibly, again if you’re OK with this. Personally I’d only do this if my passwords for these accounts wasn’t used for any other account.

In this way, you could use both Tunnelbear/PrivadoVPN and UrbanVPN to complement each other – use Tunnelbear for really security-essential stuff like logging into serious accounts and making purchases, and just use UrbanVPN for more bandwidth heavy things like streaming, and possibly logging into less serious accounts like YouTube or streaming services (at your own discretion).

Unfortunately though, with VPN’s, it is a hard and fast rule that you don’t get something for nothing, and you get what you pay for. I’ve never seen this rule broken with VPN’s – if it’s a free service you’re using, there’s going to be limitations and downsides. No one is going to pay to deliver a top notch VPN service to users free of charge out of the goodness of their heart. Use of servers across the world costs serious money (there’s no way around this), so your free options are always going to be limited.

To get a proper, unlimited, fully secure VPN service, where you know your connection is going to be fast, unlimited and reliable, and your personal data is going to be safe and private, you need to pay for a Premium service.

Some VPNs That DON’T Really Offer Free Mexico Servers

Let’s correct some poor information that’s currently appearing near the top of the search results when you search for free VPN’s with servers in Mexico.

I can confirm that these VPN services, despite what may appear in the search results, currently do NOT offer free servers in Mexico:

• ProtonVPN – Offer a great free unlimited VPN, but free servers are in USA, Netherlands and Japan. They DON’T have a free Mexico server; you need one of their paid plans for that.
• NordVPN – Offer a great Premium VPN service – one of the very best with lots of countries and double encryption, but they don’t offer ANY free servers, in Mexico or elsewhere. You have to pay to use their service.
• 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 Mexico. Mexican servers are on their paid plans only.

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 post, I’ve tried to keep it relevant and accurate by including ONLY VPN options which a) Are 100% free to sign up to and use, ZERO upfront payment, and b) Have 100% free Mexico servers that can be used on their free versions.

Some Premium VPN Services With Servers In Mexico

For any kind of serious or long term browsing in Mexico, you’re realistically going to need a Premium VPN service. The free version of Tunnelbear is great for very limited basic use, but for anything more than, you need a paid plan.

But the good news is you can get really good ones now for even a few dollars a month. Getting a Premium VPN service doesn’t need to be a massive outlay anymore.

Firstly, PrivadoVPN and Tunnelbear both offer Premium plans you can upgrade to for competitive prices, if you like their free versions.

We’ve also put together a table below of some more Premium VPN providers that have servers in Mexico, for you to compare.

Comparison of VPN’s With Mexican Servers (links are affiliate links)

Provider	Price (12 months paid in advance)	Number of servers in Mexico	Number of Devices Allowed	Main Benefits
Private Internet Access	$3.33/month	1	10	Review here
ExpressVPN	$8.32/month	1	5	Country/location choice
NordVPN	$5/month	12	6	Double Encryption & Server Choice
Le VPN	$4.95/month	1	5	Lots of countries
AtlasVPN	$3.29/month	1	Unlimited	Cheap no nonsense VPN

Bottom line – Private Internet Access (PIA) has it covered for cost, NordVPN has it covered for server choice within Mexico. ProtonVPN is the best for the number of devices/simultaneous connections allowed (10). The others don’t stand out specifically in terms of Mexico servers, but are all great, reliable, unlimited VPN services, where you know your connection is going to be secure, and there’s someone to help you if something goes wrong. If I were staying in Mexico long term, I’d bite the bullet and get a Premium plan.

Signing up for a VPN is usually very easy. You simply visit their site (click on one of our links above for each provider), sign up, pay your subscription, download their product and boot up the program.

Once running you simply select a preferred server location and open the VPN connection. You now have a secure, encrypted connection that will keep all your browsing and personal data safe over public Wi-Fi networks.

Best Practices For Using The Internet In Mexico

Some quick tips for using the internet in Mexico:

• The internet in Mexico is notorious for being patchy and going down quite a lot in some areas, so sometimes your VPN connection may cut out because the wider internet has gone down. There’s nothing much you can do about this, but this is another reason why having a Premium VPN is advisable in Mexico – all the paid VPN’s have built in “Kill Switches” now, so if your connection drops, no data is leaked and you privacy is maintained. Free VPN’s almost never have this feature.
• Mexico is one of the few countries in Latin America to have little or no internet censorship, so the internet is relatively free here, but VPN’s are still useful for online security and privacy, as well as accessing geo-restricted content.
• Using a VPN in Mexico is legal, as long as your online activity is also still legal.
• Some websites in Mexico do restrict access only to users with a Mexican IP address, so a VPN with Mexican servers can be very useful to access these services that would otherwise be blocked.
• Do not use Wi-Fi in any public place (cafe, restaurant, internet cafe, co-working space, Hotspot) without having a VPN connection enabled. It will keep your connection and personal data secure.