At TunnelBear, we’ve always believed that privacy shouldn’t feel complicated or scary. For over a decade, we’ve worked hard to make a VPN that’s easy to use, fiercely secure, and better than the rest.

To keep our Bears private and secure across the internet, we’re making a few important changes to our Free user accounts.

What is changing for Free users?

Soon, select features that were previously available for our Free Plans will become a part of our Paid experience only. Specifically, Paid subscribers will retain exclusive access to:

  • SplitBear (website/app split tunneling)
  • Country selection
  • Upcoming customization features

Free users will still be able to connect securely, however these advanced features will now live behind the honeycomb wall for our Paid subscribers.

Why are we making this change?

We believe transparency matters, so here’s the honest story.

The VPN world has changed a lot since we first started tunneling. Running a global privacy service means maintaining secure servers in dozens of countries, keeping up with constant security research, and undergoing annual independent security audits. Meanwhile, the internet landscape around “free” VPNs has shifted. Many now rely on in-app advertising or data collection to fund their services - something TunnelBear has never done, and never will.

We’re proud to be one of the few VPNs that still offers a truly free option without ads, or tracking and selling your data.

Put simply, these changes allow us to keep up with the costs of maintaining and keeping the lights on in our tunnels without compromising our values. This means we can continue:

  • Improving speed, reliability, and security
  • Conducting independent security audits
  • Expanding our network and investing in features responsibly
  • Keeping our free plans safe, simple, and honest
  • Avoiding to ever need to fund our tunnels outside our subscribers

What does this mean for our users?

Paid subscribers

For our Paid subscribers, expect no changes to your current service. In fact, as part of these updates, we'll be investing more time and energy in making our Paid experience more unique and memorable than ever before.

Censored users part of the Bandwidth Program

For individuals connecting from censored countries as part of our Bandwidth Program, you will still retain access to all features. We made a commitment to help keep victims of censorship safe online, and we intend to uphold that promise by ensuring you are not locked out of these features.

Free users

As for our normal Free users, while you will lose access to certain features, it's important to stress that our free plans aren’t going anywhere. You will still be able to:

  • Browse securely from anywhere in the world
  • Access 2GB of encrypted data each month
  • Keep connections secure with features like VigilantBear and GhostBear
  • Enjoy the same friendly design and privacy-first approach

We’ll always offer a way to try TunnelBear, learn how it works, and see if it’s right for you. No hidden traps, no sneaky data collection, no tracking.

While this is a big change, we are looking forward to some even bigger updates coming soon. We're not quite ready to share details just yet, however we are working on a whole new experience to level-up TunnelBear for all users.

Stay tuned.