Alternatives to VPN Gate
A free academic VPN network of volunteer-run public relay servers from the University of Tsukuba. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
VPN Gate
A free academic VPN network of volunteer-run public relay servers from the University of Tsukuba.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as VPN Gate.
Psiphon
A censorship-circumvention app that combines several blocking-resilient transports to reach sites blocked in your country.
Psiphon is an open-source circumvention app with several blocking-resilient transports; its free tier shows ads and all traffic passes through Psiphon's servers.
Lantern
An open-source censorship-circumvention app that gives access to blocked websites and apps.
Lantern is an open-source, free circumvention app for all major platforms including Linux, routing traffic through Lantern's own infrastructure instead of volunteer relays.
Proton VPN
A VPN from the Proton Mail company with a free tier that has no data cap, and open source clients.
Proton VPN's free tier has no data cap and uses audited open-source clients with a published no-logs policy, but requires an account and covers few countries.
Cloudflare WARP
A free WireGuard-based tunnel to Cloudflare that encrypts your traffic without pretending to be a privacy VPN.
Cloudflare WARP is a free WireGuard tunnel with no data cap and consistent speed, but it does not change your apparent country.
Windscribe
Canadian VPN with built-in ad blocking and a usable free tier.
Windscribe's free tier gives a monthly bandwidth allowance with built-in ad blocking and open-source apps, run by a single commercial provider in Canada.
Outline VPN
Self-run VPN server built on Shadowsocks, made for censored networks.
Outline VPN uses Shadowsocks on a server you pay for and run yourself, so privacy no longer depends on volunteer operators.
Also worth comparing
These listings name VPN Gate as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Mysterium VPN
A paid decentralized VPN that routes traffic through residential IP addresses in over 100 countries.
VPN Gate is free and uses volunteer-run relay servers with standard L2TP/IPsec, OpenVPN and SSTP clients, but speed varies and the project keeps connection logs.
Shadowsocks
A fast encrypted tunnel proxy for getting past firewalls, with implementations for most platforms.
VPN Gate is a free volunteer-run VPN network using standard L2TP/IPsec, OpenVPN and SSTP clients, but privacy depends on each operator and the project keeps connection logs.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
OpenVPN Community
The VPN protocol and client that has been the default for two decades, and still runs on everything.
SoftEther VPN
An open-source multi-protocol VPN server and client for remote access and site-to-site networking.
DNS Leak Test
A web test that shows which DNS servers your connection is actually using.
v2rayNG
An Android client for V2Ray and Xray proxy servers, using the Xray or v2fly core.
OpenVPN Connect
The official OpenVPN client app for connecting to OpenVPN servers from desktop and mobile devices.
