With the best shopping sales season finally here, the web is flooded with jaw-dropping Black Friday VPN deals you can choose from.
Some of the best VPN providers have seriously axed their pricing for the occasion, with more companies joining the Black Friday frenzy every year.
While you are hunting for your next VPN bargain, you may have noticed a memorable absence – Mullvad has never joined Black Friday sales. But, why is that?
A "fair pricing model"
As described by the Swedish provider itself on its pricing page, Mullvad operates under a "fair pricing model." This means that you'll simply pay a one-flat monthly rate instead of the need to commit to a longer plan.
Mullvad's competitors, however, have a completely different approach. Almost all the big names across the industry offer discounted prices to users who decide to commit for longer.
In 2022, Mullvad decided to axe recurring subscriptions in the name of privacy. This move enabled the provider to collect even less data about their users, meaning you don't even need an email address or other personal information to create an account.
Take, for example, Surfshark which is currently our top pick as the best cheap VPN. The equivalent monthly fee for its most basic offering is $1.99 when you sign up for its two-year plan. This goes up to $2.99 for its 12-month subscription. Surfshark's monthly plan is then anything but cheap, clocking to a pretty pricey $15.45.
The business model is clear here – users are pushed to subscribe for longer to have the same service for a fraction of the price.
It's also worth mentioning that you'll be charged the whole amount upfront, not just $1.99 every month. The tiny pricing generally goes up, too, on automatic resubscription after the initial period is up.
By contrast, to get Mullvad, you'll always pay the equivalent of 5 euros every month, all year around – roughly $5.26 at the time of writing.
"We love a good deal, but we don't want to lock you (and your money) into a long-term payment scheme," explains the provider. "Feel free to top up your VPN account for an entire year, or just pay month to month for the exact same rate."
So, does Mullvad ever have any sales at all?
"Nope. Not for Christmas or any other holiday or event that you can think of," said the provider, noting that you can get a 10% discount when you pay with accepted cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Monero) due to lower fees and less administration.
How good is Mullvad?
You may not have the opportunity to bag yourself Mullvad for a bargain price with a Black Friday or Cyber Monday VPN deal. Yet, the provider is still one to consider subscribing to – especially if boosted privacy and online anonymity are your main needs. Mullvad is, in fact, among the most private VPN services on the market right now.
For starters, its payment model allows you to open up an account without the need to hand over any personal information. Its strict no-log privacy policy has even been tested in real life after being hit by an inconclusive police raid in 2023.
Mullvad is among the most private VPN services on the market right now
Mullvad also comes with a reliable built-in ad-blocker to minimize online tracking, while regularly improving its service to offer maximum privacy and security.
The provider doesn't lag behind also when it comes to performance, securing a spot among the fastest VPNs out there during our last round of testing with peaks at over 950Mbps when connected to WireGuard.
That said, Mullvad isn't the right service for you if you're looking for a reliable streaming VPN able to unlock foreign libraries across most platforms. During our tests, the service crucially failed to do so for most of Netflix's catalogs, Prime Video, and Disney Plus.
If flexible streaming is what you are after, you should definitely head to our Black Friday VPN deal hub and make sure not to miss the chance to bag yourself a strong streaming VPN at its lowest rate of the year.
