If you’re shopping for a VPN, you might have been surprised that these handy security tools cost money, and the good ones can get expensive. To defray the costs, you may have wondered if you could share a VPN. Here’s what you need to know.

Share a VPN subscription

You’ll be happy to know that, yes, you can share a VPN subscription, and you can do so without repercussions. In fact, VPN providers even encourage you to do so, up to a point. All VPN providers allow a number of so-called simultaneous connections, which means you can have the VPN active on multiple devices at the same time and connected to different destinations.

Note that “active” in this case means “connected”. Almost all VPNs will let you install their software on as many devices as you want; you can only light them a certain number of times. For example, NordVPN lets you have six simultaneous connections, so you can run it on three phones and three laptops, for example.

However, you could install it on a dozen machines without any problem, you’ll just hit a wall when you log in for the seventh time. Note, however, that if you plan to install a VPN on many machines, you might want to check if it is allowed. CyberGhost, for its part, limits the number of devices on which it can be installed.

Why share a VPN?

Sharing a VPN subscription is great for families or businesses that want to make sure everyone stays protected online without having to subscribe to multiple subscriptions. It also opens the door to economic shenanigans, which can be great for people who want a VPN but don’t want to spend too much on it.

For example, ExpressVPN allows up to five simultaneous connections. If you just have a laptop and a smartphone and your friend has the same, you can split the rather hefty price of $100 per year with them and get a premium VPN for just $50 per year. If you have a second friend, you can always split the account and bring that number down to $33 for each person, but it would be hard to keep track of who turns on when.

If you have more devices or just want to share your VPN with a larger group of people, there are plenty of other options to choose from in our selection of the best VPNs that allow more simultaneous connections than ExpressVPN. Private Internet Access, for example, allows you to connect up to 10 devices at the same time, just like Hide.me. Some VPNs even let you have unlimited simultaneous connections, like Surfshark and Windscribe.

Disadvantages of Sharing a VPN

All of the above sounds good, but usually when things go so well, there’s a catch. In this case there is one too, but it’s only a small one: if you connect a lot of devices, you may experience slowdowns if you are connected to the same server on all of them – the server load is l one of the most important things that can affect VPN speed.

However, the chances of this happening are quite low, you will need to connect a plot devices to make this happen. In these cases, it’s possible your VPN provider will step in (Surfshark reserves that right, for example), but we doubt most people can go that far.

However, if you want to connect a really massive network through a VPN, using a VPN router might be a much better option. Using one of these can protect an entire network at once and only counts as one simultaneous connection.

Whichever option you choose, sharing a VPN is a perfectly acceptable way to keep your costs down while staying safe while browsing. Don’t expect any hassle to do so, nor any technical issues.