VPN Black Friday Deals: Smoke and Mirrors or a Real Bargain?

Black Friday can be truly awesome. If you know how and where to look, you can get all sorts of things at a fraction of the cost, saving a good deal of money. However, for every honest product and service provider who brings out genuine deals, there appear to be more and more opportunists who attempt to jump on the hype train without actually cutting down their price tag.

With how popular this event has become, every year, the consumer industry rolls out Black Friday hype earlier – and it’s hardly about that one Friday anymore, either. By late October, tons of companies, including many VPN providers, are already pitching the whole Black November, with countdowns, early access, and “extended” Cyber Monday sales sprinkled all around.

Yet, in all this chaos, it’s honestly hard to tell which of these attention-grabbing offers are actually genuine deals and which are just pure marketing noise. That’s why today, we’ll do that sanity check for you!

If you’re not just about big words and flashy lights but are actually looking for real value, read on, and you’ll find out everything you need to know about how to successfully navigate Black Friday VPN deals.

When Do Black Friday Deals Start?

You might already be aware, but most, if not all, Black Friday VPN deals actually start quite a bit earlier than the Friday in question. Many VPN providers already tease “early access” promos in mid-October, rolling into full “Cyber Month” discounts through November, and then stretching “extended” Cyber Monday deals all the way into early December.

This usually results in a nonstop carousel of seasonal discounts that look like very limited-time offers that are fleeting fast, even though plenty of Black Friday deals VPN providers offer stick around for weeks if not months. Better yet, these discounts often end just in time to be replaced with Christmas offers, extending the cycle even further!

Of course, none of this necessarily means that all the seemingly best Black Friday deals are a scam. These deals truly are for a limited time, but not as limited as they seem. The prices often do drop, too, but how much is that really? Let’s find out!

Are Black Friday Deals Real or Just Marketing Sparkle?

In many cases, these tactics are classic retail, where the “original” prices get anchored high so the discount looks huge, “3 extra months free” are added simply to stretch a two-year subscription into a 27-month bundle while keeping the same effective monthly rate, and countdown timers are there just to reset for the next “limited” window.

The pattern is clear: many Black Friday VPN deals are often made to appear urgent and exceptional, while the underlying prices and bundles change little from the usual deals offered by these service providers. There are simply too many VPN services riding this hype, giving you "best savings," "best value," and “best VPN deals” that are nothing more than an illusion.

Still, there are some great VPNs around that do play the fair game and actually do try to make their VPN subscription more widely available during these holiday promotions. The issue is that to figure out who's telling the truth and who's not by yourself requires a significant amount of time and effort, which is not something most of us are willing to invest.

But worry not, because we did all the research for you, and now, we’ve brought facts. In just a moment, we'll be looking over the deals offered by the top VPN service providers and how they really change, if at all, during this discount season.

How Much Do Prices Drop on Black Friday?

There are various Black Friday VPN deals that are more than just a facade. Some change their price a lot, others only a little, but it's certainly not a piece of fiction.

For example, Mysterium VPN's Black Friday 80% discount on a two-year plan, which puts you at $1.99 a month, is a significant change from its usual monthly price of $3.19. That's nearly $30 less, all at face value.

Now, it’s easy for us to say that this is one of the best Black Friday VPN deals around. After all, it’s a Mysterium VPN blog. But don’t just take our word for it – we brought facts. Below you’ll find a table with all the statistics needed to see which of the deals offered by other top VPNs are shamelessly recycled and which are actually real. So, shall we?

Here are the top VPNs’ price comparisons before and during Black Friday deals on a 2-year plan:

Disclaimer: Monthly prices before Black Friday were captured in May 2025.

What to Make of It?

As you can see, many of these seemingly jaw-dropping deals offer barely anything more than just smoke and mirrors. They might appear like a huge steal at first glance, but if you take a look, aside from a few cases, you’re always offered more or less the same thing.

You still do get a better deal, technically. Only that deal is often not nearly as impressive as it’s made out to be, as you mostly get a marginally smaller price with just a few extra months before turning over to the standard price. But even if the price cut is actually significant, those VPNs often cost way above their competitors’ pricing, so even with a discount, they’re still much more expensive.

Naturally, there are plenty of other VPNs we didn’t cover here. These days, there are just too many to fit them all into a single table. Yet, the pattern is pretty clear, so we’ll leave it for you to judge.

Honest Pricing and Transparency

Whether for better or worse, there are always some edge cases, too. Some VPNs really do offer you a genuine deal with a generous discount and no hidden catches, like what you saw with Proton VPN or Mysterium VPN. But at the same time, some other providers, like IPVanish, not only offer you the exact same price they did before, only with a Black Friday sticker slapped on, but also employ a countdown that resets daily.

But most of the time, the devil is in the details. A perfect example comes from the research for this very blog post, where we found that some of these VPN giants take very clear extra measures to ensure that the past records of their sites remain secret. 

A great deal of information for price comparison came from the Wayback Machine, which is a digital archive made by the Internet Archive, where users have the possibility to view past versions of various online websites. But, say, if you were to try to check how the NordVPN or ExpressVPN sites looked in the past, you’d get an apology message stating, “This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.”

Then there are situations like that with Surfshark VPN, where the URL has not been excluded, but surprisingly, it has never been archived either, and it won’t save, no matter how many requests are sent. Or what about Proton VPN, whose website is, indeed, available, but the pricing itself never loads?

Naturally, there are some way simpler methods to save such information than the Wayback Machine, like screenshots or straight-up written-down numbers, so we weren’t left helpless.

And, of course, none of what these VPN providers do here is actually criminal or otherwise illegal. But a situation like this doesn’t exactly spell honesty or transparency, does it? So ask yourself, are these the kind of services you want to trust your sensitive data to?

Not Everything Is Really on Sale

The term “on sale” has long lost the exclusiveness that made it special. This is true not only for the VPN services but also for the software industry as a whole. Many companies now run sale promotions all year round, rotating banners and endless coupon codes, turning so-called seasonal discounts into permanent pricing in disguise.

No matter the discount, there's always a decent chance that the super-exclusive, limited-time deal you just happened to stumble upon is actually the very same deal that has been live for months, if not years, only under a different label. It really carries the same spirit of the age-old marketing tactic of raising certain product prices only to “discount” them back to the original number during some holiday. 

These days, it’s simply all too easy to slap a Black Friday logo on, add a resetting countdown timer, and call it a day. It creates a false sense of urgency, with the retailers betting on the chance that consumers will rush into buying the product without taking a deeper look.

But while this still works a bit too often, the customers are getting more and more skeptical about this whole ordeal, and they're right to be so. After all, why would you want to do business with someone who's not being honest with you?

Be Wary of Real Scams That Come Along the Way

Black Friday deals and Cyber Monday discounts are not all that November brings. Unfortunately, this sales season is also a perfect environment for scammers to thrive in, who scale up several playbooks during this time of year.

As you're hunting the best prices online, be watchful of various threats that are just waiting to catch you off guard. These include typosquatted stores (amaz0n-like domains), phishing text messages and emails with trap links, malvertising, rogue “coupon” extensions, bait-and-switch sellers, and fake support/refund chats. Even app stores aren’t immune: there’s no lack of impostor VPN services and shopping apps there either.

Yet, a reliable VPN, regardless of how real its Black Friday deal is, can harden your online security. It's a perfect tool for encrypting your online traffic, protecting you from DNS leaks, and offering the kill switch function, among other security and privacy features, whether you're using public Wi-Fi or your own. Pair that with a solid password manager, two-factor authentication, and simple card alerts, and things will look a whole lot safer already.

But keep in mind that all this protection is more like a bulletproof vest rather than a full-body suit. They're wonderful in helping you achieve greater security online, but you still need to stay mindful. So, aside from getting Mysterium VPN service, make sure not to click suspicious links, double-check the sender’s information, use strong passwords, and check reviews as well as research stores, sellers, and organizations before engaging with them.

Conclusion

To summarize, Black Friday VPN deals are often real, but they’re not nearly as big or limited as they’re made out to be.

Most of the top VPN service providers tend to slap on huge Black Friday stickers all over the place, while essentially, they offer only a marginally better deal than what you can get on any other day of the year. And even if the discount is actually significant, the overall service price is usually so much higher than the competitors’ that it’s simply not worth it.

At the same time, you can find some edge cases, too, where some VPNs offer genuinely good deals without any hidden catches, like what you can find at Mysterium VPN. At the same time, others offer the same price with a different label while also employing dirty tactics like resetting countdowns.

So, the bottom line is this: Those who want to sell you something can tell you anything to make it happen. Thus, you simply have to shop smarter. Be patient, pay attention to what you’re getting, and do a little bit of research instead of jumping straight at it. The first thing you see is rarely ever the best, so make sure to look around first, and you’ll be just fine!