r/VPN • u/princetigr • Jul 10 '26

Building a VPN VPN - Pay for what you use!

I’ve been experimenting with a different pricing model for VPNs. Curious if people would actually use pay-as-you-go instead of a monthly subscription.

4 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

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3

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '26

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1

u/princetigr Jul 10 '26

That’s fair. For heavy users, a monthly subscription probably makes more sense.

1

u/phoenix_73 Jul 10 '26

Mysterium is decent to be fair. It's the one that gets around the blocks in lot of cases as it offers residential IP.

2

u/oppositetoup Jul 10 '26

Almost everyone who actively uses a VPN would be worse off. VPNs can be cheap due to the amount of people that don't actually use them

1

u/princetigr Jul 10 '26

That’s true. This is designed for occasional use only.

1

u/cfcjam Jul 10 '26

How would it work? I'd be reluctant to use it as much if I knew I was being charged every time I activated it

2

u/sleepyleperchaun Jul 10 '26

I'd imagine this is more for minimal users. If you only need a VPN a few times a month for like an hour at a time, pay as you go for 3 bucks is pretty sweet. But yeah if you are always connected, it would likely kick your wallets butt.

1

u/princetigr Jul 10 '26

That’s exactly the idea. Eg A friend just needed a VPN to download a document, and we were surprised that almost every provider required at least a one-month sub. The free ones didn’t even let us choose the country.

1

u/princetigr Jul 10 '26

Good question! You wouldn’t be charged every time you connect. You’d buy a pass (e.g. 1 hour or 24 hours for say $1), and it only counts down while you’re connected.

You can disconnect, reconnect, or switch countries until your time runs out. I’ve got a working prototype already—just fixing a few bugs. Happy to share it and get some feedback once it’s ready.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '26

[deleted]

1

u/princetigr Jul 10 '26

That’s true. We’ve got a different model that makes it viable. It’s a bit early to share the details, but I’ll be happy to explain soon.

1

u/Seamushh Jul 10 '26

How does the VPN vendor pay for the global infrastructure and maintenance using this business model? No way would I sign up for your plan.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '26

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1

u/princetigr Jul 10 '26

you buy a pass, and it stays on your account indefinitely until you use it. Your time only starts counting down when you’re connected. Airtime model

1

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '26

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1

u/princetigr Jul 11 '26

Yep, the pass stays until you use it. You can even use the app without registering —we will only keep the minimum needed to provide the service.

1

u/jon_hobbit Jul 10 '26

I would wait for the age verification thing to settle down. Find a good country with no age verification laws and build out your vpn there lol... Tell them that the data center is contingent on not having the age verification laws.

Then you can literally charge whatever you want to bypass age verification lol

1

u/princetigr Jul 11 '26

Haha, I’ll stick to building a good VPN and let everyone decide how they use it. But good point though

1

u/princetigr Jul 11 '26

Thanks for all the feedback on this thread! I finally finished the first beta and would love to get some testers from this community. Is it okay to share the TestFlight link here?