Trying WrapVPN before you pay

An account without a subscription is on the free plan. Signing in with Apple or Google is all it requires: nothing is bought in the App Store or Google Play, no payment details are involved and there is nothing to cancel afterwards.

Free accounts use the same apps and exit servers as paid ones. They receive the same server list and can connect to any location in it, Clean Web works for them, and no plan, the free one included, has a device limit.

The limit is time. Each account has three sessions a week, and each session lasts one hour from the moment it starts. The hour keeps running if you disconnect, reconnecting within it does not start another session, and the allowance resets every Monday at 00:00 UTC.

How a free VPN is funded is a fair question to ask of any provider, and the guide to judging a VPN sets out how to read the answer. WrapVPN's free sessions pass through the same exit servers as paid ones, and the privacy policy describes what is recorded about every session.

Three hours a week, in three separate windows, are enough for a structured test but not for living with the app. Planned in advance, each session can answer a different question. Used casually, a five-minute check costs a whole session, because the hour runs from its start whether or not you stay connected.

All of an account's devices share the allowance and the running hour. A device that connects while a session is running joins it and ends when it ends, so a phone, a tablet and a laptop can be tested together within one session rather than one after another across three.

Within those limits, the sessions can show whether the app installs, signs in and connects on each device, whether your usual networks carry the connection, how nearby server locations perform and how your regular sites behave with Clean Web. They cannot show the parts of the service that only time reveals.

The order below puts first the questions that can rule the app out, so that no session is spent on details before the basics are settled. Three sessions fit it well: the first on every device together, the second on your other networks and on nearby locations, and the third on Clean Web and a network with a sign-in page.

Where a trial is offered, it belongs to the monthly plan; the weekly plan has none. The App Store or Google Play decides eligibility under its own rules, and an offer shown in the app is not a promise. The store applies those rules when you confirm, and its purchase sheet is the authority on what will be charged.

A trial is a store subscription that starts with a free period, so it is set up with the payment method on your App Store or Google Play account, and WrapVPN never receives your card details.

Subscribing, with or without a trial, happens in the iPhone, iPad or Mac app through the App Store, or in the Android app through Google Play. The Windows app sells nothing: its 'Upgrade' and 'Subscribe now' buttons open WrapVPN's Google Play listing. Access belongs to the account, so a Windows PC signed in to the same account as the phone has the same access for as long as a trial lasts.

If you take a trial, spend it on what the free sessions cannot show: a full day with the VPN left on, Auto-Connect on a phone, battery over an ordinary day and a week of moving between networks.

If you take a trial and do not cancel it in time, the monthly plan begins when the trial ends, the store charges $3.99, or the amount it shows in your currency, and the plan then renews every month until you cancel it. The end date is shown in the subscription settings of the store you used.

On the App Store, cancelling in time means at least 24 hours before the trial ends, as the iPhone app's own trial terms state. On Google Play, it means before the date the store shows. Both stores handle cancellation in their subscription settings, which the apps open from 'Manage in App Store' on iPhone, iPad and Mac and 'Manage in Play Store' on Android.

Cancelling in time does not cut a trial short. Access continues until the end date, the account then returns to the free plan, and nothing is charged.

If a trial turns into a paid month you did not want, use 'Request a refund' on the app's subscription screen. Under the current policy, a Google Play request within 14 days of the charge is refunded automatically, and for an App Store purchase Apple decides.

A test across several devices means something only if they all reach the same account, and the plan or trial follows the account rather than the device. Both sign-in methods, Apple and Google, are offered in every app; choose one before the first device and keep to it.

The two methods meet in one account only when the provider's identifier or the email address matches. An Apple sign-in with Hide My Email gives WrapVPN a relay address instead of your own, so a Google sign-in on another device matches nothing and creates a second account, without the first one's plan or trial.

A device that still shows the free plan after you have subscribed on another one is usually the sign of this. Sign out on that device, sign in with the Apple or Google account used where you subscribed, and the plan appears there too.