I’m searching for the most affordable VPN that’s reliable and not easily detected by websites. While many popular VPNs are budget-friendly, I’m open to lesser-known options. I’ve encountered issues with some well-known VPNs, like NordVPN, being blocked or requiring frequent CAPTCHA verification. This has prevented me from accessing services like ChatGPT. Any recommendations?
I would say the most affordable is probably Surfshark or Mullvad.
I like mullvad for safety and lack of logs. You can even pay with crypto. It’s like $4/month
Surfshark has a promo of 83% alot of times and with cashback you pay next to nothing, PIA also with cashback, once it had 110% cashback, so got money for it 
Windscribe is cheap but don’t do alot of promos, Proton vpn is free and they added country’s for free users, but as a top vpn on a budget surfshark hands down, unlimited devices
Mullvad €5 a month, well worth it
Every VPN is detectable.
Inherent to the technique your traffic will in 95% of the times be identified as being indirect.
Best chance is hosting your own, but I guess that defeats the purpose (keeping your identity away from prying eyes)
Take what i say with a grain of salt as im not an expert, but being connected to a vpn over tls is very noticeable. whatever VPN you go with, make sure they support dns over https and use that option. not foolproof, but better than most. if a website specifically blocks vpns, try using an obfuscated server. (may be named differently depending on service, and some services may not have them.) While i despise NordVPN as their privacy practices are terrible, off the top of my head i know they have all those features, and feature some insane deals bi-yearly.
PIA works out to about $1.60 a month
AirVPN for me with port forward
proton vpn good free/paid one, good paid mulvad
Perhaps Windscribe with a dedicated IP if you are trying to get around blocks. Not cheap though. Also never understood how Windscribe can maintain your anonymity when a specific IP is tied to you.
Celo VPN $2.70 p/m special reddit deal
CAPTCHAs are a pain with most big VPNs. Try servers in less common regions, sometimes that help. Do check out Proton VPN too, it has a solid free option and affordable paid plans. No data limits on free, but speeds get throttled.
Might sound weird, but residential proxies plus a budget VPN can sometimes work better than premium VPNs alone.
If price is the main concern, check out Proton VPN. Decent free plan and cheap upgrades.
Some lesser-known VPNs like AirVPN fly under the radar better than big names like Nord.
Avoiding captchas is more of a hit and miss, because it’s server and traffic related. However, from personal experience, Nord, Surfshark, and Mullvad are all good enough. The US servers are pretty clogged usually, but they become better when you try some trial and error with the servers.
As for affordability, Nord and Surf have long-term affordable plans compared to Mullvad. But both of these need a giant initial pledge, and with Mullvad you only need 5 euros per month. It’s not cheap in the long-term, but it works and is pretty transparent.
Buy long term service on Black Friday.
AirVPN has port forwarding and works well.
Looks like a great deal to me, thanks.
Yeah mullvad is good but long term it costs more compared to some otherw