“VPN without ads” can mean two things: no ads popping up in the VPN app itself, or a VPN that removes ads in other apps. Below: where the ads in free VPNs come from, how to check an app before you pay, and where Mayak stands on both.
In short. Ads in a free VPN are a way to pay for servers, which cost money every month. You can check an app before paying in three ways: use it and watch for banners and videos between actions; look for a “remove ads” purchase; read the Data safety section in Google Play or the privacy label in the App Store. Mayak has no ads in the app: we live on subscriptions. There is no free tier either, only a trial. Ads in other apps are cut by a separate, optional filter — it does not remove everything, and what it leaves is described in a separate article.
We make Mayak — a private network for Android and Android TV. No ads in the app, we live on subscriptions; there is no free tier, but you can try it. 3 days free after you confirm your email, no card needed. The trial is free and needs no card; without an email it is 1 day.
🍎 On iPhone Mayak works through the third-party Happ app — with the subscription link from your account. Happ is not in the Russian App Store; there INCY (publisher LLC ITDEV) works instead, checked on 22 September 2026.
What “VPN without ads” means: two different requests
One phrase hides two requests, and the answers differ.
- No ads shown inside the VPN app itself. Banners on the home screen, a video after you disconnect, “watch an ad to continue”. This is a question about the app: how it makes money. Most of this article is about it.
- A VPN that removes ads in other apps and on websites. That is an extra feature — a filter. Not every service has one, and such a filter removes far from everything. Details are in the last section and in the article about the ad filter.
Hence the awkward consequence: “VPN without ads” in the first sense does not mean “a VPN that removes ads” in the second. They are independent properties.
Why free VPNs show ads
Servers, the links to them and development cost money every month, free service or not. If you do not pay, someone else does. There are several ways, and advertising is the most visible: the app shows ads to you, and the advertiser pays the app. The other ways are covered in “What you really pay for a free VPN extension” and “Paid or free VPN”.
This is not an accusation: free tiers can be honest when the source of money is visible. The question to any service is the same — what do you live on?
How ads in a VPN app differ from ads in a game. Ads inside an app are usually shown by a ready-made advertising module (SDK) from a third-party ad company, and some information about the device is usually passed to it so that the ad can be chosen and paid for. A VPN app, meanwhile, sits between you and the network: in the consent window Android itself says the app can “monitor network traffic”. That is why ad modules deserve a separate question precisely here — what do they receive? What a service sees at all and what to ask about “logs” is in the article about safety.
How to check an app before you pay
Three checks, each takes a few minutes and no special knowledge.
- Use it. Connect and disconnect a few times, open the settings and the country list. Banners on screens, full-screen videos between actions, “wait 15 seconds” or “watch an ad to get time” — that is advertising in the app, and there is nothing to guess.
- Look for a “remove ads” purchase. If the app sells an item that turns ads off, ads are there by default. Read the store description and the screen with the plans.
- Read the privacy label. In Google Play it is the “Data safety” section on the app page. According to Google's help page, the developer describes there which data the app collects and shares, and advertising is one of the listed purposes — “used to display or target ads or marketing communications, or measuring ad performance” (Google help). The App Store has privacy labels: data is split into linked to you, not linked to you and not collected, and “Third-Party Advertising” is among the purposes (Apple's page on privacy labels). An advertising purpose on a VPN app is a reason to be careful and read the rest.
Two caveats. First, a label is the developer's own words: it shows what was declared, not what the app really does. Second, no ads does not make a service safe: the questions “what does the service see” and “what does it live on” remain.
Check it yourself. Install Mayak, connect a couple of times and see what is on the screens. We do not ask for payment details for the trial. A confirmed email opens the access — 3 free days. An email is optional: without one the trial is 1 day.
🍎 On iPhone Mayak works through the third-party Happ app — with the subscription link from your account. Happ is not in the Russian App Store; there INCY (publisher LLC ITDEV) works instead, checked on 22 September 2026.
What Mayak does: no ads in the app
That is what the home page says: servers are paid for by subscribers, so there are no ads in the app and your data is not the product. The privacy policy adds that we use no third-party advertising or analytics modules and have no advertising pixels or trackers.
What we live on. Subscriptions, from 300 ₽ a month; plans differ in the number of devices, not in speed — details in the help. What there is not. A free tier forever: there is a trial, and after it you pick a plan. If you need a permanently free service, that is not us, and we will not pretend otherwise.
These are our own words about ourselves, and you can check them with the same three steps from the previous section: use the trial, look for a “remove ads” purchase (there is none — nothing to remove) and compare with the privacy label in the store.
Ads in other apps: the filter
The second meaning of the query is covered by a separate feature. The settings have a filtering choice, and one of its options is “Ads and trackers”. It is off by default, costs nothing extra, works during the trial too, and the setting is one per account (help).
How it works and where the limit is. The filter works at the DNS level: before loading anything, an app asks for a server's address by its name, and for the names of known ad servers the filter answers with an empty address. Ads served from the same server as the content itself are not removed this way: you cannot cut that server off without breaking the service. That is why, in our measurement of 19 September 2026, ads inside YouTube videos and in social feeds stayed. The address tables and the steps are in the article about the ad filter; we do not repeat them here.
If what you need is “a VPN after which the ads in videos disappear”, nobody can honestly promise that: a VPN does not remove ads from videos by itself.
What we checked
- What our site says about ads. On 9 October 2026 we compared the wording on the home page (the “Why you can trust us” list and the “no ads” badge) and in the privacy policy (about third-party advertising and analytics modules).
- What the stores say about labels. The same day we opened Google's help page on the Data safety section and Apple's page on privacy labels: in both, advertising is among the purposes, and the developer fills the label in.
- Trial terms. On 9 October 2026 we asked our server: the full trial is 3 days, without an email 0 days, so “without an email” appears in this article only where the server allows it.
- The ad filter. The address measurement and tables come from the filter article, 19 September 2026, app version 0.7.33. We did not repeat it here.
What we do not know
- Ads in other VPN apps. We have not gone through other VPN apps or taken them apart, so we neither name nor compare them: what a particular app shows, check yourself with the three steps above.
- Our own store listing. What our app's Data safety section says in Google Play, we did not compare today.
- The path to the filter in version 1.0.0. The steps in the filter article were taken on 0.7.33, and in 1.0.0 the app menu moved to the bottom. The “Ads and trackers” item is described in the help on the site, but we have not walked through the 1.0.0 screens again.
- iPhone. Whether the filter applies when Mayak is connected on iPhone through a subscription link, we have not checked.
- What other labels show. A label is the developer's words; we did not undertake to compare it with an app's behaviour.
Short answers
Is there a free VPN without ads? There can be, but the source of its money should be visible: for example, the free level of a paid service. Check it with the three steps above. Mayak has no free tier — only a trial.
Which VPN without ads is best? We do not rank: we have not tested other apps. No ads is one property among many; the rest are collected in “Paid or free VPN”.
A VPN without ads for Android? Mayak is an app for Android and Android TV, with no ads in it. It installs from Google Play or as a file from our site.
A VPN without ads for iPhone? We have no app of our own for iPhone: Mayak connects there through a third-party app with the subscription link from your account, in the Russian App Store that is INCY. Whether it shows ads is up to its publisher, not us — read its privacy label.
A VPN for YouTube without ads? A VPN does not remove ads in videos by itself. In our 19 September 2026 measurement our ad filter does not cut YouTube ads: they come from the same servers as the video.
Paid VPN — does that mean no ads? Not necessarily: some paid apps have ads. Paying is not a guarantee; check the same way.
Does Mayak's ad filter cost extra? No, it is part of the access and works during the trial.