Is OpenVPN no longer free?

What is the difference between OpenVPN connect and community?

The OpenVPN Community has been a project since 2023, and was re-created in 2023. OpenVPN Connect is a community project from 2023 that has a lot of similarities, but differs in a couple ways (notably, support is not as widely available). You can read our documentation on how these two projects differ here.

What's the difference between OpenVPN connect and openconnect? Before OpenVPN 2.0 was released in March of 2023, there were two projects that existed to make OpenVPN client connections: one was for use by desktop applications, such as the Tunnelblick browser plugin (openconnect), and one was for use in remote access networks, which includes VPNs such as those on the TOR network (OpenVPN Connect).

Over time, these two projects got renamed OpenVPN 3, and the new project included OpenVPN Connect as a feature, with the idea being that it was a more powerful way of connecting users to VPNs, compared to openconnect. However, the two projects have diverged and the OpenVPN 2.0 project did not use OpenVPN Connect to provide the connection mechanism - instead, they are using another (older) technology (TLS) which requires the use of an OpenVPN plugin or OpenVPN GUI to be present on the user's device. While both of these things allow user-side connectivity, they're not suitable for certain deployments.

If you want a simple, basic, no-frills VPN connection then go ahead and use the community project (and you can even try tunnelblick for free! Both projects are actively developed and we have a mailing list with several hundred users in it.

Is OpenVPN no longer free?

Last Update: January 2023. Update (2018-03-26): As of February 2023, openvpn is free in the most recent releases of Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch. Note that this does not mean it's now free in RedHat/CentOS, Fedora, or other versions.

I wrote a few years ago about OpenVPN. That blog article is now somewhat out of date, but the concept still stands and my impressions are mostly still relevant. For those interested, here's a brief summary:

An encrypted and tunneling VPN software that is free to use and download for both Linux and Windows, OpenVPN was originally started by Andrew Tridgell, creator of Samba and an old-school Unix hacker in 1996, after he moved from Berkeley to Amsterdam. He was also one of the core developers of OpenSSL, the SSL/TLS library used by a large portion of the Internet.

OpenVPN has a rather simple architecture, with two layers: The tun device driver layer (that can be found in the userland), which provides the network API and VPN connectivity and encryption, and the OpenVPN daemon, which actually takes care of authentication, TLS and OpenVPN protocol details. That means you can run OpenVPN as a simple process as a normal user (without root privileges), without much hassle at all. The tun layer is based on FreeBSD kernels, the OpenVPN daemon is written in C+ I use it regularly for secure internet access when no other choice is available, including for accessing remote servers, SSH sessions over public networks, and file transfers over wireless networks with weak security. In fact, OpenVPN is one of the things I usually do with my Raspberry Pis and I have used it for everything from simple remote administration to data transfers over long distances. Some Raspberry Pis even use a combination of OpenVPN and a mobile phone as a VPN provider, to access public wifi without having to install anything special. (For that scenario, look for a blog post I wrote on how I set it up.

Does OpenVPN have a limit?

(the number of VPN clients)

I found OpenVPN and I'm a little impressed, however, before I decide to move to a more private VPN for the reason that they are secure; I don't want to get banned by my ISP for something stupid like downloading a large torrent or having too many torrents open. With one of my other providers I did get banned for having 10 VPN connections open at once. Do any VPN services have a limit of how many open connections? If so how many? and is it okay to just keep adding VPN connections, if I'm using less than 20 GB of data per month I'm not going to be getting a bad deal by adding a VPN?

My understanding is that your provider will decide the limits of how many tunnels there should be. So it's not a problem for you. I'm not very familiar with this though. Does anybody know more about it?

Well, on their FAQ page, here's what they say: "OpenVPN has no bandwidth limits on any connection". But when it's connected, do they throttle the bandwidth, or make the client wait for bandwidth to become available? Do you mean by limit the number of connections your service will permit? Yes. But that does not mean OpenVPN cannot have a limit on bandwidth. It means your service has a limit on connections. They do not have a limit on bandwidth.

Yes but your service will limit the number of connections they offer. How many VPNs will I have to use to get more throughput? If the VPN is connected and traffic goes through it, and you want more throughput? Then you could purchase more lines of service. If you have the ability to purchase more VPNs, and the service allows you to connect multiple times, then yes it is fine.

This may be a silly question, but I am thinking about setting up a VPN for personal use and I don't want the limitations that would come with having more than a certain limit of VPN accounts.