Free business VPN tiers side by side: Firezone 6, Tailscale 6 (non-commercial), Twingate 5, OpenVPN 5 seats, NetBird 5, and the bill for user number seven
In one table
Of the 24 vendors this site holds, six print a free row on their pricing page with a stated cap in users or devices. Here they are, with what each page says about commercial use and what happens in the first month past the cap.
| Vendor | Free plan | Cap | Commercial-use condition | First paid plan once you cross it | A 7-person team, the month after |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firezone | Starter | 6 users | None in this site's reading of the page (no credit card required) | Team, $4.16 per user per month on annual billing ($5 monthly) | $4.16 x 7 = $29.12 |
| Twingate | Starter | 5 users | Described as for personal and small use | Teams, $5 per user per month on yearly billing ($6 monthly) | $5 x 7 = $35.00 |
| OpenVPN CloudConnexa | Starter | 5 seats (a seat is a user or a connector) | None in this site's reading of the page | Essential, $7 per seat per month, billed yearly | $7 x 7 = $49.00, plus $7 for each connector |
| Tailscale | Personal | 6 users, unlimited user devices | FAQ: "only suitable for non-commercial use" | Standard, $8 per user per month, monthly | $8 x 7 = $56.00 |
| NetBird | Free | 5 users, 100 machines | None in this site's reading of the page | Team, €6 per user per month, monthly | €6 x 7 = €42.00 (euros; not compared with the dollar rows) |
| ZeroTier | Personal | 10 devices, 1 network | "Personal, non-commercial use" | Essential, $18 a month base including 10 devices, then $2.00 per device | $18 if 7 people bring one device each; $18 + $2 x 4 = $26 at two devices each (14) |
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The commercial-use column copies only what the pricing page, or an FAQ it links to, says. "None in this site's reading" means the page does not raise the question; it does not mean the vendor has waived it. Consumer free VPNs, the one-device, ten-country, data-capped kind, are a different subject and sit in the free-VPN article. This page assumes a company team.
What separates a free six from a free five
There are only two cap sizes here: 6 (Firezone, Tailscale) and 5 (Twingate, OpenVPN, NetBird). One user apart, but for a six-person company it is the line between paying nothing and paying something. The 5-user table carries all six free plans; at six people only Firezone Starter and Tailscale Personal are left; at seven, none. That is why the 10-user page says there is nothing free at that size.
The two sixes are not the same six. Tailscale's own FAQ says the Personal plan "is only suitable for non-commercial use," and its docs add that you cannot buy extra seats on it (article-39 quotes the passage). Read strictly, a six-person company on Tailscale starts at Standard's $8. Firezone's page, as this site has read it, attaches no such condition to its six.
OpenVPN's five seats are not five people
The CloudConnexa pricing page asks "How many users and connectors will you need?" and counts both as seats. One connector, the piece that joins an office or a cloud network to the mesh, leaves room for four users. The unit does not change when you pay: seven people plus one connector is eight seats, $7 x 8 = $56. Twingate's five and NetBird's five are user counts; Twingate connectors and NetBird machines are counted some other way (NetBird's Free includes 100 machines, Team includes 100 plus 10 per user, and extra machines are €0.50 each per month).
ZeroTier's ten are devices, not people
ZeroTier never counts people. Personal is free for 10 devices on one network, for "personal, non-commercial use." Essential charges an $18 monthly base that covers 10 devices and $2.00 for each device after that. Seven people with a laptop each fit inside the $18; a laptop and a phone each makes 14 devices and $26. Divide by seven and you get $2.57 or $3.71 a head, but those are not the same unit as the per-user rows, which is why the table above does not divide them. Article-07 is about the unit problem in general and article-64 works through ZeroTier and Pritunl specifically.
What the invoice looks like in month seven
The step from free to paid, for a team of seven, by month and over three years. Where a vendor prints an annual per-user rate the figure uses it; where it prints only a monthly rate, that one. This is the same rule as every table on this site.
| Paid plan | Monthly bill for 7 | Per person | Three years (monthly x 36) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Firezone Team | $29.12 | $4.16 | $1,048.32 |
| Twingate Teams | $35.00 | $5.00 | $1,260.00 |
| OpenVPN CloudConnexa Essential (7 seats) | $49.00 | $7.00 | $1,764.00 |
| Tailscale Standard | $56.00 | $8.00 | $2,016.00 |
| NetBird Team | €42.00 | €6.00 | €1,512.00 |
Firezone and Twingate are $5.88 a month apart. Both figures are annual-billing rates; on monthly billing Firezone is $5 a user and Twingate $6, so a monthly-billed team of seven pays $35 or $42. Tailscale prints only the $8 monthly rate.
The seventh user does not leave the other six free. Every paid plan here bills every user, so the step is from $0 for six to $29.12 for seven on Firezone, and the seventh hire is the one who costs $29.12 that month.
How long you can stay at zero
- Up to 5 people: all six vendors (ZeroTier up to 10 devices), with the non-commercial condition on Tailscale and ZeroTier.
- 6 people: Firezone Starter. Tailscale Personal fits by headcount but not by its FAQ.
- 7 or more: nothing. Put any number into the calculator and the free rows vanish past their caps.
- On OpenVPN, five people plus one connector is already six seats, so a five-person team with a connector is paying.
A free tier is in this table only when the vendor prints a paid per-user rate under it. Cloudflare's Free Plan is printed as "$0 forever" and "Best for teams under 50 users", a recommendation rather than a stated cap, so it is left out (article-44). Pritunl's Community edition is free for one server with unlimited users, which is a server-based free, not a user-based one.
Twingate note: the Twingate figures above are the 2026-10-02 reading ($5 Teams, $10 Business on yearly billing). Until that day this site's tables used $4.25 and $8.50; article-41 has the detail.
Who this is not for
This page says nothing about what the free tiers do or which is easier to run. This site has not used any of these products. What is here is each cap as printed and the rate that applies in the month after it; which plan to pick is not part of it.
Sources
- https://www.firezone.dev/pricing — checked 2026-09-07 (a server-side read on 2026-10-02 returned no figures)
- https://tailscale.com/pricing — checked 2026-10-02
- https://www.twingate.com/pricing — checked 2026-09-07
- https://openvpn.net/cloud-vpn/pricing/ — checked 2026-09-07
- https://netbird.io/pricing — checked 2026-09-07
- https://www.zerotier.com/pricing/ — checked 2026-10-02
- https://seatbill.com/vpn-pricing/5-users — this site's 5-user table
- https://seatbill.com/vpn-pricing/article-39 — the Tailscale FAQ wording as quoted there
Related on this site
- [[Business VPN pricing for 5 users]](5-users.html)
- [[Firezone pricing: why $4.16 tops the ranking, and moving off the 6-user Starter]](article-51.html)
- [[Twingate pricing: free Starter for 5, Teams at $5]](article-41.html)
- [[How much does Tailscale cost for a business?]](article-39.html)
- [[NetBird pricing in euros: Team €6, Business €12]](article-56.html)
- [[Is a free VPN really free, or is there a catch?]](article-18.html)
- [[The calculator, at your own headcount]](tool.html)
Written by Kaz (pen name). Published October 2, 2026. Prices were checked on the dates given under Sources. We have not used these products. Corrections: contact form.