Business VPN trials, refunds and contract terms: who publishes what, and what a year's commitment costs if you leave in month three
The numbers first
- Four of the 24 vendors here print a free-trial length on the pricing page: Proton VPN Business (14 days), GoodAccess (14 days, no card), Tailscale (14 days for business customers, added to this site's tables on 2026-10-02) and Firezone (30 days, Enterprise plan only).
- Refund terms this site could read from a vendor's own page: Proton (30 days from first purchase, once per user), NordLayer (14 days), ExpressVPN Teams (30 days for new users), PureVPN (its page says both "14-day" and "31-day"), GoodAccess ("please contact us"), Twingate (fees paid are not refundable, unused portion included).
- Only PureVPN, ExpressVPN Teams and VyprVPN print a contract length in months. The others print an annual per-user rate without saying how many months you are paying for.
- Sign a one-year plan for five people and stop using it after three months, and the year's charge runs from $249.60 (Firezone Team) to $480 (NordLayer Lite). Three months on monthly billing would have been $75 to $150.
Who lets you try before the minimum bites
| Vendor | Free trial | Free plan (not a trial) | Refund |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proton VPN Business | 14 days; the terms say you are then "enrolled into a full-fledged paid subscription" that auto-renews | None | Full refund within 30 days of first purchase, once per user; cash and bank transfers excluded. Business subscribers agree they are "not acting as a consumer" |
| GoodAccess | 14 days, no card needed | None | "To request a refund of a service, please contact us" |
| Firezone | 30 days, Enterprise only | Starter, free up to 6 users | This site has not read a refund term |
| Tailscale | Page states "Business customers can enjoy a 14-day free trial of the product with no user limit" (read 2026-10-02) | Personal, up to 6 users, non-commercial | Not stated on the pricing page |
| NordLayer | Not stated on the pricing page | None | "14-day money-back guarantee"; FAQ: "you can request a refund within 14 calendar days of your initial purchase" |
| Twingate | The customer agreement says "either party may cancel a free trial before it ends by providing written notice"; no length on the pricing page | Starter, free up to 5 users | "Payment obligations are non-cancelable and Fees paid are not refundable (including for any unused portion of a Subscription Term)" |
| ExpressVPN for Teams | Not stated on the pricing page | None | "30-day money-back guarantee for new users" |
| PureVPN Business | Not stated on the pricing page | None | The same page says "14-day no question asked money back" and "31-Day money-back guarantee"; which applies to Business cannot be read from it |
| OpenVPN CloudConnexa, NetBird, UTunnel, Windscribe, VyprVPN | Not stated on the pricing page | OpenVPN Starter 5 seats; NetBird Free 5 users | This site has not read a refund term |
See Proton VPN Business pricing
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A free plan and a free trial are kept apart on purpose. Firezone's six users, Twingate's five, OpenVPN's five seats and NetBird's five are free without an end date and capped by headcount (article-45 puts them side by side). A trial has no headcount cap and ends on a date. Proton's terms are explicit that the trial rolls into a paid subscription, so stopping it is something you do before day 14, not something that happens.
"Has not read" means this site has not yet read a terms page for that vendor beyond its pricing page. It is not a claim that there is no refund. NordLayer's terms-of-service URL returned 404 on 2026-10-02, so NordLayer's row quotes only the FAQ on its pricing page.
How far apart the two prices are
Article-08 found monthly billing 18% to 29% higher on the five plans that printed both rates when it was written. The 2026-09-07 re-read added Proton, NordLayer and ExpressVPN Teams, so seven vendors now print both.
| Plan | Annual rate, per month | Monthly rate | Monthly is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Twingate Teams | $5.00 | $6.00 | 20% more |
| Proton VPN and Pass Professional | $10.99 | $12.99 | 18% more |
| Proton VPN Professional | $9.99 | $11.99 | 20% more |
| Firezone Team | $4.16 | $5.00 | 20% more |
| NordLayer Lite | $8.00 | $10.00 | 25% more |
| NordLayer Core | $11.00 | $14.00 | 27% more |
| GoodAccess Premium | $11.00 | $14.00 | 27% more |
| NordLayer Premium | $14.00 | $18.00 | 29% more |
| GoodAccess Essential | $7.00 | $9.00 | 29% more |
| Proton VPN Essentials | $6.99 | $8.99 | 29% more |
| PureVPN Starter (1 to 10 seats) | $7.00 | $9.00 | 29% more |
| ExpressVPN for Teams (5 to 9 licenses) | $4.68 | $9.74 | 108% more |
Eleven of the twelve plans stay inside the 18% to 29% band. ExpressVPN Teams is the exception: $9.74 and $4.68 are the 1-month and 12-month rates for the same license band, and the monthly rate is more than double. NordLayer is the one vendor where a fixed charge moves with the term as well: the required Server with Dedicated IP on Core and Premium reads "+$40/month" on the yearly toggle and "+$50/month" on the monthly one.
Twingate's two rates are as read on 2026-10-02 (Teams $5 yearly, $6 monthly), which this site's tables have used since that day. The 2026-09-07 reading was $4.25 and $5.00; article-41 has the detail.
A one-year plan for five people, abandoned in month three
Following this site's formula, the year's charge is the annual per-user rate x 5 x 12, set against the monthly rate x 5 x 3. Whether "annual" means twelve months paid up front or twelve monthly invoices is stated by ExpressVPN ("Auto-renews $280.80 annually for 5 licenses") and by nobody else here, so the table assumes you pay for twelve months.
| Plan | Year's charge (5 x 12) | Three months, monthly billing | Difference | Does any of it come back after three months? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firezone Team | $4.16 x 5 x 12 = $249.60 | $5 x 5 x 3 = $75.00 | $174.60 | Not read |
| Twingate Teams | $5 x 5 x 12 = $300.00 | $6 x 5 x 3 = $90.00 | $210.00 | No; unused portion not refundable |
| ExpressVPN for Teams | $280.80 (as printed) | $48.70 x 3 = $146.10 | $134.70 | Within 30 days, new users |
| Proton VPN Essentials | $6.99 x 5 x 12 = $419.40 | $8.99 x 5 x 3 = $134.85 | $284.55 | Within 30 days, once |
| GoodAccess Essential | $7 x 5 x 12 = $420.00 | $9 x 5 x 3 = $135.00 | $285.00 | "Please contact us" |
| PureVPN Starter | $7 x 5 x 12 = $420.00 | $9 x 5 x 3 = $135.00 | $285.00 | 14 or 31 days; the page says both |
| NordLayer Lite | $8 x 5 x 12 = $480.00 | $10 x 5 x 3 = $150.00 | $330.00 | Within 14 calendar days; nothing stated after that |
Every refund window here is shorter than three months. By the time a team decides in month three that it is done, Proton's 30 days and NordLayer's 14 are behind it. The Difference column is the amount you are taking on when you pick the annual toggle.
The same arithmetic run the other way gives the month in which annual becomes the cheaper choice: the year's charge divided by the monthly rate. NordLayer Lite: $96 / $10 = 9.6 months. GoodAccess Essential, Proton Essentials and PureVPN: 9.3 months. Firezone: 10.0. Twingate: 10.0. ExpressVPN Teams alone sits at $56.16 / $9.74 = 5.8 months, so if you expect to keep it past half a year the annual rate is already the lower total.
The three that print a contract length
contract_months is filled for three vendors.
- PureVPN Business: two Starter rows, "monthly" (1 month) and "annual" (12 months)
- ExpressVPN for Teams: 1 month, 12 months and 2 years in one table; the 2-year term is $366.00 for 5 licenses and "then renews biennially"
- VyprVPN Business: $55.00 a month or $329.99 a year for Professional Edition
Twingate, Firezone, GoodAccess, NordLayer and Proton all print an annual per-user rate without saying on the pricing page whether "annual" is a twelve-month promise, a twelve-month prepayment, or both. Twingate's customer agreement fills some of that in: each subscription "will automatically renew for periods equal to the initial Subscription Term," non-renewal needs written notice "at least 30 days prior to a renewal date," and Twingate may change fees for renewing services with 30 days' written notice, effective from the next renewal. Proton's terms say the subscription "is renewed automatically for the duration as specified during your initial purchase." Those are the terms that decide what month three costs, and neither is on the pricing page.
What the pricing pages leave out
- Tax. ExpressVPN Teams prints "All amounts shown are in USD before VAT or sales tax." Whether the other rates are before or after tax cannot be read.
- When the annual charge is billed (above).
- What happens when headcount falls mid-term. Twingate's "including any unused portion" reads as: five seats bought for a year stay five seats. The others say nothing.
- What happens at the end of a trial. Proton says it converts. GoodAccess asks for no card, so there is nothing to convert. The rest do not say.
The cost guide covers the charges outside the per-user rate; article-43 covers Proton's two- and three-user minimums; article-50 covers GoodAccess's five-user minimum and the $49 gateway.
Who this is not for
If you have already signed, none of this applies; your term and your rate are whatever the contract says, and the pricing page stops mattering. This page also says nothing about how quickly any vendor processes a refund or what a trial lets you test. This site has not used these products.
Sources
- https://proton.me/legal/terms — checked 2026-10-02
- https://proton.me/business/vpn/pricing — checked 2026-09-07 (browser read)
- https://nordlayer.com/pricing/ — checked 2026-10-02 (the terms URL https://nordlayer.com/legal/terms-of-service/ returned HTTP 404 the same day)
- https://www.twingate.com/terms — checked 2026-10-02
- https://www.goodaccess.com/pricing — checked 2026-10-02
- https://www.expressvpn.com/teams/pricing — checked 2026-10-02
- https://www.purevpn.com/business-vpn — checked 2026-10-02
- https://tailscale.com/pricing — checked 2026-10-02
- https://www.firezone.dev/pricing — checked 2026-09-07
- https://seatbill.com/vpn-pricing/article-08 — this site's annual-vs-monthly table
Related on this site
- [[Where both prices are printed, monthly business VPN pricing runs 18% to 29% higher]](article-08.html)
- [[What a business VPN price leaves out]](guide-cost.html)
- [[Proton VPN for Business pricing: $6.99, $9.99, $10.99 and a 2-to-3-user minimum]](article-43.html)
- [[GoodAccess pricing: $7 and $11, a 5-user minimum and the optional $49 gateway]](article-50.html)
- [[NordLayer pricing: what a user costs with minimums and fixed charges]](d/nordlayer.html)
- [[NordLayer vs Twingate: cost per user at two, ten and fifty]](vs/nordlayer-vs-twingate.html)
- [[The calculator]](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.