Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro owners should know that their new phone comes with a pretty appealing perk. Google announced that both phones would come with complimentary access to its Google One VPN — but didn’t specify how long you’d get. It turns out that you’ll get access for the next five years.
More specifically a new Google Security blog post reveals that free access to the Google One VPN will “be available at no extra cost as long as your phone continues to receive security updates." According to Google’s own support pages, the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro are guaranteed to get security updates until at least October 2027 — five years from now.
Considering how many people ditch their phone after two or three years, chances are they’ll be onto the Pixel 9 or 10 by the time this freebie expires. Which is pretty great, especially since other Pixel perks, like free access to YouTube Premium, typically expire after a few months.
Normally the Google One VPN is only available to Google One subscribers on the Premium plan. This plan costs $10 a month (or $100 a year) and comes with Google One VPN access, 2TB of Drive storage, the option to share with five others, 10% back at the Google Store and various other features.
This change gives Pixel 7 owners one less reason to subscribe to the Premium Google One plan, especially if they don’t really need 2TB of cloud storage space. Then again, the Google One VPN is far from one of the best VPN services available, and probably isn’t the draw Google was hoping it would be.
Locking the Google One VPN into the Premium plan makes it more expensive than a lot of the competition, and doesn’t let you pick which server you connect to. Our own usage also showed that it doesn’t offer the ability to stream content from other regions. That’s one of the main reasons why people subscribe to a VPN in the first place.
That said, Google’s offering does seem to be a capable option from a reliability standpoint. It offers encrypted access to websites, hiding your activity in the process. Google even claims that the VPN uses “Protected computing” to ensure it’s theoretically impossible for people to link your browsing to you or your Google account — even people at Google itself.
The consensus here at Tom’s Guide is that the Google One VPN is a solid choice and fairly reliable. Particularly since it relies on open source clients that are independently audited and verified.
Our current favorite is Express VPN, thanks to its rock solid privacy, 30-day money back guarantee and fantastic support for just about everything. Plus, it lets you pick from one of over 3,000 servers in 94 countries.
In short, Google One is not the best VPN out there but it’s a great free perk.
