Like eduroam, the eduVPN service is available free of charge to the end-user. This means if you're a student, research, academic, or staff member at an eligible institution, you won't have to pay anything to make use of eduVPN — whether you make use of it in South Africa or abroad.
However, eduVPN comes without any of the risks associated with other "free" VPN services. Nobody is trying to find a way to monetise your data, nor are we going to enforce arbitrary restrictions to encourage you to upgrade to a "premium" offering. This is because the eduVPN service isn't operated or funded in the same way as commercial VPN offerings.
Of course, eduVPN is not free; it just doesn't rely on recovering its costs from the users of the service. eduVPN's global coverage relies on reciprocal arrangements between NRENs and educational institutions around the world, just as eduroam and identity federation do. These are organisations that have a strong history of respecting privacy and have business models that don't rely on directly charging end-users for services.
