So I was just renewing a contract with a VPN provider, and paid out for a couple years it works out to somewhere under $2/month.
ISPs around me can run from about $50-$150/month
If I’m putting the major bulk of my traffic over a tunnel that could eat up a sizable chunk of a given connection point for the provider that I’m sure costs more than $2/month to maintain. I would have to assume it would take the combined subscriptions of several users to pay for a given node.
So how does that work as a business model? Unless these VPN providers are getting a steal on their connections it’s hard to envision how they can manage to pay their costs without these nodes being absolutely bottlenecked when a few people start streaming some shows.
VPNs are basically free to host. All you need is one server and you can put hundreds of people on it if you really hate them.
ISPs have to actually run cables to your house, to other nodes, sometimes pay to route traffic through certain connections.
Also most cheap/free VPNs are either stealing and selling your data, or using your network as a VPN for others.