Two catalogs get mashed together online: Apple in-app prices (what we date) and website intro banners (what affiliate roundups date, then forget). This page is the first catalog, scraped 29 Aug 2026. And it carries a warning the roundups will not give you: the bargain rows from earlier this month are partly gone. Cheap VPN countries are not a permanent address.
Keep the unit in the sentence. A month is a month. A 12-month total is one prepaid year. ExpressVPN lists the year plan first in our file; NordVPN and Surfshark list monthly first.
Which is cheaper: monthly, same unit
| Service | Cheapest monthly | Local | USD / month | US monthly | vs US |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExpressVPN | Egypt | E£249.99 | $4.96 | $12.99 | −62% |
| ExpressVPN | Turkey | ₺239.99 | $5.01 | $12.99 | −61% |
| NordVPN | Turkey | ₺399.99 | $8.34 | $13.99 | −40% |
| Surfshark | Turkey | ₺449.99 | $9.39 | $10.99 | −15% |
ExpressVPN owns the bottom of the monthly table outright: Egypt and Turkey both undercut everything NordVPN and Surfshark offer anywhere. That fact disappears from posts that only ever print ExpressVPN as a $99.99-a-year brand.
If you cannot leave the US storefront, the ranking flips:
- Surfshark $10.99
- ExpressVPN $12.99
- NordVPN $13.99
So “cheapest brand” depends on which column you live in. ExpressVPN Egypt is the cheapest absolute monthly. Surfshark is the cheapest US monthly. NordVPN has neither crown this month - but see the year table below.
One more honest cell: India stopped being a bargain. NordVPN India monthly repriced from $5.73 (19 Aug) to ₹1,159 = $12.10 (29 Aug) between two consecutive scrapes. ExpressVPN India sits at $10.95, Surfshark at $11.16. Nobody’s India story survived the week.
Per-brand pages: NordVPN, Surfshark, ExpressVPN. Full country boards: /service/nordvpn/, /service/surfshark/, /service/expressvpn/. Hub: /vpn/.
Which is cheaper: 12 months prepaid
These USD amounts are what Apple charges once for 12 months. They are not monthly rates.
| Service | Cheapest 12-month country | Local | USD for the year | US 12-month | vs US |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NordVPN | Turkey | ₺459.99 | $9.60 | $83.99 | −89% |
| Surfshark | Indonesia | Rp635,000 | $35.61 | $47.99 | −26% |
| ExpressVPN | Egypt | E£3,949.99 | $78.38 | $99.99 | −22% |
NordVPN’s Turkey year plan ($9.60) is the single wildest row in the file - it sits next to Turkey’s own monthly NordVPN price of $8.34, meaning the year costs about one more month. We report it as cataloged; we do not relabel it “$0.80/mo” in a comparison column.
Note what changed for ExpressVPN: its old Turkey year plan at $37.55 is gone from the storefront (Turkey now shows $93.88 for the year). The cheapest ExpressVPN year is now Egypt at $78.38. If you read a 2025 or early-2026 roundup quoting $37.55, it is quoting a dead price.
Cross-term math without lying about the unit
If you will pay for a year, multiply monthlies by twelve and leave year plans alone.
| Path | Cash over 12 months | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| NordVPN Turkey 12-month | $9.60 | year plan |
| 12 × ExpressVPN Egypt monthly | 12 × $4.96 = $59.52 | monthly × 12 |
| ExpressVPN Egypt 12-month | $78.38 | year plan |
| 12 × NordVPN Turkey monthly | 12 × $8.34 = $100.08 | monthly × 12 |
| Surfshark Indonesia 12-month | $35.61 | year plan |
| 12 × Surfshark Turkey monthly | 12 × $9.39 = $112.68 | monthly × 12 |
| US Surfshark 12-month | $47.99 | year plan |
| US NordVPN 12-month | $83.99 | year plan |
| US ExpressVPN 12-month | $99.99 | year plan |
The lesson is not “always prepay.” Twelve monthlies and one year plan are different products, often priced in different countries, and the cheap monthly country is frequently not the cheap year country (ExpressVPN: Egypt wins both, but via wildly different amounts; Surfshark: Turkey monthly vs Indonesia year).
Forbidden comparison: ExpressVPN Egypt $78.38/year printed next to NordVPN Turkey $8.34/month in one column labeled “price.” That column is how clone sites harvest clicks. It is not how anyone actually gets billed.
How you actually pay each brand
App Store rows above bill through your Apple account, so any way you fund that account works. Direct on the vendors’ own websites (checked August 2026):
- NordVPN: cards including UnionPay, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, GrabPay, crypto, Sofort/Klarna, iDEAL, Twint, and prepaid or cash-bought cards - the widest set of the three.
- Surfshark: crypto works on the website only, never through app billing; website promos run around €2.49/mo over long terms with a 30-day money-back window.
- ExpressVPN: nearly identical pricing everywhere (Egypt’s −22% is the only real dent worldwide), and it quietly removed crypto from checkout - a Bitcoin marketing page still loads, but the option is gone. Basic runs about $83.72 for a first 28-month term, then $99.95/yr.
That last point matters: ExpressVPN being flat-priced means there is far less arbitrage to chase, while NordVPN’s Turkey year row is real but fragile - exactly the kind of row that vanished for India monthly this week.
All three also renew higher than their intro price. NordVPN’s own pages document roughly $94-to-$139 on a popular annual plan; Surfshark’s standard rate returns near $15.45/month after promo terms. Renewal write-ups: NordVPN, Surfshark, ExpressVPN.
None of these purchases move YouTube, Netflix, or Spotify onto another country’s price list - those services bill by the account’s own country, and a VPN does not change that reliably. How figures get a date: methodology.