Remote access is the backbone of modern work, yet budgeting for it still feels chaotic. Cloud-hosted business VPNs cluster around $8–$14 per user per month (minimum five seats), while legacy vendors such as Cisco sell 100-user blocks for about $2,300–$2,600 upfront—plus annual support. Rising hardware prices and ongoing chip shortages already push many teams toward cloud-delivered SASE and Zero-Trust platforms.
This guide walks through five real-world buying scenarios—from fast SaaS subscriptions, to firewall add-ons, to DIY builds—so you can nail total cost of ownership, dodge hidden fees, and choose the model that pays you back.
Ready? Let’s match each pricing model to the way your organization works.
1. Subscription VPNs: fast, flexible, and built for growth
TorGuard: when budget is the boss
TorGuard rarely tops enterprise shortlists, yet its numbers stop even the sternest CFO mid-scroll. A five-user Starter plan lands at about six dollars and sixty cents a seat, and the 70 percent-off deal advertised on TorGuard, which also bundles a free residential IP, drops that to pocket-change territory for the first contract term. Static IPs, often a hidden forty-dollar add-on elsewhere, sit right in the box, so you skip both technical workarounds and extra fees.
That headline price would mean little if the service skimped on protection. It does not. TorGuard ships with AES-256 encryption, a 3,000-plus server network, and no bandwidth throttles, so remote staff stream dashboards instead of loading bars. Teams that white-label client software for resell or brand consistency can flip the switch for a modest monthly charge, which is handy if you are an MSP or want your own logo on the login screen.
Where is the catch? Scale. The largest off-the-shelf bundle tops out at twenty users. You can chain plans together, but admin overhead grows with each extra portal and invoice. SSO and directory sync remain on the roadmap, which can push compliance-heavy shops toward pricier rivals. For lean organisations, though, TorGuard turns the usual ROI equation inside out: you start with premium features for pennies, then upgrade only when growth forces the issue.
If you need secure access today, have a two-digit headcount, and hate surprise line items, TorGuard becomes the conversation starter rather than the footnote.
NordLayer: security that scales up without tripping you up
NordLayer earns its keep by stripping away the usual enterprise red tape. You sign up online, drop your company logo in the console, and invite five users within ten minutes. The Lite tier clocks in near eight dollars a seat on an annual plan, while Core sits around eleven. Month-to-month pricing jumps to the mid-teens, but commit for a year, and you pocket roughly a 22 percent discount.
Every tier includes multi-factor authentication, a clean web portal, and global gateway coverage, so teams spread across time zones connect at full speed. Need extras? Flip to Core, and you unlock one-click network segmentation and SSO hooks for Azure AD or Okta, which is helpful when auditors keep asking about least-privilege access.
Static IPs are the one budget gotcha. They live outside the bundle at about forty dollars per month, nudging real per-user cost higher if you rely on IP allowlists. Larger shops dodge that premium by moving to the Enterprise plan, where dedicated gateways roll into the quote once you cross one hundred seats.
Why pay the NordLayer premium over a rock-bottom option? Time. Admins rave about shaving hours off onboarding and policy tweaks, and that labour saving matters more the faster your headcount climbs. When growth outpaces IT bandwidth, spending a few extra dollars per user on automation and dependable support often pays for itself in the first quarter.
Bottom line: if you expect your remote roster to double before your next coffee refill, NordLayer bridges the gap between a scrappy starter VPN and a heavyweight SASE suite without making finance flinch.
Perimeter 81 (now Check Point Harmony SASE): one stack to secure them all
Perimeter 81 built its fan base on slick management and granular network rules. After the Check Point buy-out, it doubled down, folding VPN, Zero Trust access, secure web gateway, and firewall-as-a-service into a single pane. Translation: you replace three or four siloed tools with one security contract, and one interface.
Pricing lands in the higher bracket, about eight to sixteen dollars per user on an annual term, yet you feel the value the moment you toggle a DNS filter or device-posture check without buying extra modules. Minimum seats start at ten, though premium bundles ask for twenty, so micro-teams must weigh the jump carefully.
The ROI kicker shows up when you already carry other Check Point licences. Bundled agreements often shave double-digit percentages off list, and your SOC gains unified logging across endpoints, network, and remote users. Less swivel-chair time equals fewer missed alerts.
Power does come with complexity. Advanced features hide behind plan tiers, and first-time admins face a learning curve steeper than the quick-start subscriptions we just covered. If you only need plain remote access, you can save cash elsewhere. If you want full SASE coverage without stitching vendors together, Harmony’s higher sticker price often nets out cheaper the moment you price separate web filtering, ZTNA, and round-the-clock enterprise support.
2. Firewall-bundled VPNs: squeezing more value from on-prem appliances
Cisco AnyConnect: the familiar workhorse for Cisco-first networks
If your racks already glow Cisco blue, AnyConnect often costs less than adding a brand-new cloud service. A 100-user perpetual block licence lands between two thousand three hundred and two thousand six hundred dollars up front, then you add annual support. Spread that over three years, and you pay well under three dollars per user each month while hardware you already own handles the load.
That price buys more than a tunnel. AnyConnect snaps into Duo for MFA, Umbrella for DNS security, and Identity Services Engine for posture checks, all managed in one policy set. Your network team views VPN sessions and firewall rules in the same dashboards they already use, so no one juggles three portals at midnight during an outage.
The integration dividend is where real ROI appears. Roll out a new compliance rule once, and it follows users whether they are on campus Wi-Fi or tethered to hotel broadband. Support tickets drop because the client and the firewall firmware come from the same playbook, and Cisco’s TAC owns every layer when something misbehaves.
Trade-offs remain. Licences expand in blocks, so sudden head-count spikes mean buying the next tier, not a single seat. Non-Cisco shops face a steep cover charge because you need an ASA or Secure Firewall to terminate tunnels, and that hardware is not cheap. The user interface feels dated next to slicker cloud portals, and upgrades ride the same maintenance windows as your other appliances.
Bottom line: AnyConnect shines when you already run Cisco switches, firewalls, and identity services. In that world, flipping on VPN is a line-item licence, not a six-figure rip-and-replace, and finance enjoys a capital expense already depreciated.
Palo Alto GlobalProtect: extending next-gen firewall policies to every laptop
Palo Alto Networks treats the remote user as another interface on the same NGFW that inspects branch traffic. That design removes blind spots because threat signatures, URL filtering, and application IDs that protect the office now follow employees onto hotel Wi-Fi.
Cost hinges on the hardware you already own. Smaller appliances often include a few hundred VPN seats; larger gateways require a GlobalProtect subscription licence that usually runs a few thousand dollars per year per gateway, plus support. Spread across several hundred staff, you often settle below three dollars per user each month, keeping traffic inspection on premises.
The bigger win is policy consistency. Security teams write rules once in Panorama and push them everywhere. Compliance audits shrink because you can prove identical controls on campus, in data centres, and on roaming laptops. That unification saves both time and fines, two line items any CFO loves to erase.
Complexity is the rub. Initial setup involves certificates, gateway zoning, and host-information-profile checks that seasoned PAN admins breeze through, but small IT teams dread. Capacity also tracks firewall horsepower: a surge in remote workers could demand a bigger box, not simply extra licences. If you already live in the Palo Alto ecosystem, those hurdles fade. If not, onboarding costs can eclipse licence savings.
In short, GlobalProtect is a straightforward add-on for organisations committed to Palo Alto gear. You monetise hardware already purchased, keep every security rule under one roof, and achieve per-seat costs that rival cloud services.
Fortinet FortiClient: low per-seat pricing for teams riding a FortiGate
Fortinet loves a bundle, and FortiClient VPN is no exception. Many FortiGate firewalls ship with a quota of SSL or IPsec VPN seats included, so your first wave of remote staff may cost zero beyond existing support. Need central control and compliance reporting? Add the FortiClient EMS licence, and you pay roughly ten to fifteen dollars per endpoint per year in reasonable volume.
That math turns heads. Even after adding EMS, a hundred-user deployment hovers near twelve hundred dollars a year, or about one dollar per user each month. Few SaaS rivals match that once you recognise that FortiClient also enforces endpoint posture, web filtering, and application firewall rules drawn from the same FortiOS policies guarding headquarters.
Operational efficiency sweetens the pot. Your network ops team already lives in FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer, so rolling out VPN becomes another module, not another platform. Tickets fall because threat logs, user sessions, and compliance dashboards sit side by side.
Downsides exist. FortiClient updates arrive often, and some admins grumble about the effort to keep every laptop on the latest build. Smaller appliances with limited memory lost SSL VPN support in recent firmware, forcing upgrades or a pivot to IPsec. If you are not already deep in Fortinet’s catalogue, buying a FortiGate just for cheap VPN seats rarely pays off.
For organisations fluent in Fortinet, though, FortiClient delivers an enviable cost curve: you stretch your firewall investment, unify policy, and end up with per-seat pricing that rounds down to loose change.
3. Usage-based cloud VPNs: pay for what you use
AWS Client VPN: elastic costs for elastic workloads
AWS prices connectivity the same way it prices compute, by the hour. You pay about five cents for every connection hour and roughly a dime an hour for the endpoint that serves those links. Leave a user connected around the clock, and the math climbs to about four hundred thirty-eight dollars a year, close to thirty-six dollars each month.
Run tunnels only eight hours a day, twenty days a month, and spend drops to the low twenties total for ten users. That elasticity suits bursty patterns such as field engineers who log in to check a dashboard, contractors who spin up for a sprint, or any team whose laptops sleep more than they sync.
Integration is another win. Authentication rides your existing IAM or SSO stack, routing policies map to security groups you already manage, and traffic can hairpin straight into VPCs without detouring through headquarters. You stand up the service in minutes, with no hardware or capacity planning.
Trade-offs appear when usage is high. Persistent staff can rack up cloud bills that dwarf a simple nine-dollar subscription elsewhere. You also inherit AWS complexity, including subnets, routes, and per-region quirks, which small IT teams may find overkill.
Use AWS Client VPN when you value elasticity over predictability, already live heavily in AWS, and prefer operating expenses that scale both up and down rather than fixed licences.
Azure VPN Gateway: flat gateway fee, surprise data charges
Microsoft flips the AWS model. Instead of billing by connection hour, Azure sells the gateway itself. The Basic SKU sits near twenty-six dollars a month, while VPNGw1 lands around one hundred forty. Every user shares that fee, so as headcount climbs, your effective per-seat cost drops.
Watch the fine print. Data egress from the gateway carries a metered charge. For light admin tasks, those pennies hardly register. Heavy file sync or video traffic spins the meter quickly, erasing the savings you expected from the flat gateway rate.
Protocol support matters, too. The bargain Basic tier offers only SSTP, a single-threaded tunnel many security teams retire on sight. Most businesses move to VPNGw1 or higher for IPsec/IKEv2, doubling the monthly spend and edging cost parity with cloud-native VPN subscriptions.
Azure does shine on integration. Policies tie directly into Network Security Groups, and authentication leans on Azure AD with no extra glue. If your workloads already sit in Azure and users mainly jump in to manage those resources, a shared gateway plus identity-based rules can be cheaper and simpler than juggling separate vendor clients.
Choose Azure VPN Gateway when your team is Azure-driven, bandwidth needs stay modest, and you prefer a flat gateway charge over per-user math. Just keep an eye on those egress lines in the bill.
Google Cloud VPN: one tunnel, many users, minimal overhead
Google keeps pricing simple. A Classic VPN tunnel costs about five cents an hour, roughly thirty-six dollars a month, no matter how many employees ride through it. If your whole team shares a single tunnel, per-user cost sinks toward pocket change.
The catch is architectural. Classic VPN supports only one tunnel per gateway and caps throughput well below hefty file-share speeds. High-Availability (HA) VPN doubles both the tunnels and the bill, yet still undercuts many seat-based services when dozens of users pile on.
Because you pay for tunnels, not connections, bursty access does not spike your invoice. Data egress carries region-based charges, but Google’s backbone means traffic between Google services stays free. That is gold for dev teams hosting code, containers, or analytical workloads inside the same cloud.
Setup is light. Drop a Cloud Router, tick a few boxes, and IAM does the rest. Identity-Aware Proxy or BeyondCorp can layer zero-trust controls without extra appliances, nudging you closer to SASE at incremental cost.
Choose Google Cloud VPN when most workloads and identities already sit in Google’s ecosystem, you need a low-touch gateway for distributed teams, and you prefer tunnel-priced models that stay flat as headcount shifts.
4. DIY open-source VPNs: cash-light, time-heavy
OpenVPN and WireGuard: owning the stack for under twenty dollars a month
Spin up a small cloud VM, install OpenVPN or WireGuard, and ten developers can tunnel home for about fifteen dollars a month, server included. Skip commercial licences and the software itself is free. On paper, that crushes every commercial plan in this guide.
Reality bites. Someone must harden the server, issue keys, monitor logs, and patch vulnerabilities on schedule. If your in-house admin bills at fifty dollars an hour, a single evening lost to troubleshooting can eat a year of subscription savings.
Scaling hurts, too. Each new laptop means new keys, revocations when staff leave, and support for whichever OS update breaks your scripts. At twenty or thirty users, overhead rivals a paid service, without the twenty-four seven help-desk safety net.
Where self-hosting shines is control. You decide where logs live, which cipher suites run, and how long user keys stay valid. For startups guarding sensitive prototypes or agencies bound by strict client agreements, owning every packet path feels priceless.
Choose the DIY route when budget is tight, skill is plentiful, and downtime risk is acceptable. Otherwise, count the real cost of midnight maintenance before crowning open source the ROI king.
5. Zero-trust and “VPN-plus” disruptors: future-proofing remote access
Twingate: app-level access without network baggage
Twingate skips dropping users onto your entire LAN. Its lightweight connector brokers a direct, encrypted link to each approved application. No network visibility, no lateral movement. Pricing starts near five dollars a user on annual terms and slides toward ten as you add device-posture checks.
Setup feels like SaaS, not plumbing. Deploy a connector in your VPC or data centre, point DNS, and invite users via SSO. Because traffic rides Twingate’s global edge, performance often beats legacy VPNs that hairpin through a central firewall. Teams with scattered offices or frequent travellers notice the speed boost immediately.
Cost comparisons get interesting around fifty seats. Stack a traditional VPN licence, plus MFA, plus a cloud firewall, and Twingate’s bundle often wins. You also avoid buying or refreshing VPN gateways, an easy win as hardware prices climb and lead times stretch.
The flip side is mapping every resource explicitly. That forces good security hygiene but taxes small IT teams during onboarding sprints. Legacy apps that rely on hard-coded IP allowlists may need refactoring or a hybrid approach.
Pick Twingate when you value least-privilege access, dislike hardware refresh cycles, and want costs that flex with headcount rather than appliance throughput.
Cloudflare Access and Gateway: freemium entry to SASE on a global edge
Cloudflare arrived via DDoS protection and now lets workers reach internal apps through the same 300-city edge that accelerates half the web. Up to 50 users free for Access, plus DNS, and HTTP filtering if you add Gateway. Paid plans sit around seven dollars a seat, still below most full-stack SASE rivals.
Deployment feels like adding SPF records. Point DNS at Cloudflare, install a small connector near your app, and choose an identity provider. A browser handles access to web apps; the Warp client appears only when you need device-level tunnels or split routing. That keeps rollouts smooth for contractors and BYOD devices.
Savings show up beyond licence fees. Because traffic reaches the nearest Cloudflare POP, staff in Johannesburg or Jakarta no longer hairpin to a single US hub. Latency drops, productivity rises, and you avoid the cost of regional VPN gateways. Gateway’s web filtering and malware scanning also remove the need for a separate secure web gateway subscription, turning two budget lines into one.
Caveats exist. Fine-grained posture rules are newer and less mature than in veteran ZTNA products. Organisations running thick-client legacy apps may need the Warp agent, adding another item to the endpoint image. The free tier lacks support SLAs, so mission-critical teams should budget for paid seats.
Choose Cloudflare when you need global performance, want to merge web filtering with ZTNA, and like starting free before scaling.
ExpressVPN Teams: consumer-grade polish in a business wrapper
ExpressVPN spent years courting streaming subscribers before launching a workforce plan in 2026. That consumer DNA shows: the desktop and mobile apps feel slick, setup wizards hand-hold non-technical staff, and connection speeds rival any mainstream business VPN. Early pricing sits in the three to ten dollars per user band, squarely against NordLayer’s entry tier.
What do you get? Unlimited device installs per user, more than one hundred POPs worldwide, and a portal that finally lets admins create and revoke accounts without juggling personal logins. Dedicated IPs remain absent at launch, so companies relying on static allowlists must wait or add a separate solution.
The draw is simplicity. Smaller firms can upgrade from shared “family” plans to a workspace that centralises billing and support while keeping the one-click connect flow employees recognise. Security holds up: ExpressVPN’s audited no-logs policy, RAM-only servers, and Lightway protocol carry over intact.
Constraints appear for growing teams. No SSO, limited role-based access, and only email ticket support mean you outgrow Teams before you hit triple-digit headcount. Treat it as an affordable runway to an enterprise VPN, not a forever home.
Choose ExpressVPN Teams when your company is leaving the freelancer stage, wants consumer-grade ease without consumer-grade chaos, and will trade deep controls for fast rollout.
Conclusion
Remote connectivity no longer comes in a one-size package. Subscription VPNs, firewall add-ons, cloud gateways, open-source stacks, and zero-trust newcomers each carve a niche defined by headcount, compliance, and growth pace. Map those variables to the pricing levers here, and the right choice reveals itself—often with savings hiding in plain sight.
