Guide
How to cancel a VPN subscription
Where you bought the subscription decides where it is cancelled, and the provider cannot do it for you if a store took the payment. Turning off renewal, asking for a refund and deleting the account are three steps, in that order, and this page takes them one at a time. Written against the stores of late 2026.
What this settles
Three things are easy to confuse here: the subscription, which is a standing instruction to charge you; the refund, which is a request made against a window; and the account, which is the login and whatever the provider keeps against it. Each is ended separately, and ending one does not end the others. The order below stops the charges first, settles the money second and closes the account last.
Find out where you bought it
The receipt decides everything. A subscription is renewed by whoever took the payment, and only they can stop it.
- Find the receipt mail from the first payment. It came from the provider, from the App Store, from Google Play or from a reseller, and the sender is the place you cancel.
- If it came from a store, note which account made the purchase. A subscription lives in the account that bought it, which may not be the one signed in on the device you hold.
- If you cannot find the receipt, check the store subscription pages first, then the provider's account page. The one that lists it with a renewal date is the one in charge.
1. Turn off auto-renewal
Bought from the provider
Sign in on the provider's website, open the account or billing page and look for the renewal setting. Turn it off; the subscription then runs to the end of the period you paid for and stops. Some providers put the switch behind a cancel link that offers alternatives first. Keep going until the page states a date on which the subscription ends.
Bought through the App Store
On the device, open Settings, your name at the top, then Subscriptions, and select the provider. Cancel there. The provider cannot do this for you, and deleting the app does not do it either. The subscription stays usable until the renewal date.
Bought through Google Play
Open the Play Store, your profile, then Payments and subscriptions, Subscriptions, and select the provider. Cancel there; as with the App Store, the provider has no access to it, and uninstalling changes nothing.
Bought through a reseller
A key bought from a third party is usually a one-time period with no renewal to turn off, and the reseller's own terms govern anything beyond that. Confirm on the provider's account page that no renewal is set anyway.
2. Ask for the refund inside the window
- Read whose window applies. The provider's refund terms cover purchases made from the provider; a store purchase follows the store's refund policy, and the provider cannot refund money it never received.
- Count from the payment date, not from the day you stopped using it. A window measured in days closes quietly, and a renewal that went through unnoticed starts a new one from its own date.
- Ask in writing through the account's support channel, or the store's refund form, and keep the reply. The yearly sum on the receipt is the figure to quote; nothing is gained by dividing it.
3. Delete the account last
Delete it after the final renewal date has passed and any refund has arrived, so that neither depends on an account that no longer exists.
- Note anything you still need from it — usually nothing beyond the receipt, and that is the point of a provider that keeps little. Configuration files you downloaded for a manual setup stop working with the account.
- Find the deletion request on the account page or through support. Some providers delete on the spot, others queue it; either way, ask for confirmation in writing.
- What is deleted is the account. What the provider kept of your use of it, and for how long, is a question about its documents rather than this form, answered on the retention pages.
Then remove the client
A client left installed after the account closes keeps its network adapter, its login item and, on a phone, its VPN configuration, none of which the subscription's end removes. How to uninstall a VPN takes those out in order. If the plan is a different provider rather than none, choose it on the register first, and remove the old client before installing the new one: two clients on one machine each claim the same routes.
When the charge keeps coming
I cancelled on the provider's site and the store charged me again
The store holds the subscription, not the provider. Cancelling an account, or even deleting it, does not reach a subscription that the App Store or Google Play is renewing on its own; only the store's subscription page can stop it. Open it, cancel there, and then ask the store, not the provider, for the refund of the renewal that went through.
I cannot find the subscription in the store
Look under the account that made the purchase, which is not always the one signed in on this device: a family member's account, a second account on the phone, or an account on a different platform. The receipt mail says which store and which account; the subscription page of that account is where it is.
If no store shows it, the provider or a reseller took the payment directly, and the provider's account page is the place.
The refund request was refused
Read which terms applied. A refund from a store follows the store's own policy and is usually decided once; a refund from the provider follows the provider's window, which runs from the day of payment and not from the day you stopped using it. A purchase made through one cannot be refunded by the other.
If the request was inside the window and refused, the provider's own terms are the document to quote back to them, and the payment card's dispute process is the last step rather than the first.
The account is deleted and the client still connects
The device still holds a valid session and the provider has not revoked it yet, or the deletion is queued and the subscription runs to its end date. Uninstall the client, which removes the session with it; how to uninstall a VPN covers the parts the uninstaller leaves behind.
Same steps, other machines
The rest of the platforms
Every platform has a guide of its own rather than a tab on this one. The steps diverge as soon as the installer opens, and a page that answers three platforms at once answers none of them properly.