ExpressVPN Pricing Explained: The 2-Year Plan vs Monthly Maths

TL;DR: ExpressVPN’s 2-year Basic plan is $2.79/month, billed as $68.40 upfront for 28 months total. The monthly plan is $12.99/month. On a like-for-like basis, the 2-year plan is roughly 78% cheaper per month. But here’s what matters: ExpressVPN renews at $99.95/year for Basic, not at the introductory rate. Over three years including renewal, the effective monthly cost is closer to $4.85. With cashback through Rewardio, that drops further. Here’s the full breakdown.

Affiliate disclosure: Rewardio earns affiliate commission when you sign up for ExpressVPN through our links, and we pass a portion of that commission back to you as cashback. Our analysis of ExpressVPN’s pricing reflects publicly available rates and is intended to help you make an informed decision, not to push you toward any particular plan.

If you’ve landed on ExpressVPN’s pricing page, you’ve already seen the three tiers (Basic, Advanced, Pro) and the three durations (monthly, 1-year, 2-year). The page is clean. The percentages are big. Sitting prominently in the middle, the 2-year plan is clearly the “good” choice based on how everything’s laid out.

What the pricing page doesn’t make obvious is what you’ll pay in year three, four, and five. Or how the maths actually breaks down per month once you account for the upfront billing structure. Or how much cashback can change the total.

This article covers all of it. Let’s start with what each plan actually costs.

ExpressVPN current pricing (2026)

ExpressVPN restructured its pricing in early 2026 into three tiers. Here’s how each plan and duration shakes out at introductory rates:

*1-year plans include 3 bonus months (15 months billed upfront). **2-year plans include 4 bonus months (28 months billed upfront).

The upfront amounts you’ll actually be charged on the 2-year plans:

• Basic 2-year: $68.40 for 28 months
• Advanced 2-year: $87.92 for 28 months
• Pro 2-year: $146.80 for 28 months

Sources: ExpressVPN and Wizcase, March 2026 data

A few useful things to flag before we move on. The bonus months are not separate add-ons. They’re part of the upfront billing total, so the per-month figure already accounts for them. The 2-year price doesn’t mean you’ll pay $2.79 every month for 24 months. It means you pay $68.40 once, you get 28 months of service, and that works out to $2.44/month when you do the actual division (which is why some sources cite that figure rather than the headline $2.79).

What changes at renewal

This is the part of the pricing conversation that rarely makes it into the headline marketing, and it’s where the long-term cost picture lives.

When your introductory term ends, ExpressVPN renews you not at the same long-term rate, but at the standard annual rate for your tier. Per ExpressVPN’s own renewal pricing structure documented across multiple 2026 reviews:

• Basic renews at $99.95/year (roughly $8.33/month)
• Advanced renews at $119.95/year (roughly $10/month)
• Pro renews at $199.95/year (roughly $16.66/month)

These rates apply whether you originally signed up on the 1-year or 2-year plan. The introductory discount applies only to your first term.

In practical terms, this means a Basic 2-year subscriber goes from paying the equivalent of $2.79/month in their first 28 months to paying $8.33/month from month 29 onwards. That’s not a small jump.

It’s worth being clear about what’s happening here. ExpressVPN isn’t doing anything unusual by industry standards. Every major VPN provider (NordVPN, Surfshark, Proton, CyberGhost, PIA) operates similarly, with introductory rates that don’t carry through to renewal. The pattern is industry-standard. But the gap between intro and renewal does mean the headline price isn’t the actual long-term cost, and that’s worth knowing before you commit.

The honest three-year cost

If you’re going to use a VPN for years (which most people are), the meaningful number isn’t the first-term monthly rate. It’s the average monthly cost across the full period you actually use the service.

Here’s the maths for ExpressVPN Basic across three years, assuming you sign up on a 2-year plan and let it auto-renew:

• Year 1-2 (28 months including bonus): $68.40 = $2.44/month
• Year 3 (12 months at renewal): $99.95 = $8.33/month
• 3-year total: $168.35 over 40 months
• Average monthly cost over 3 years: $4.21/month

For Advanced over three years:

• Year 1-2: $87.92 = $3.14/month over 28 months
• Year 3: $119.95 = $10/month
• 3-year total: $207.87 over 40 months
• Average monthly cost over 3 years: $5.20/month

For Pro over three years:

• Year 1-2: $146.80 = $5.24/month over 28 months
• Year 3: $199.95 = $16.66/month
• 3-year total: $346.75 over 40 months
• Average monthly cost over 3 years: $8.67/month

Compare those true three-year averages to the headline 2-year rates and you can see how the gap works. The Basic plan effectively costs $4.21/month over three years, not $2.79. The Pro plan effectively costs $8.67/month, not $5.24. That’s still good value compared to monthly billing, but it’s a different conversation from the front-page numbers.

How monthly billing compares

If you bypass the long-term plan and pay monthly, the picture is much simpler.

• Basic monthly: $12.99/month every month
• Advanced monthly: $13.99/month every month
• Pro monthly: $19.99/month every month

Over three years, the Basic monthly plan costs $467.64. The same three years on the 2-year plan with one renewal costs $168.35. The 2-year plan saves you roughly $300 over three years for Basic, $295 for Advanced, and $373 for Pro.

The monthly plan only makes sense if you genuinely need short-term VPN access (a few weeks of travel, a specific limited-time use case) and have no intent to keep paying. In every other scenario, the 2-year plan dominates the maths, even after accounting for the renewal hike.

Where cashback changes the picture

This is where Rewardio fits in. Sign up for ExpressVPN through our VPNs & Cybersecurity category and you’ll earn cashback on the upfront payment.

Cashback rates vary, but for illustration let’s say 25% on the Basic 2-year plan:

• Upfront cost: $68.40
• Cashback at 25%: $17.10
• Net cost for 28 months: $51.30
• Effective monthly cost in first term: $1.83/month

Now run the three-year average with cashback included:

• Year 1-2 net: $51.30 over 28 months = $1.83/month
• Year 3 at renewal: $99.95 over 12 months = $8.33/month
• 3-year total with cashback: $151.25 over 40 months
• Average monthly cost over 3 years with cashback: $3.78/month

The cashback applies to the upfront payment, not to the renewal. So the cashback advantage is most pronounced in your first term and gets diluted across the longer holding period. But that first-term saving is real money, and on a Pro plan with a higher upfront amount, the cashback can run into the high double digits.

We covered the broader case for VPN cashback in our best VPN deals 2026 piece, including comparisons across NordVPN, Surfshark, and Proton.

The renewal workaround that actually works

There’s a legitimate strategy worth knowing about, documented in multiple user forums and reviews. When your ExpressVPN subscription is about to renew, you can:

1. Disable auto-renewal in your account settings before the renewal date
2. Let the subscription expire
3. Sign up again as a “new customer” using a different email address
4. Get the introductory rate again
5. Earn cashback on the new signup

Multiple sources document this approach as standard practice, and ExpressVPN’s terms don’t explicitly prohibit it. You’ll need a separate email and ideally a separate payment method to be treated as a new customer.

A few practical notes on this. You’ll lose any account-specific settings, saved server preferences, or referral credits when you switch accounts. The transition needs to be timed so you don’t have a gap in VPN coverage. And ExpressVPN may eventually tighten this if the practice becomes widespread, so don’t assume it’s permanent.

For most users, this is the single biggest pricing optimisation available on ExpressVPN. It cuts the long-term effective cost roughly in half compared to letting auto-renewal run.

When ExpressVPN’s pricing is actually a good deal

Despite the renewal complexity, ExpressVPN can be the right choice for the right user. A few cases where the pricing works:

You value the Lightway protocol and consistent speeds. Independent testing consistently rates ExpressVPN among the fastest VPNs, and the proprietary Lightway protocol is meaningfully faster than OpenVPN on most connections.

You’re streaming geo-restricted content. ExpressVPN’s MediaStreamer DNS works with smart TVs and gaming consoles that don’t support VPN apps natively. This is a feature most competitors don’t match.

You’re willing to manage the renewal manually. If you set a calendar reminder, disable auto-renewal in time, and either re-sign up at intro rates or migrate to a competitor, ExpressVPN’s effective long-term cost can be lower than it looks.

Your priority is the British Virgin Islands jurisdiction. ExpressVPN’s BVI base puts them outside intelligence-sharing alliance jurisdictions, which matters for users with specific privacy concerns.

When you should probably look elsewhere

A few honest cases where ExpressVPN isn’t the right answer:

Pure budget priority. Surfshark’s 2-year Starter plan is cheaper at $1.99/month introductory, and Proton’s renewal rates are more reasonable. If price is the dominant factor, ExpressVPN isn’t the cheapest option even within the 2-year plan tier.

You want low renewal pricing. Among the major VPNs, ProtonVPN’s renewal rates have historically stayed closer to introductory pricing than ExpressVPN’s. If you don’t want to manage the renewal cycle manually, Proton is the better fit.

You need extensive specialty servers. NordVPN offers more specialty server types (Double VPN, Onion over VPN, obfuscated servers) than ExpressVPN. For specific advanced use cases, NordVPN’s catalogue is deeper.

The bottom line

ExpressVPN’s 2-year Basic plan at $2.79/month is a strong introductory rate. The maths breaks down to $68.40 upfront for 28 months of service. After that, you’ll renew at $99.95/year unless you actively cancel and re-sign up.

Over three years, the true average monthly cost lands around $4.21 for Basic, $5.20 for Advanced, and $8.67 for Pro. Cashback through Rewardio brings the Basic first-term effective rate down to roughly $1.83/month, and the three-year average to around $3.78/month.

Compared to monthly billing at $12.99/month, the 2-year plan saves substantial money even after the renewal hike. Compared to competitors at similar tiers, ExpressVPN sits roughly in the middle of the market on price and toward the top on speed and feature breadth.

The most important thing to do at signup is to put a calendar reminder for 30 days before your renewal date. Whether you choose to renew at full price, cancel and re-sign up at intro rates, or migrate to another VPN, that reminder is what turns the 2-year plan from a “saw the headline rate, signed up, forgot about it” purchase into a deliberate pricing optimisation.

FAQ

How much does ExpressVPN cost per month? On the 2-year Basic plan, $2.79/month (billed as $68.40 upfront for 28 months). The 1-year Basic plan works out at $3.49/month. If you pay monthly, you’re looking at $12.99/month. Advanced and Pro tiers cost more at every duration.

Does ExpressVPN have a free trial? Yes. There’s a 7-day free trial available through the iOS and Android app stores, and a 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans purchased through ExpressVPN’s website. The money-back guarantee doesn’t apply to Apple App Store purchases (refunds for those go through Apple).

What does ExpressVPN renew at after the 2-year plan? ExpressVPN Basic renews at $99.95/year, Advanced at $119.95/year, and Pro at $199.95/year. The introductory long-term discount applies only to your first term. Auto-renewal is enabled by default unless you disable it in your account settings.

Is the 2-year ExpressVPN plan worth it? For most users, yes. The 2-year plan costs roughly 78% less per month than the monthly plan at the headline rate, and even accounting for the renewal hike, it’s significantly cheaper than monthly billing over any period longer than a few weeks.

Can I get ExpressVPN cashback? Yes. Sign up through a cashback site like Rewardio’s VPNs & Cybersecurity category and you’ll earn a percentage of the upfront payment back. Cashback applies to the initial purchase, not to renewals.

Does ExpressVPN offer a student discount? Not currently. Unlike some competitors (Surfshark and NordVPN), ExpressVPN doesn’t operate through Student Beans, UNiDAYS, or other student verification platforms. The 2-year plan is the lowest available rate regardless of student status.

How do I avoid the ExpressVPN renewal price increase? Disable auto-renewal in your account settings before your subscription ends. You can then either let the subscription expire and re-sign up as a new customer to access the introductory rate again (using a different email), or switch to a competitor at their introductory rate.

Is ExpressVPN cheaper than NordVPN? On the 2-year Basic plan introductory rate, ExpressVPN at $2.79/month is currently cheaper than NordVPN’s equivalent. On renewal, both VPNs charge similar rates. The comparison depends on which features matter most to you. Speed and ease of use favour ExpressVPN; specialty servers and lower renewal rates favour NordVPN.