Judging a VPN for long-term use is not the same as judging it for a first purchase. On a first buy you check whether it connects and whether the price is acceptable; for the long run you check whether the service will still be here in a year, whether routes have grown, and whether the client keeps up with OS updates. An annual plan just compresses all of that into a single payment — the discount itself is not a reason.
An annual plan saves on unit price; the stake is time
The logic of an annual plan is simple: pay for a longer period up front and get a lower average monthly price. The cost is just as simple: you hand over your options for the next twelve months.
The bigger the discount, the longer the prepaid term, and the more concentrated the risk. Say the service becomes unusable for a long stretch in month four: the refund window has closed, the remaining eight months are neither usable nor refundable, and that money is sunk. So the question isn't how the discount compares with paying monthly — it's how the discount compares with the odds of an outage. A 20% discount looks generous, but against a 30% chance of disruption the math loses.
A workable order: run a monthly subscription through one full billing cycle first, verifying peak-hour stability, several devices online at once and subscription updates, then decide whether to pay for a longer term. For people who have already run it steadily for six months or more and can see routes being maintained, the annual discount is a net gain; ordering a multi-year plan on sign-up day means the savings won't cover a single misjudgment.
How to choose among three billing cadences
There are three common payment cadences: monthly subscriptions, one-off data packs, and prepaid plans covering a year or more. They don't solve the same problem, so comparing their unit prices tells you nothing.
| Payment model | Billing cadence | Data rules | Loss if service stops | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly subscription | Once a month, reset on the activation date | Monthly allowance, from 60GB | One month at most | Steady usage, want to change tiers freely |
| Data pack | One-time payment | Use until it runs out, never expires, from 300GB | Unused data stays, nothing wasted | Backup routes, travel, spiky usage |
| Multi-year prepaid | One payment covering a year or more | Terms vary by provider; read them line by line | The remaining term may not be recoverable | Six months in and confirmed stable |
This service currently offers the first two: monthly subscriptions at ¥9.9 for 60GB, ¥18 for 250GB and ¥28 for 500GB, with data resetting each month on the activation date and mid-cycle upgrades prorated into remaining days; data packs at ¥158/300GB, ¥358/1000GB and ¥658/3000GB, usable until they run out and never expiring. Long-term cost is something you work out by combining monthly subscriptions and data packs, not by locking everything into a multi-year plan.
The refund window: how to make the 30 days count
A 30-day no-questions refund is an observation period, not a free trial. Its real purpose is to let you run, at no risk, the checks that only surface over long-term use.
- Day 1: get the connection working. Register with a username and password (no email address needed), sign in to the dashboard for your subscription link, import it on your main device, and confirm international sites load normally.
- Days 2–3: test the evening peak. On your usual network, test between 20:00 and 23:00 and note whether the connection stays smooth, whether switching routes forces a reconnect, and whether it recovers on its own after a drop.
- Week 1: several devices at once. Add a second and third device to the same account. Unlimited devices means they can all be online together — check that they don't knock each other offline.
- Week 2: set up split routing and DNS. Send apps that need international routes through the proxy and let local services connect directly; also confirm DNS lookups aren't falling back to your local ISP, which is how you end up connected but resolving badly.
- Weeks 3–4: read the terms through. Find where refund requests are submitted, how the amount is calculated and how long it takes to arrive, then decide whether to renew or refund.
After the route count, look at route structure
110+ countries and 150+ routes are a baseline, not proof of quality. The same numbers can mean a dozen crowded direct connections crammed into one country, or a handful of popular regions each with several route types. Three ways to tell: does the server list name cities, does it label route types, and can you switch between types within the same city?
| Route type | How traffic travels | Characteristics | When to pick it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct | The client connects straight to the exit server | Shortest path, low latency; noticeably affected by international gateway congestion at peak hours | Daytime use, latency-sensitive tasks |
| Relay | Connect to a relay node first, then on to the exit | Skips congested segments at the cost of one extra hop; usually steadier than direct | Peak hours, cross-carrier access |
| IEPL dedicated line | A carrier point-to-point line that avoids the public international gateway | More predictable bandwidth and latency; costs more and usually covers only popular regions | Video calls, long stable sessions |
Also check whether routes are being added. A service that is still operating will see its server list change slowly: new cities, an extra dedicated line for one location, machines that were never stable being retired. A list that hasn't moved in a year usually isn't stability — it's neglect. That tells you more about a provider's state than any marketing copy.
Client update cadence says more than a feature list
The client is the easiest thing to overlook. Protocols keep evolving: Shadowsocks, VMess, Trojan, VLESS, Hysteria2 and TUIC arrived in different eras and suit different situations; the client has to keep up before the server side dares to switch. Three things are enough to check.
- Are supported protocols and transports spelled out? “Compatible with mainstream clients” says nothing; at minimum it should state which platforms each protocol works on.
- Can the subscription link update in one tap? When servers change, one subscription refresh should sync the client without hand-editing configs; whether the update interval is adjustable also shapes how it feels over months of use.
- How fast does it adapt after a major OS release? iOS network extensions, macOS extension permissions, Android background keep-alive and battery rules — every generation changes the rules, and slow movers drop the connection first and explain later.
Across platforms, the same subscription behaves differently in different clients: desktop can stay resident in the background, while mobile has to deal with whether the tunnel survives the screen turning off; running on a router and running on a phone also call for different split-routing rules. If the changelog only ever says “improved the experience”, the maintainers aren't planning to tell you what changed — and that kind of service rarely gives you actionable troubleshooting steps when something breaks.
What never-expiring data packs mean for long-term users
A monthly subscription answers “how much will I use this month”; a data pack answers “what if I need it one day later on”. They don't conflict, and it shouldn't be either-or.
Never expiring means you aren't forced to burn the allowance inside a fixed period. The worst case for a low-frequency backup user is buying a one-month pack, not needing it during the week of a trip, and watching the allowance reset to zero. A use-it-until-it's-gone rule removes that waste; the trade-off is a unit price somewhat higher than a monthly subscription, and that difference buys flexibility.
A practical combination: put your main devices on a monthly subscription, with the allowance resetting each month on the activation date, and keep a data pack for backup devices or occasional needs — switch to it when you travel or need a route in a particular region for a while. That way, even if the subscription lapses one month, you still have a working route instead of scrambling for an alternative.
The pre-purchase checklist
Run through the items below one by one and you'll filter out most of the options that look cheap and feel awful in practice.
- ✅ The server list names cities and labels route types (direct / relay / IEPL dedicated)
- ✅ The terms state where to request the 30-day no-questions refund and how it's calculated
- ✅ Sign-up needs only a username and password — no email address
- ✅ Payment covers what you can actually use: Alipay / WeChat / USDT
- ✅ Data packs say “use until it runs out, never expires”, not a monthly reset
- ✅ The client has a changelog you can check, with compatibility notes after major OS releases
- ❌ Only “global servers”, with no cities or route types
- ❌ A discount so large it requires paying for several years up front, with no word on how refunds work
- ❌ The subscription link can't be reset yourself; resets go through manual review
- ❌ The terms say only “no logs”, without saying what would be logged or how long it's kept
Verdict: verify first, then talk about annual plans
Whether an annual plan is worth it depends on whether you can confirm the service will still be worth using a year from now. The order should be: use a monthly subscription and the 30-day refund window to verify peak-hour stability, multiple devices online, subscription updates and client compatibility one by one; only then consider paying for a longer term. No discount is big enough to justify paying before you've run a full billing cycle.
VPNSJ splits the choice in two: monthly subscriptions at ¥9.9 for 60GB, ¥18 for 250GB and ¥28 for 500GB, resetting each month on the activation date; data packs at ¥158/300GB, ¥358/1000GB and ¥658/3000GB, usable until they run out and never expiring. Neither limits the number of devices, both come with a 30-day no-questions refund, and sign-up needs no email address.