Introducing Firefox’s Built-in VPN: IP protection, now in the browser

[MShahabuddin]

Hello everyone,

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Firefox’s free built-in VPN Beta, a new privacy feature that hides your IP address while browsing in Firefox.

When you browse the web, your IP address is typically visible to the websites you visit and to your internet service provider. IP addresses can be used to approximate your location or link activity over time - for example, when browsing on public Wi-Fi or visiting sites you’d prefer not to be linked together. Built-in VPN reduces that exposure by masking your IP address while you browse in Firefox.

Our goal is straightforward: make IP protection accessible directly in Firefox.

The built-in VPN is available for up to 50 GB of browsing per month. It is currently rolling out to users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, and we are planning expansion to more regions soon.

We’ve also heard concerns about so-called “free VPNs,” which often rely on advertising or selling user data to generate revenue. Built-in VPN is designed differently. It does not sell your browsing data and does not inject advertising into your traffic.

Instead, we offer a limited amount of browser-level protection for free, alongside Mozilla VPN, our paid, full-device VPN service. This allows us to make IP protection more accessible while continuing to invest in more comprehensive privacy tools.

How it works

Instead of connecting directly to a website, Firefox routes your browsing traffic through servers run by our service partner Fastly.

In practice:

• Firefox creates an encrypted TLS connection to the proxy.
• DNS lookups are sent through that encrypted connection.
• The proxy connects to the website on your behalf.
• Website content remains end-to-end encrypted using standard HTTPS encryption.

What each party can see:

• Your ISP or local network sees that you connected to the proxy, but not which websites you visited.
• The proxy provider can see the destination hostname, connection timing, and data volume, because it must know where to connect. It cannot read passwords, form entries, messages, or page content.
• The website sees the proxy’s IP address, not your real one.

Mozilla receives aggregate data usage from the proxy provider so Firefox can display your monthly usage. This information is separate from your browsing activity and does not include the websites you visit.

For more details about how Built-in VPN works, including data limits, account requirements, and privacy protections, see our support article.

How to use it

To get started:

1. Update to Firefox 149 or later
2. When the feature is available, click the VPN button in the toolbar
3. Sign in to or create a Mozilla account (used to track your usage against the 50 GB limit)
4. Turn on protection in the panel

The VPN indicator will turn green when it is active.

You can manage the feature anytime in Settings > Privacy & Security > VPN. If you prefer not to use it, you can remove the toolbar button. If you experience issues with a specific site, you can exclude it from the proxy directly in the panel.

We’d like your feedback

Built-in VPN is launching in Beta, and your feedback will directly inform how it evolves. We’ll continue expanding availability and refining the feature as we learn how people use it.

If you try it, we’d like to know:

• Does it work as you expect?
• Have you noticed any sites behaving differently?
• Have you encountered any performance or connection issues?
• What use cases are important to you, and what would you like to see this feature do?

Share your thoughts in the comments below. Your input helps us improve reliability, clarity, and overall experience.

- The Firefox Team

[Blitz_zz]

I think a whitelist feature to only use the vpn on a select few websites, and a location choosing feature would be nice, as certain websites block content based on the location you are browsing from.

[Agentvirtuel]

Bonjour

Je vis en France.
Ci-dessous, Firefox 151 bêta, un test effectué.

Firefox vpn - Firefox vpn localisation Canada

[junk]

First I want to say I'm a big fan of this feature. Thank you.

Several times over the last few days I have come back to my computer and had a modal dialog pop up saying that the VPN was unreachable. I was given two options: one to close my tabs, and one to continue browsing without the VPN. There should be a third option - try to reconnect to the VPN. It would also be nice if it periodically checked if the VPN was back and reconnected and closed the modal dialog on its own. But it makes no sense that I have to continue browsing unprotected, just so I can click the VPN button in the bar to re-enable it. I don't want to lose my tabs or my protection, and I shouldn't have to unless it is a last resort.

My other suggestions would be to allow inverting the blacklist to a whitelist, permitting wildcards or regex in that list, and changing the color of the VPN status indicator so a user knows when they're approaching the 50GB limit. Choosing the region (country, state, province, etc.) of the exit node would be swell too but maybe there are policy reasons to disallow that.

[myspace]

not sure if this has been suggested but it would be nice to be able to easily enable vpn on a single tab  

[GGebhard]

I Have Firefox 150 and use it on a windows 11 PC.  When I activate the VPN I got a problem:
When I listen to www.SWR1.de  (radio), the transfer stops after few minutes and I have to activate the radio again. Without VPN  the radio session is ok.
Please check this. I am aware, that this is probably a prelimary version, therefore I report this effect.

kind regards Gerhard Gebhard

[OrangeHedghog]

Hi,

I tried the Firefox VPN the day I was notified it was available to me (09 Apr 2026).  It didn't work then, and it is still not functioning. By which I mean, I tested it on several URLs (listed below) all of which really should work.

• https://www.bbc.co.uk/
• https://www.facebook.com/
• https://support.microsoft.com/
• https://support.mozilla.org/
• https://www.cnn.com/

For each and every URL tested, Firefox reports, "Unable to find the proxy server"

System:

• 150.0.1 (64-bit)150.0 (64-bit)
• Windows 10 Pro (22H2) (Up to date)

[Raziel]

Hi. Is that related to this issue ?