I don’t have personal experience yet with picking a VPN but when I do I’m definitely going with a paid one. I think James Corbett spoke of VPN options, he covers a lot of the stuff like this at some point.
I haven’t read it but a quick search for VPN on his site brought me this
https://www.corbettreport.com/decentralize-everything-how-to-avoid-the-technocratic-nightmare/