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Best VPN for PC and the Data Center Boom's Cloud Cost

Wall Street is souring on the data center boom. Here is how AI infrastructure spending could raise your cloud costs, plus the best VPN for PC to lock in now.

AI Data Center Boom: Why Wall Street Skeptics Matter for Your Cloud Costs — illustrative featured image
## Wall Street Blinks, Your Cloud Bill Doesn't Somewhere in a boardroom in Manhattan this month, an analyst did the math on a hyperscaler's depreciation schedule and did not like the answer. The New York Times reported that Wall Street is growing skeptical of the data center boom, and that skepticism has a specific shape: not "AI is a fad," but "the spending is outrunning the returns." Microsoft, [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/), Google and Meta have committed hundreds of billions to AI infrastructure, and the market is starting to ask when the payback arrives. Here is why you should care, and it connects to something you probably already pay for. If you have ever typed "best vpn for pc" into a search bar, you belong to the same subscription economy that funds those data centers. Every streaming tier, cloud storage plan, AI assistant and privacy tool you rent sits on top of compute that someone financed with debt and equity. When the financing gets expensive, the price gets passed down. Not immediately, and not evenly, but it gets passed down. ## The Problem: You Are Rent, Not Revenue Run the arithmetic on your own stack. A 2TB cloud storage plan runs about $10 a month. [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com/) Plus or [Claude Pro](https://claude.ai/), $20. A password manager, $3. A VPN, $5 to $13. Add a couple of AI tools that write code or transcribe meetings and a household in the US, UK or Europe is easily spending $60 to $90 monthly on software that did not exist as a category a decade ago. Those vendors do not own data centers. They rent capacity from AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, or from GPU specialists like CoreWeave. When hyperscalers raise prices or reprice contracts, the squeeze travels down the chain within two or three renewal cycles. We have watched this movie before: Twilio, Heroku and countless SaaS shops repriced after cloud cost shocks in 2022 and 2023. So the practical question is not whether the data center boom is a bubble. It is which of your subscriptions are most exposed, and what you should do about it before renewal season. ## Our Selection Criteria We ranked categories, not individual vendors, because exposure is structural. A vendor can be well run and still get squeezed. We scored each category on four things: 1. **Compute intensity.** How much GPU or storage capacity does the service burn per dollar of revenue? Higher burn means higher exposure. 2. **Switching cost.** How painful is it to leave? Low switching cost means you have leverage. 3. **Price trend, 2024 to 2026.** What has actually happened to list prices in the last two years? 4. **Your realistic alternative.** Free tier, self-hosted, or a cheaper competitor. ## The Ranking: What Gets Repriced First ### 1. AI coding and writing assistants (highest exposure) These are the most compute-hungry products you buy. Inference on frontier models costs real money per query, and vendors have been subsidizing heavy users for two years. GitHub Copilot is $10 to $39 a month. Cursor's Pro tier is $20. Claude Pro is $20, with Max tiers at $100 and $200. Expect tier restructuring rather than headline increases: usage caps, "fair use" clauses, and premium tiers that actually cover inference cost. Some of that is already visible in 2026 pricing. **Skip if:** you use an assistant fewer than ten times a week. The free tiers from Google and Anthropic cover light use, and you are paying for headroom you never touch. ### 2. Cloud storage and backup Storage is capital-intensive and boring, which makes it a prime candidate for quiet increases. Google One's 2TB tier sits at $9.99 a month. Dropbox Plus is $11.99. iCloud+ 2TB is $9.99. These prices have been remarkably stable, but storage-heavy AI features (photo search, transcription, document Q&A) are being bolted on without separate charges, and that cannot last. **Skip if:** you are paying for 2TB and using 300GB. Drop to the 200GB tier at $2.99 and save roughly $84 a year. Do this regardless of what Wall Street does. ### 3. VPN and privacy subscriptions (lowest exposure, highest churn) VPN providers are the least compute-intensive product on this list. A VPN is mostly bandwidth and server maintenance, not GPU time. That makes the category relatively insulated from the AI infrastructure squeeze, which is exactly why it belongs in a cost-control plan: it is one of the few subscriptions you can lock in cheaply for two or three years. Prices cluster between $4 and $13 a month depending on term length. [NordVPN](https://nordvpn.com/)'s two-year plan lands near $4.39 a month, [Surfshark](https://surfshark.com/) near $2.49 on multi-year deals, Proton VPN around $4.99. All three publish USD pricing for US, UK and EU customers, though VAT applies at checkout in the UK and EU. **Skip if:** you only need a VPN for occasional public Wi-Fi. Your phone's built-in option or a free tier from Proton is enough. ### 4. Streaming and consumer cloud gaming Not AI infrastructure in the obvious sense, but these services compete for the same GPU capacity and the same electricity. Expect more ad tiers and fewer simultaneous streams at the same price. This is the category where "same price, less product" is already the norm. ## Our Take: What to Buy, What to Skip **The one to buy:** a long-term VPN plan, and specifically **NordVPN** on a two-year term. It is the cheapest insurance against a category that is not going to get cheaper, the price is locked, and the service does not depend on GPU capacity. If you want the absolute floor, **Surfshark** on a multi-year deal is the value pick and covers unlimited devices, which matters if you are protecting a household. **The one to avoid:** annual prepay on any AI assistant that has changed its pricing model in the last twelve months. You are locking in a price for a product whose cost structure is still moving. Pay monthly until the tiers settle. **The honest answer on everything else:** none of these yet. Do not cancel your cloud storage or your coding assistant on the strength of a Wall Street mood swing. Do audit what you actually use, drop one tier where you are overprovisioned, and keep your monthly commitments flexible. The repricing, when it comes, will hit annual subscribers hardest, because they cannot leave. One more thing worth saying plainly: the data center boom is not going to reverse. The skepticism is about returns, not about demand. What changes is who pays for the buildout. For two years, investors did. Going forward, more of it lands on your invoice. ## FAQ **Will AI subscription prices actually go up in 2026 and 2027?** Some already have, mostly through tier restructuring rather than list price increases. Expect usage caps and premium tiers to do the work. A flat 20 percent hike across the board is less likely than a split into cheap and expensive tiers. **Is a VPN worth paying for if I mostly worry about cloud costs?** Yes, for a different reason than privacy. It is one of the few subscriptions you can lock at a low rate for two or three years, which makes it a hedge against price increases elsewhere in your stack. **Should I cancel subscriptions now because of the data center skepticism?** No. Audit first. Drop tiers you are not using, switch annual plans to monthly where pricing is volatile, and keep the tools that earn their keep. Panic-cancelling costs you more in lost productivity than the price increases will.

Frequently asked questions

Will AI subscription prices actually go up in 2026 and 2027?

Some already have, mostly through tier restructuring rather than list price increases. Expect usage caps and premium tiers to do the work. A flat 20 percent hike across the board is less likely than a split into cheap and expensive tiers.

Is a VPN worth paying for if I mostly worry about cloud costs?

Yes, for a different reason than privacy. It is one of the few subscriptions you can lock at a low rate for two or three years, which makes it a hedge against price increases elsewhere in your stack.

Should I cancel subscriptions now because of the data center skepticism?

No. Audit first. Drop tiers you are not using, switch annual plans to monthly where pricing is volatile, and keep the tools that earn their keep. Panic-cancelling costs you more in lost productivity than the price increases will.

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