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Cybersecurity · head to head

Mullvad VPN vs Restate

M

Mullvad VPN

Cybersecurity

Privacy-first VPN with one flat price and no email required to sign up

From
$5/month
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Restate logo

Restate

Developer Tools

Durable execution engine in Rust with a free tier and low-latency workflows

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Restate has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Mullvad VPN offers no free trial or free tier, unlike several consumer VPN competitors.; Restate the runtime is under a Business Source Licence rather than an open source licence, so building a competing managed offering on it is prohibited and some procurement functions will reject it on licence grounds alone.
  • They diverge on capability: Mullvad VPN covers Flat single pricing, Restate covers Durable execution.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Mullvad VPN and Restate actually diverge.

Attributes where Mullvad VPN and Restate differ
AttributeMullvad VPNRestate
Starting price$5/monthFree
Pricing modelsubscriptionPer month by durable action count
Free tierNoYes
Platformswindows, mac, linux, ios, androidLinux, macOS, Web
CategoryCybersecurityDeveloper Tools
Founded2009Unknown

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Mullvad VPN

  • Flat single pricing
  • Account-number signup
  • Cash and crypto payments
  • WireGuard support
  • Independent audits

Only in Restate

  • Durable execution
  • Virtual objects
  • Single binary runtime
  • Multi-language SDKs
  • Workflows and sagas
  • Restate Cloud

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Mullvad VPN

  • Paying for a VPN anonymously with cash or cryptocurrencynot Restate
  • Avoiding tiered upsells with a single flat-rate plannot Restate
  • Signing up without providing an email addressnot Restate
  • Verifying a provider's privacy claims via independent auditsnot Restate

Restate

  • Payment or order flows where a crash between two external API calls must not double-charge or lose the ordernot Mullvad VPN
  • AI agent loops that call tools over minutes or hours and must survive a deployment mid-runnot Mullvad VPN
  • Replacing hand-rolled retry, idempotency key and outbox code across a set of microservicesnot Mullvad VPN
  • A small team that wants durable workflows without operating a Temporal cluster and its databasenot Mullvad VPN

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Mullvad VPN

  • Offers no free trial or free tier, unlike several consumer VPN competitors.
  • Lacks a bundled tiered structure, so there is no cheaper limited plan for occasional users.
  • Server network and streaming-unblocking performance is smaller than large mainstream VPN providers.
  • No annual discount, meaning long-term subscribers pay the same monthly rate as short-term users.

Restate

  • The runtime is under a Business Source Licence rather than an open source licence, so building a competing managed offering on it is prohibited and some procurement functions will reject it on licence grounds alone.
  • Restate Cloud jumps from a free fifty thousand actions straight to 300 US dollars a month for twenty million, so a workload sitting at a few hundred thousand actions pays enterprise-shaped money for hobby-shaped volume.
  • It is a young project against Temporal’s established base, so hiring engineers who already know it is unrealistic and the answer to most questions is in the docs rather than on Stack Overflow.
  • The programming model requires structuring code around durable handlers and virtual objects, which is a genuine rewrite for existing services rather than a library you add.
  • The single-binary simplicity that makes small deployments cheap also means fewer operational knobs at very large scale than a system designed as separable components.

Pricing, plan by plan

Mullvad VPN

$5/month
  • Mullvad VPN$5/month
    • Flat rate regardless of subscription length
    • 5 simultaneous devices
    • No email required

Restate

Free
  • FreeFree
    • Fifty thousand durable actions per month
    • No credit card required
    • Community support
  • Starter$300/month
    • Twenty million actions per month
    • Two hundred actions per second, bursting to one thousand
    • Twenty GB storage
  • Pro$1000/month
    • Fifty million actions per month
    • Five hundred actions per second, bursting to two thousand
    • Fifty GB storage
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Negotiated volume
    • Twenty-four seven P0 support
    • 99.99 per cent SLA

Which should you pick?

Choose Mullvad VPN if

  • You need flat single pricing.
  • You work on windows, mac, linux, ios, android.
  • You also want account-number signup.
Mullvad VPN review

Choose Restate if

  • You need durable execution.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Web.
  • You also want virtual objects.
Restate review

Questions people ask

Is Mullvad VPN or Restate better?
Neither clearly leads. Mullvad VPN starts at $5/month and Restate at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Mullvad VPN or Restate?
Restate has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $5/month for Mullvad VPN and Free for Restate.
Does Mullvad VPN or Restate run on more platforms?
Mullvad VPN runs on windows, mac, linux, ios, android. Restate runs on Linux, macOS, Web.
Can I use Restate for free?
Yes. Restate has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Mullvad VPN starts at $5/month.
What is Mullvad VPN best used for?
Mullvad VPN is most often used for paying for a vpn anonymously with cash or cryptocurrency, avoiding tiered upsells with a single flat-rate plan, signing up without providing an email address, verifying a provider's privacy claims via independent audits. Of those, paying for a vpn anonymously with cash or cryptocurrency and avoiding tiered upsells with a single flat-rate plan are not what Restate is typically brought in for.
What can Mullvad VPN do that Restate cannot?
Mullvad VPN covers Flat single pricing, Account-number signup, Cash and crypto payments, WireGuard support. Restate covers Durable execution, Virtual objects, Single binary runtime, Multi-language SDKs.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Restate: Is Restate open source?

The SDKs are MIT. The runtime is under a Business Source Licence, which permits self-hosting but not offering it as a competing service.

Restate: How does it compare with Temporal?

Same problem, different shape: one Rust binary with embedded storage instead of a server plus database plus workers, and lower per-step latency.

Restate: Is there a free tier?

Yes, fifty thousand durable actions a month on Restate Cloud with no card required.

Restate: Which languages are supported?

TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Go, Python and Rust.

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