I was under the impression that VPN services were very profitable on their own, without selling data. Is this really a price thing, or is it a shady greed thing?
It’s hard to have another business model when you know nothing about the user. Please read up on how Mullvad works and then come back with a coherent argument on how they could be making money off user data.
Lots of video streaming services seem to be in the $10/mo range, and they have to deal with licensing all the shows and storing them. $3/mo seems pretty reasonable off the cuff for a VPN service.
Don't forget all the youtubers a VPN has to pay and all the 75% off deals with the promocode ILOVEMYYOUTUBER.
It is when support costs are negligible and they use 40 cents of server resources.