[German]Has Fortinet just discontinued its free VPN client? Brief information for administrators and IT staff who rely on Fortinet products. The provider previously offered a free VPN client in its FortiClient package, which was probably used by some of our readers. Yesterday, I received information that Fortinet has probably "discontinued" the free VPN client. Anyone who wants to continue using the product will have to "purchase a license in the future." Is the product discontinued?
German blog reader Daniel wrote in an email dated September 10, 2025 (thanks for that): "It looks like Fortinet has discontinued the free FortiClient VPN only today, meaning that customers will have to license it in the future. Would you like to address this topic? It could be interesting for some people, especially since more and more companies are becoming increasingly greedy."
Discontinuation of free FortiClient VPN only?
Fortinet has included a cryptic information in its Special notices 7.4.4. This includes the passage "No new version of VPN-only agent," which states:
FortiClient (Windows) 7.4.4 does not include a new version of the free VPN-only agent as no feature updates were made to the free VPN-only agent between 7.4.3 and 7.4.4. Users can continue to use the FortiClient (Windows) 7.4.3 free VPN-only agent.
The FortiClient version 7.4.4 for Windows is no longer shipped with a free Fortinet VPN-only agent. Users can continue to use FortiClient (Windows) 7.4.3 free of charge, but at some point this version will be discontinued because security vulnerabilities will no longer be patched.
Discussion on reddit.com
The blog reader then pointed me to a reddit.com discussion thread entitled Forticlient 7.4.4 removes VPN-Only option? Someone there asked whether the above information meant that FortiClient VPN-only free was being discontinued. He wrote:
Did I miss an announcement that FortiClient will no longer offer a free VPN-only client, or does this simply mean that we will have to use the regular FortiClient, which will cause confusion among our end users when new versions are released?
In this post a poster provided a possible explanation for the discontinuation of the VPN-only client:
Might be related, but when I was reviewing the admin guide for 7.4.4 I found the following note:
Since a lot of free VPN users are still using IKEv1, this is probably why they are not releasing a free version of Forticlient 7.4.4 because it wouldn't work at all for those users anyway.
I can't say whether that's true. As alternatives, someone on Reddit.com suggests the following solutions:
On the FortiGate: IPsec IKEv2 dial-up VPN
On the endpoint: Native Windows VPN client
With certificate MFA authentication:
Question for readers: Is it true that the FortiClient VPN only free client for Windows is no longer available, and has anyone more information from Fortinet and are you affected by this?
I think differently. I believe the changes only affect features that exist in the paid version. Maybe in the future they'll create version 7.4.5 without creating version 7.4.4.