Firefox 149 Arrives With Free Built-In VPN, Split View, and Privacy Controls

Mozilla released Firefox 149 with a built-in VPN tool offering up to 50GB of monthly traffic, a feature that lands without a subscription fee, without a separate download, and without a third-party extension ever touching the transaction.

The feature uses a secure proxy server to route only traffic from the browser, unlike the company's commercial Mozilla VPN, which covers system-wide traffic. Once signed in, users can hide their location and IP address by routing it through a secure proxy while browsing in Firefox, receiving 50GB of protection every month with the option to turn it on or off for specific websites.

The feature is progressively rolling out in the US, UK, Germany and France starting March 24. The built-in VPN will route browser traffic through a proxy, hiding a user's IP address and location during browsing sessions without requiring a separate download or extension. Eligible users will see a prompt in the browser toolbar to enable the feature after signing into a Mozilla account, and in-browser notifications will alert them when they approach the limit.

Mozilla has framed the rollout as a direct response to the risks of third-party free VPN services. In its blog post announcing the update, the company stated: "Free VPNs can sometimes mean sketchy arrangements that end up compromising your privacy, but ours is built from our data principles and commitment to be the world's most trusted browser." Mozilla emphasizes that its proxy-based service is built so that even the company itself cannot track the websites a user visits. Independent audits or certifications for the service have not been confirmed.

The new VPN tool will only handle browser traffic, not offering full-device protection, so it should not be assumed that activating it secures all internet traffic outside Firefox. The 50GB monthly cap is adequate for general browsing, email, and reading on public Wi-Fi, but HD video streaming or large file downloads can consume that allowance quickly. For context, PDFs render significantly faster in the built-in viewer thanks to hardware acceleration, and Microsoft's Edge offers just 5GB of free VPN data in many markets, making Firefox's allowance a notable step up.

Beyond the VPN, Firefox 149 ships two productivity additions. Split View puts two webpages side by side in one window, making it easy to compare, copy and multitask without bouncing between tabs. Tab Notes let users add notes to any tab as another tool to help with multitasking and picking up where they left off, available through Firefox Labs starting March 24.

Notifications from sites Safe Browsing flags as malicious are now automatically blocked, and the release also tightens JavaScript execution requirements in the browser's parent process as a defense against potential exploits. Mozilla engineers fixed several security vulnerabilities in the release, with the list including 46 issues, more than half receiving a high severity score.

Ajit Varma, head of Firefox, said the roadmap for 2026 "is the most exciting one we've developed in quite a while," adding that features are "driven by the feedback from our community." Mozilla expects to expand the VPN service beyond the initial four countries, though no firm timeline has been announced.