Proton VPN evaluate: Premium, confirmed privateness and a free tier with no knowledge limits

Desk of Contents

Editor’s Be aware: That is the primary in a sequence of VPN evaluations we’re overhauling in accordance with our all-new VPN testing methodology, which you’ll be able to learn in full right here.

Proton VPN posits itself as a VPN for the folks. The eight-year-old Swiss supplier maintains open-source apps, abides by sturdy privateness practices which have held up in courtroom, gives censorship bypassing instruments, and helps web freedom causes. It is also the uncommon VPN service with a free tier boasting zero knowledge limits. No marvel so many Redditors are obsessive about it.

I am proper there with them. I examined (and scrutinized) Proton VPN for a little bit over every week, and whereas I’ve just a few nitpicks, I used to be largely impressed by its dependability, integrity, and accessibility. I particularly suppose it is price paying for to get probably the most out of its options and its monumental server community.

On the finish of the day, it is solely proper that Proton VPN is the primary VPN we have ever given a Mashable Alternative Award.

How a lot does Proton VPN value?

Proton VPN’s commonplace paid tier is known as Proton VPN Plus, and it is obtainable in three subscription lengths. The next costs have been correct as of March 2025:

• One-month plan: $9.99 monthly

• One-year plan: $4.99 monthly (billed $59.88 upfront)

• Two-year plan: $4.49 monthly (billed $107.76 upfront)

These yearly plans each renew yearly at $79.95 (or $6.66 monthly) after your first time period, which works out to a value hike of 33% or 48%, respectively. That is not best, however these are removed from the worst markups I’ve seen amongst main VPN suppliers’ plans.

Customers even have the choice of bundling Proton VPN with different Proton merchandise like Proton Mail, Proton Calendar, and Proton Drive within the type of a Proton Limitless subscription, which ranges from $7.99 to $12.99 monthly relying on the size of the plan. (For the needs of this evaluate, I solely tried Proton VPN.) 

Proton VPN gives a free tier with no knowledge limits, as talked about up prime, although it is severely restricted in comparison with its premium counterpart when it comes to options and server entry. Proton Free customers are sponsored by its paid subscribers, not by promoting in-app adverts or person knowledge, and also you needn’t provide any bank card info with a purpose to enroll.

Proton VPN Plus customers have the choice to pay by way of credit score or debit card or PayPal, and anonymously by way of Bitcoin or money (by the mail). Subscribers are lined by a 30-day money-back assure.

Is Proton VPN reliable?

Proton VPN is likely one of the youthful VPN providers on the market, having launched in 2017. (For comparability’s sake, trade giants ExpressVPN and NordVPN have been based in 2009 and 2012, respectively.) Nonetheless, its “privacy-for-all” mission shortly earned it a robust popularity and a little bit of a cult following. A deep dive into its firm historical past, insurance policies, and transparency efforts revealed loads of glorious causes for the hype, albeit a few hitches.

Proton VPN historical past and popularity

Proton VPN is run by Proton AG, a Swiss tech firm owned by the nonprofit Proton Basis. In accordance with its web site, Proton VPN “was born out of a desire to build an internet that puts people before profits,” and to assist people reclaim their on-line freedom.

VPN service apart, the corporate’s report definitely displays these targets. It is raised cash for privateness activists in Hong Kong. It is referred to as out Apple for allegedly blocking Proton VPN safety updates after the United Nations really helpful that folks in Myanmar use Proton Mail to report crimes in the course of the nation’s 2021 coup. It is supplied reductions to knowledge journalists and added further free servers earlier than elections in international locations with a historical past of censorship and misinformation campaigns. Plenty of VPN suppliers declare to care about digital freedom and privateness, and when you’ll by no means catch me “yas queen”-ing an organization, Proton VPN actually walks the stroll in an admirable approach.

On the identical time, I might be remiss if I did not broach a current controversy surrounding a tweet posted by Proton CEO Andy Yen in response to President Donald Trump’s cupboard decide for assistant legal professional common for the Division of Justice’s Antitrust Division.

“10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned,” Yen tweeted in December 2024.

After a screenshot of the tweet blew up on the r/ProtonMail subreddit, an official Proton account doubled down in a remark, writing that “Till company Dems are thrown out, the fact is that Republicans stay extra more likely to sort out Massive Tech abuses.” The remark was later deleted and retracted as an official assertion (regardless of it opening with the phrase, “Right here is our official response”). Yen tried to do injury management in one other thread. Extra backlash ensued.

With out getting too within the weeds — The Intercept has a very good recap of how all the things went down — the rationale for the fallout was threefold: Proton has repeatedly positioned itself as a impartial group, to say that Republicans have not been in mattress with Massive Tech is frankly goofy, and finally, the corporate’s response to the criticism was uncharacteristically messy.

I personally suppose your complete incident was sloppy greater than the rest and never a symptom of a sinister ulterior motive. Nevertheless it may give some customers pause or depart a nasty style of their mouths in the event that they interpret it as an example of company knee-bending to the Trump administration.

Proton VPN privateness coverage and transparency efforts

Proton VPN is technically lined by two privateness insurance policies: the primary Proton Privateness Coverage and Proton VPN‘s personal sub-policy. The latter is transient and crystal clear, however Proton’s common coverage can get a little bit complicated, as some parts of it do not apply to Proton VPN. Extra particularly, customers of different Proton merchandise could also be topic to occasional IP logging. (These inconsistencies aren’t at all times plainly recognized, both — I needed to attain out to the Proton crew for readability on just a few factors). General, although, it is thorough and complete.

Proton VPN’s devoted privateness coverage particularly calls it “a no-logs VPN service” that does not report person visitors or session knowledge, discriminate in opposition to any gadgets, protocols, or apps, or throttle connections. It goes on to say that some person knowledge is required to take care of accounts (very commonplace), and that it is saved on servers which are owned and operated by Proton or its subsidiaries. That is just about it.

The identical sub-policy covers Proton VPN’s free tier, which “has in general no speed restrictions,” although Proton might levy them “in cases of excessive consumption” so there’s sufficient bandwidth to go round for all free customers. Do not get too wild.

Proton VPN has had its infrastructure and working procedures independently audited yearly since 2022 to confirm its no-logs coverage. The latest audit was carried out by the Polish penetration testing firm Securitum in July 2024, and it as soon as once more confirmed that Proton VPN does not maintain any logs of metadata or VPN exercise (nor does it “engage in any practices that might compromise your privacy”). Anybody can learn the audit with out making a Proton VPN account. That is all nice, however it will be even higher if the corporate had dedicated to doing these common audits sooner.

Having mentioned that, it is essential to notice that Proton VPN’s no-logs coverage held up in courtroom years earlier than it began present process annual third-party audits. In 2019, Proton VPN was ordered to cough up person logs as a part of a knowledge request from a overseas nation that was permitted by a courtroom in Switzerland, the place Proton is headquartered. (Beneath Swiss legislation, such requests cannot proceed with out a courtroom order.). Nonetheless, Proton VPN could not adjust to the request as a result of it did not have any logs.

That is considered one of dozens of such knowledge requests flagged in Proton VPN’s transparency report, which is up to date each time it receives a authorized request for info by way of courtroom order or a authorities entity (most not too long ago in September 2024). Up to now, all orders have been denied. Anybody can learn the report while not having an account.

Proton VPN additionally deserves excessive reward for open sourcing all of its apps in 2020, changing into the primary VPN supplier to take action. This makes it in order that anybody can examine the apps’ code for vulnerabilities. (It additionally had its apps endure safety audits in 2020 and 2021.) What’s extra, Proton VPN has supplied a bug bounty program since 2017, encouraging builders to search out weaknesses in its servers and apps. It is superior to see this “nothing to hide” strategy current in some kind for the reason that Proton VPN’s inception, and the longer it continues to show itself, the higher.

Branching outward, the primary Proton privateness coverage opens with a line that the corporate “strongly [believes] in an internet where privacy is the default.” Moreover, its “overriding policy is to collect as little user information (personal data included) as possible to ensure a private user experience when using the Services.” 

A number of the person info that Proton does accumulate consists of analytics once you go to its web site (sans IP deal with), your electronic mail deal with (for account creation and communications), referral attributions, and app statistics (for gathering crash info to repair bugs). Fee info is shared with third events like Chargebee, PayPal, and Stripe with a purpose to course of subscriptions, whereas assist requests might get dealt with by Zendesk or Calendly. (The previous gives Proton VPN’s dwell chat function, for instance.) That is all very commonplace.

There’s one occasion when the corporate does save a Proton VPN person’s IP addresses for a quick time period, which is that if they should confirm the particular person’s account by way of Proton Captcha, electronic mail, or textual content message. “IP addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers provided are saved temporarily in order to send you a verification code and for anti-spam purposes,” reads the Proton coverage. To be clear, that is very completely different from logging a person’s IP deal with whlie they’re utilizing the VPN service, which Proton VPN vows to not do. Refer again to the outcomes of its third-party audits and transparency report for reassurance.

For what it is price, Proton customers can entry, delete, and export any private knowledge the corporate has processed by their account interface.

Arms on with Proton VPN

Proton VPN is accessible on macOS, Home windows (together with Home windows on ARM), iOS, Android, Linux, Chromebook, Chrome, Firefox, Android TV, Apple TV, and Firestick. For this evaluate, I attempted it on macOS.

Proton VPN lets customers join by way of WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2, and its customized Stealth protocol, which is designed for bypassing censorship in areas the place VPNs are blocked. You can too allow a Good Protocol function (underneath Preferences > Connection) that may routinely join you thru the protocol that performs the very best and/or bypasses censorship based mostly in your location.

Proton VPN makes use of AES-256 encryption for OpenVPN and IKEv2 and ChaCha20 for WireGuard, that are each protected and strong.

A Proton VPN Plus subscription will get you as much as 10 simultaneous connections and city-level entry to its full server community, which has ballooned to greater than 11,800 servers in 117 international locations as of March 2025. On the time of writing, Proton VPN had the biggest and most globally various server community out of all of the VPNs I’ve examined. Customers have myriad location-spoofing choices and may by no means wrestle to discover a reliably quick native server location. That was definitely my testing expertise, not less than.

Proton VPN app design

Proton VPN’s app is intuitive and glossy, with a purple and black colour scheme that offers it a contemporary, vaguely cyberbougie look. A field within the top-left nook of the Proton VPN app comprises your present server identify and placement (with a corresponding flag within the background), a server load share that exhibits how crowded it’s, your present IP deal with, your protocol, and your obtain and add speeds.

Hitting the “Quick Connect” button on the prime of the app routinely connects you to your “Fastest” server, which is chosen based mostly on “the best combination of low latency and available bandwidth,” a Proton VPN rep instructed me. Beneath a “Profiles” tab beneath it, there are alternatives to modify to a different Quickest server, hop on a random server, and create customized profiles for various use instances along with your selection of routing, nation, server, and protocol.

Customers can peruse all of Proton VPN’s server areas within the type of an inventory (underneath a separate “Countries” tab) in addition to a map, which is studded with triangles representing locations the place servers can be found. The map itself does not have any labels on it, so it is a little bit tough to inform what nation every triangle corresponds to except you’ve got memorized each nationwide border. However the listing is conveniently searchable, and there are share load icons subsequent to every server identify.

Proton VPN efficiency

I used Proton VPN nonstop for every week, and my Quickest servers have been normally in Illinois (I dwell in Chicago), although I often landed on servers in Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. I additionally spent an hour on a UK server to see if that may make my connection sluggish, since my knowledge needed to journey additional — however nope. Regardless of which server I used, Proton VPN related immediately, by no means dropped, and felt simply as quick as my regular connection. There was one time Reddit requested me to tick a field to confirm that I wasn’t a bot (my server was in all probability on the fuller facet), however in any other case it was just like the VPN wasn’t there. In that sense, Proton VPN is forgettable in the easiest way.

Customers in the hunt for a VPN that may skirt geo-restrictions on streaming providers may even be completely happy to listen to that the UK Proton VPN server I used was simply capable of unblock Love Island UK on ITVX.

A VPN is at all times going to place some form of damper on one’s connection (negligible or not), so along with anecdotal observations, we run velocity assessments to quantify it. My obtain velocity fell by simply 5.7 % once I was hooked as much as my Quickest Proton VPN server utilizing Wireguard, whereas the UK server resulted in a 13 % obtain velocity drop. That is stellar on each accounts.

I ought to observe that Proton VPN’s “VPN Accelerator” instrument was on the entire time I used to be making an attempt the VPN and once I carried out my velocity assessments. Proton claims this function “boosts VPN speeds by up to 400 percent” and “improves VPN connection stability.” It is enabled on all Proton VPN apps by default with a Plus subscription.

Proton VPN options

Above the server listing, you may discover a row of icons for 3 completely different Proton VPN Plus options. A padlock pulls up an choice to allow “Safe Core,” which sends your connection by considered one of Proton VPN’s self-owned Safe Core servers (positioned in high-security knowledge facilities) earlier than routing it by an ordinary VPN server. It is a multi-hop/double VPN instrument that provides an additional layer of encryption for further peace of thoughts.

Proton VPN serves customers a pop-up message warning them about attainable web velocity slowdowns earlier than they hook up with a Safe Core server for the primary time. I used one which routed me by Iceland and the U.S., and whereas webpages loaded noticeably slower whereas I used to be related to it, it was nonetheless completely usable. One other velocity take a look at confirmed that it resulted in a 7.7 % obtain velocity drop in comparison with my common web connection.

A defend icon in that very same row of icons pulls up Proton VPN’s “NetShield” function, which may block malware alone or malware, adverts, and trackers. Some web sites displayed pop-ups asking that I disable my advert blocker once I browsed with NetShield on, together with Twitch and Slate. Just a few websites would not load in any respect, displaying a “This site can’t be reached / [so-and-so’s] server IP address could not be found” error message. They loaded correctly as soon as I turned NetShield off, although.

The final icon within the row is a lightswitch symbolizing Proton VPN’s kill swap, an vital instrument that stops all visitors in case your VPN connection drops (conserving your actual IP deal with hidden). Customers must allow it manually. 

Proton VPN gives a sophisticated function referred to as “Tor over VPN” that permits you to hook up with the Tor community by way of specialised Tor servers (indicated by the “TOR” of their identify). On macOS, this solely works in case you have the kill swap enabled. Customers can discover Tor servers by scrolling by its server listing and in search of international locations which have a little bit onion image subsequent to their drop-down arrows. 

I discovered six Tor servers in Colorado, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Sweden, and Switzerland, and all of them have been extraordinarily full (to the tune of 88 to 97 % load — they’re simply probably the most packed servers in Proton VPN’s community at any given time). The typical person can disregard this, as they in all probability will not ever really want to make use of Tor over VPN, however the activists and journalists who may profit from this doubled-up privateness technique will should be affected person with extraordinarily pokey connections.

The one Proton VPN Plus function I wished to attempt however could not was its cut up tunneling instrument, which lets customers exclude a few of their visitors from the VPN tunnel to enhance connection speeds and entry content material in several areas on the identical time. It was solely obtainable on Home windows, Android, and Android TV on the time of writing. Nonetheless, a fall 2024 product roadmap teased future assist for macOS and Linux within the close to future.

Proton VPN Plus customers who run into points with their account or any of the service’s options can get premium assist by way of dwell chat, submit questions by way of electronic mail or web site kind, and search for solutions by way of Proton VPN’s on-line “data base” of how-to guides. I am going to add that the corporate could be very lively and aware of person suggestions within the r/ProtonVPN subreddit.

Extra on Proton VPN’s free plan

Proton VPN’s free customers get entry to its service on one machine at a time and do not should take care of any knowledge limits, which is extraordinarily clutch and one thing I have not encountered in another free VPNs I’ve tried. (For comparability, TunnelBear‘s free tier caps you at 2GB monthly.) You’ll be able to have it operating 24/7.

The trade-off is that free customers solely have entry to about 2,300 Proton VPN servers in 5 international locations — Japan, the Netherlands, Romania, Poland, and america — which suggests they have a tendency to get clogged. It additionally means your location-spoofing choices are severely restricted, and that unblocking regional content material in areas exterior of these 5 international locations is not possible. You’ll be able to’t select which server you are related to, both, and there is a timeout between server modifications that will increase each time you turn. If a server you land on is unusably gradual, you may need to hang around there for some time.

My expertise utilizing Proton VPN’s free tier for just a few days was superb, however not nice. It was often tough to make a strong preliminary connection: I might get on a server and would not be capable to load any web sites. This was made extra irritating by the truth that I obtained hit with that timeout each time I switched servers in the hunt for a working connection; at one level, I needed to wait 20 minutes to modify once more.

Issues have been largely okay as soon as I used to be on a working free Proton VPN server. Whereas those I used have been at all times crowded, with 70 to 91 % hundreds, they weren’t as dramatically gradual as these numbers suggest. (Granted, they did really feel a tad pokier in comparison with the Plus servers I used, however provided that I actually paid consideration.) That mentioned, there have been two events when my connection randomly dropped. Ensure the kill swap is on — it is mainly the one function Proton VPN’s free customers have entry to in addition to its censorship-skirting Stealth protocol. Safe Core, VPN Accelerator, Tor over VPN, and cut up tunneling are all off-limits to its free customers throughout all platforms, as is its dwell chat assist.

Is Proton VPN price it?

Proton VPN Plus is simple to justify. The service’s paying subscribers take pleasure in constantly glorious efficiency and obtain entry to helpful privateness options in addition to a server community that is at present unmatched in measurement and geographic unfold (with city-level choice besides). VPN veterans will respect the customizability of their connections, whereas informal customers will like its “set it and forget it”-ness probably the most.

Proton VPN’s free tier is usually a ache to make use of at occasions, but it surely works nicely sufficient when you discover a respectable server — and the truth that you are not inhibited by any knowledge limits makes its occasional connection points tolerable.

Above all, Proton VPN is a privateness mensch that does not simply say it cares about on-line freedom, however really exhibits it. In a crowded trade with quite a lot of loud voices, this makes it a decisively worthy decide.