Proton VPN assessment: A Mashable Alternative Award winner

Desk of Contents

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

Proton VPN posits itself as a VPN for the individuals. The eight-year-old Swiss supplier maintains open-source apps, abides by robust 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 slightly over per week, and whereas I’ve a number of nitpicks, I used to be largely impressed by its dependability, integrity, and accessibility. I particularly suppose it is value paying for to get essentially 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 price?

Proton VPN’s normal 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 worth hike of 33% or 48%, respectively. That is not ideally suited, 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 assessment, I solely tried Proton VPN.) 

Proton VPN provides a free tier with no knowledge limits, as talked about up high, although it is severely restricted in comparison with its premium counterpart when it comes to options and server entry. Proton Free customers are backed by its paid subscribers, not by promoting in-app advertisements or consumer knowledge, and also you need not provide any bank card info in an effort to enroll.

Proton VPN Plus customers have the choice to pay through credit score or debit card or PayPal, and anonymously through 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, business giants ExpressVPN and NordVPN have been based in 2009 and 2012, respectively.) Nevertheless, its “privacy-for-all” mission shortly earned it a robust status and a little bit of a cult following. A deep dive into its firm historical past, insurance policies, and transparency efforts revealed loads of wonderful causes for the hype, albeit a few hitches.

Proton VPN historical past and status

Proton VPN is run by Proton AG, a Swiss tech firm owned by the nonprofit Proton Basis. In line with its web site, Proton VPN “was born out of a need to construct an web that places individuals earlier than earnings,” and to assist people reclaim their on-line freedom.

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

On the identical time, I would 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 normal for the Division of Justice’s Antitrust Division.

“10 years in the past, Republicans have been the celebration of massive enterprise and Dems stood for the little guys, however at present the tables have fully 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 truth is that Republicans stay extra prone 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 an excellent recap of how the whole lot 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 in the end, 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 would possibly 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 principle Proton Privateness Coverage and Proton VPN‘s personal sub-policy. The latter is transient and crystal clear, however Proton’s normal coverage can get slightly 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 all the time plainly recognized, both — I needed to attain out to the Proton staff for readability on a number of factors). Total, although, it is thorough and complete.

Proton VPN’s devoted privateness coverage particularly calls it “a no-logs VPN service” that does not document consumer site visitors or session knowledge, discriminate in opposition to any gadgets, protocols, or apps, or throttle connections. It goes on to say that some consumer knowledge is required to take care of accounts (very normal), 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 basically no pace restrictions,” although Proton could levy them “in instances of extreme 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 newest audit was performed 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 “have interaction in any practices which may compromise your privateness”). Anybody can learn the audit with out making a Proton VPN account. That is all nice, however it might 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 consumer logs as a part of a knowledge request from a overseas nation that was accepted by a courtroom in Switzerland, the place Proton is headquartered. (Beneath Swiss regulation, such requests cannot proceed and not using a courtroom order.). Nevertheless, Proton VPN could not adjust to the request as a result of it did not have any logs.

That is one in every 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 through courtroom order or a authorities entity (most not too long ago in September 2024). So far, 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, turning 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 bear safety audits in 2020 and 2021.) What’s extra, Proton VPN has provided a bug bounty program since 2017, encouraging builders to seek out weaknesses in its servers and apps. It is superior to see this “nothing to cover” method present in some kind because the Proton VPN’s inception, and the longer it continues to show itself, the higher.

Branching outward, the principle Proton privateness coverage opens with a line that the corporate “strongly [believes] in an web the place privateness is the default.” Moreover, its “overriding coverage is to gather as little consumer info (private knowledge included) as potential to make sure a non-public consumer expertise when utilizing the Providers.” 

Among the consumer info that Proton does accumulate consists of analytics once you go to its web site (sans IP handle), your e mail handle (for account creation and communications), referral attributions, and app statistics (for accumulating crash info to repair bugs). Fee info is shared with third events like Chargebee, PayPal, and Stripe in an effort to course of subscriptions, whereas assist requests could get dealt with by Zendesk or Calendly. (The previous gives Proton VPN’s reside chat characteristic, for instance.) That is all very normal.

There’s one occasion when the corporate does save a Proton VPN consumer’s IP addresses for a short time frame, which is that if they should confirm the particular person’s account through Proton Captcha, e mail, or textual content message. “IP addresses, e mail addresses, and telephone numbers offered are saved quickly in an effort to ship you a verification code and for anti-spam functions,” reads the Proton coverage. To be clear, that is very totally different from logging a consumer’s IP handle 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 value, 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 on the market on macOS, Home windows (together with Home windows on ARM), iOS, Android, Linux, Chromebook, Chrome, Firefox, Android TV, Apple TV, and Firestick. For this assessment, I attempted it on macOS.

Proton VPN lets customers join through 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 Sensible Protocol characteristic (below Preferences > Connection) that can mechanically join you thru the protocol that performs one of the 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 secure 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 will by no means wrestle to discover a reliably quick native server location. That was actually my testing expertise, a minimum of.

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 accommodates your present server identify and placement (with a corresponding flag within the background), a server load share that reveals how crowded it’s, your present IP handle, your protocol, and your obtain and add speeds.

Hitting the “Fast Join” button on the high of the app mechanically connects you to your “Quickest” server, which is chosen based mostly on “one of the best mixture of low latency and obtainable bandwidth,” a Proton VPN rep informed me. Beneath a “Profiles” tab under it, there are alternatives to modify to a different Quickest server, hop on a random server, and create customized profiles for various use instances together 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 (below a separate “Nations” 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 slightly tough to inform what nation every triangle corresponds to except you’ve got memorized each nationwide border. However the record is conveniently searchable, and there are share load icons subsequent to every server identify.

Proton VPN efficiency

I used Proton VPN nonstop for per week, and my Quickest servers have been often in Illinois (I reside in Chicago), although I sometimes 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 most likely on the fuller aspect), 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 seeking a VPN that may skirt geo-restrictions on streaming providers may even be joyful to listen to that the UK Proton VPN server I used was simply in a position to unblock Love Island UK on ITVX.

A VPN is all the time going to place some sort of damper on one’s connection (negligible or not), so along with anecdotal observations, we run pace assessments to quantify it. My obtain pace fell by simply 5.7 p.c after I was hooked as much as my Quickest Proton VPN server utilizing Wireguard, whereas the UK server resulted in a 13 p.c obtain pace 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 after I performed my pace assessments. Proton claims this characteristic “boosts VPN speeds by as much as 400 p.c” 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 record, you may discover a row of icons for 3 totally different Proton VPN Plus options. A padlock pulls up an choice to allow “Safe Core,” which sends your connection by one in every of Proton VPN’s self-owned Safe Core servers (situated in high-security knowledge facilities) earlier than routing it by a regular VPN server. It is a multi-hop/double VPN instrument that provides an additional layer of encryption for additional peace of thoughts.

Proton VPN serves customers a pop-up message warning them about potential web pace slowdowns earlier than they connect 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 pace check confirmed that it resulted in a 7.7 p.c obtain pace drop in comparison with my common web connection.

A defend icon in that very same row of icons pulls up Proton VPN’s “NetShield” characteristic, which might block malware alone or malware, advertisements, and trackers. Some web sites displayed pop-ups asking that I disable my advert blocker after I browsed with NetShield on, together with Twitch and Slate. A couple of websites would not load in any respect, displaying a “This website cannot be reached / [so-and-so’s] server IP handle couldn’t be discovered” 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 change, an necessary instrument that stops all site visitors in case your VPN connection drops (holding your actual IP handle hidden). Customers have to allow it manually. 

Proton VPN provides a complicated characteristic known as “Tor over VPN” that permits you to connect with the Tor community through specialised Tor servers (indicated by the “TOR” of their identify). On macOS, this solely works when you’ve got the kill change enabled. Customers can discover Tor servers by scrolling by its server record and in search of international locations which have slightly 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 p.c load — they’re simply essentially the most packed servers in Proton VPN’s community at any given time). The typical consumer can disregard this, as they most likely will not ever really want to make use of Tor over VPN, however the activists and journalists who would possibly profit from this doubled-up privateness methodology will must be affected person with extraordinarily pokey connections.

The one Proton VPN Plus characteristic I needed to strive however could not was its cut up tunneling instrument, which lets customers exclude a few of their site visitors from the VPN tunnel to enhance connection speeds and entry content material in numerous areas on the identical time. It was solely obtainable on Home windows, Android, and Android TV on the time of writing. Nevertheless, 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 through reside chat, submit questions through e mail or web site kind, and search for solutions through Proton VPN’s on-line “information base” of how-to guides. I am going to add that the corporate may be very lively and conscious of consumer 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 gadget at a time and do not need to take care of any knowledge limits, which is extraordinarily clutch and one thing I have never encountered in some other 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 an inclination to get clogged. It additionally means your location-spoofing choices are severely restricted, and that unblocking regional content material in areas outdoors of these 5 international locations is unimaginable. You’ll be able to’t select which server you are related to, both, and there is a timeout between server adjustments that will increase each time you turn. If a server you land on is unusably sluggish, you may need to hang around there for some time.

My expertise utilizing Proton VPN’s free tier for a number of days was fantastic, however not nice. It was sometimes tough to make a strong preliminary connection: I would get on a server and would not have the ability to load any web sites. This was made extra irritating by the truth that I received hit with that timeout each time I switched servers seeking a working connection; at one level, I needed to wait 20 minutes to modify once more.

Issues have been principally okay as soon as I used to be on a working free Proton VPN server. Whereas those I used have been all the time crowded, with 70 to 91 p.c masses, they weren’t as dramatically sluggish 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. Make certain the kill change is on — it is principally the one characteristic Proton VPN’s free customers have entry to apart from 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 reside chat assist.

Is Proton VPN value it?

Proton VPN Plus is straightforward to justify. The service’s paying subscribers get pleasure from persistently wonderful efficiency and obtain entry to helpful privateness options in addition to a server community that is presently unequalled in measurement and geographic unfold (with city-level choice in addition). VPN veterans will recognize the customizability of their connections, whereas informal customers will like its “set it and neglect it”-ness essentially the most.

Proton VPN’s free tier generally is a ache to make use of at occasions, however it works effectively sufficient when you discover a first rate 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 reveals it. In a crowded business with a whole lot of loud voices, this makes it a decisively worthy decide.