Proton VPN review: A Mashable Choice Award winner

Desk of Contents

Editor’s Notice: That is the primary in a collection of VPN opinions we’re overhauling in accordance with our all-new VPN testing methodology, which you’ll be able to read in full here.

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

I am proper there with them. I examined (and scrutinized) Proton VPN for a little bit 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 assume 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 Choice Award.

How a lot does Proton VPN value?

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

• One-month plan: $9.99 per thirty days

• One-year plan: $4.99 per thirty days (billed $59.88 upfront)

• Two-year plan: $4.49 per thirty days (billed $107.76 upfront)

These yearly plans each renew yearly at $79.95 (or $6.66 per thirty days) after your first time period, which works out to a worth hike of 33% or 48%, respectively. That is not supreme, 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 Unlimited subscription, which ranges from $7.99 to $12.99 per thirty days relying on the size of the plan. (For the needs of this overview, I solely tried Proton VPN.) 

Proton VPN presents 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 subsidized by its paid subscribers, not by promoting in-app adverts or person knowledge, and also you needn’t provide any bank card data with a view to join.

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

Is Proton VPN reliable?

Proton VPN is among the youthful VPN providers on the market, having launched in 2017. (For comparability’s sake, business giants ExpressVPN and NordVPN had been based in 2009 and 2012, respectively.) Nevertheless, its “privacy-for-all” mission shortly earned it a powerful fame 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 fame

Proton VPN is run by Proton AG, a Swiss tech firm owned by the nonprofit Proton Foundation. Based on its website, 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 record definitely displays these objectives. It is raised cash for privateness activists in Hong Kong. It is called out Apple for allegedly blocking Proton VPN safety updates after the United Nations recommended that folks in Myanmar use Proton Mail to report crimes throughout the nation’s 2021 coup. It is offered discounts to knowledge journalists and added additional free servers earlier than elections in international locations with a historical past of censorship and misinformation campaigns. Numerous 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 manner.

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

“10 years in the past, Republicans had been the celebration of huge enterprise and Dems stood for the little guys, however as we speak the tables have utterly 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 comment, writing that “Till company Dems are thrown out, the fact is that Republicans stay extra prone to deal with 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 damage control in one other thread. Extra backlash ensued.

With out getting too within the weeds — The Intercept has a great recap of how every little thing 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 assume the whole incident was sloppy greater than anything and never a symptom of a sinister ulterior motive. However it may give some customers pause or depart a nasty style of their mouths in the event that they interpret it for instance of corporate knee-bending to the Trump administration.

Proton VPN privateness coverage and transparency efforts

Proton VPN is technically coated by two privateness insurance policies: the principle Proton Privacy Policy and Proton VPN‘s personal sub-policy. The latter is transient and crystal clear, however Proton’s basic 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 staff for readability on a number of 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 file person site 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 keep up accounts (very customary), and that it is saved on servers which can be 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 generally 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 would not hold any logs of metadata or VPN exercise (nor does it “have interaction in any practices that may compromise your privateness”). 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 court docket 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 accepted by a court docket in Switzerland, the place Proton is headquartered. (Beneath Swiss regulation, such requests cannot proceed and not using a court docket 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 data through court docket order or a authorities entity (most just lately in September 2024). To this point, 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 provided 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 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 person data (private knowledge included) as potential to make sure a non-public person expertise when utilizing the Companies.” 

A few of the person data that Proton does gather contains analytics whenever you go to its web site (sans IP handle), your electronic mail handle (for account creation and communications), referral attributions, and app statistics (for amassing crash data to repair bugs). Cost data is shared with third events like Chargebee, PayPal, and Stripe with a view to course of subscriptions, whereas help requests could get dealt with by Zendesk or Calendly. (The previous supplies Proton VPN’s reside chat function, for instance.) That is all very customary.

There’s one occasion when the corporate does save a Proton VPN person’s IP addresses for a short time period, which is that if they should confirm the particular person’s account through Proton Captcha, electronic mail, or textual content message. “IP addresses, electronic mail addresses, and telephone numbers offered are saved quickly with a view 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 person’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 price, Proton customers can entry, delete, and export any private knowledge the corporate has processed by way of their account interface.

Fingers on with Proton VPN

Proton VPN is offered on macOS, Home windows (together with Windows on ARM), iOS, Android, Linux, Chromebook, Chrome, Firefox, Android TV, Apple TV, and Firestick. For this overview, 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 may also allow a Smart Protocol function (below Preferences > Connection) that can robotically 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 protected and stable.

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, no less than.

Proton VPN app design

Proton VPN’s app is intuitive and smooth, with a purple and black shade 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 title and site (with a corresponding flag within the background), a server load percentage that exhibits 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 robotically connects you to your “Quickest” server, which is chosen based mostly on “one of the best mixture of low latency and accessible 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 together with your selection of routing, nation, server, and protocol.

Customers can peruse all of Proton VPN’s server areas within the type of a listing (below a separate “International locations” tab) in addition to a map, which is studded with triangles representing locations the place servers can be found. The map itself would not have any labels on it, so it is a little bit troublesome 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 proportion load icons subsequent to every server title.

Proton VPN efficiency

I used Proton VPN nonstop for per week, and my Quickest servers had 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 in all probability 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 one of the best ways.

Customers looking for a VPN that may skirt geo-restrictions on streaming providers can even be joyful 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 pace exams to quantify it. My obtain pace fell by simply 5.7 % after I was hooked as much as my Quickest Proton VPN server utilizing Wireguard, whereas the UK server resulted in a 13 % obtain pace drop. That is stellar on each accounts.

I ought to be aware that Proton VPN’s “VPN Accelerator” instrument was on the entire time I used to be attempting the VPN and after I performed my pace exams. Proton claims this function “boosts VPN speeds by as much as 400 %” 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 “Secure Core,” which sends your connection by way of one in every of Proton VPN’s self-owned Safe Core servers (situated in high-security knowledge facilities) earlier than routing it by way of a typical VPN server. It is a multi-hop/double VPN instrument that provides an additional layer of encryption for additional peace of thoughts.

Proton VPN’s Safe Core servers supply an additional layer of privateness at the price of potential pace slowdowns.
Credit score: Screenshot: Proton VPN

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 way of 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 take a look at confirmed that it resulted in a 7.7 % 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” function, which may block malware alone or malware, adverts, 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. Just a few websites would not load in any respect, displaying a “This web site 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.

Here is what number of adverts and trackers NetShield blocked throughout about quarter-hour of on-line procuring.
Credit score: Screenshot: Proton VPN

The final icon within the row is a lightswitch symbolizing Proton VPN’s kill switch, an essential instrument that stops all site visitors in case your VPN connection drops (retaining your actual IP handle hidden). Customers have to allow it manually. 

Proton VPN presents a complicated function known as “Tor over VPN” that permits you to connect with the Tor network through specialised Tor servers (indicated by the “TOR” of their title). On macOS, this solely works you probably have the kill change enabled. Customers can discover Tor servers by scrolling by way of its server record and searching for 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 had 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 benefit from this doubled-up privateness methodology will must be affected person with extraordinarily pokey connections.

Tor servers had been at all times probably the most crowded servers in any given nation.
Credit score: Screenshot: Proton VPN

The one Proton VPN Plus function I wished to strive however could not was its split tunneling instrument, which lets customers exclude a few of their site visitors from the VPN tunnel to boost connection speeds and entry content material in several areas on the identical time. It was solely accessible on Home windows, Android, and Android TV on the time of writing. Nevertheless, a fall 2024 product roadmap teased future help 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 help through live chat, submit questions through email or website form, and search for solutions through Proton VPN’s on-line “knowledge base” of how-to guides. I will add that the corporate may be very energetic and attentive to person suggestions within the r/ProtonVPN subreddit.

Extra on Proton VPN’s free plan

Proton VPN’s free customers cannot choose which server they’re related to.
Credit score: Screenshot: Proton VPN

Proton VPN’s free customers get entry to its service on one gadget at a time and do not should take care of any knowledge limits, which is extraordinarily clutch and one thing I have never encountered in every other free VPNs I’ve tried. (For comparability, TunnelBear‘s free tier caps you at 2GB per thirty days.) You’ll be able to have it working 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 the USA — which implies 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 inconceivable. 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 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 nice, however not nice. It was sometimes troublesome to make a stable preliminary connection: I might 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 obtained hit with that timeout each time I switched servers looking for a working connection; at one level, I needed to wait 20 minutes to modify once more.

Issues had been principally okay as soon as I used to be on a working free Proton VPN server. Whereas those I used had been at all times crowded, with 70 to 91 % hundreds, they weren’t as dramatically sluggish as these numbers indicate. (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 function Proton VPN’s free customers have entry to moreover its censorship-skirting Stealth protocol. Safe Core, VPN Accelerator, Tor over VPN, and break up tunneling are all off-limits to its free customers throughout all platforms, as is its reside chat help.

Is Proton VPN price it?

Proton VPN Plus is simple to justify. The service’s paying subscribers take pleasure in constantly 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 besides). VPN veterans will respect the customizability of their connections, whereas informal customers will like its “set it and overlook it”-ness probably the most.

Proton VPN’s free tier is usually a ache to make use of at instances, however it works properly 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 exhibits it. In a crowded business with a whole lot of loud voices, this makes it a decisively worthy choose.