Proton VPN makes online privacy accessible to everyone by eliminating financial barriers. Its free plan is among the best in the industry, offering unlimited data and access to eight servers at no cost. For users ready to go premium, Proton delivers a full-featured VPN with a global server network, advanced tools, and a strong commitment to privacy. Few competitors match Proton's combination of affordability, user-friendly design, and robust features. That’s why it earns the only five-star rating we've given a VPN service, along with our Editors' Choice award. If you're building a suite of privacy tools, Proton VPN should be at the top of your list.
We evaluated Proton's base tier, also known as Proton Plus, for this review. That plan starts at $9.99 per month and includes the VPN and an ad blocker. The annual version is currently $35.88 ($2.99 per month), but note that this introductory discount is only available for a limited time. The annual plan will renew at $79.95 ($6.66 per month) after the first year. The two-year plan is $71.76 ($5.98 per month) at the introductory rate, and it will renew annually thereafter.
The tier above is Proton Unlimited, which gives you access to all of Proton’s privacy tools. Proton Pass, Proton Mail, Proton Drive, and Proton Calendar are all included at the base rate of $12.99 per month. The annual cost for Unlimited is $77.88 for the first year ($6.49 per month), after which it renews at $119.88 ($9.91 per month). The two-year plan is available for $191.76 ($7.99 per month) for the first two years, and then it will renew annually at the base rate.
You can see the full price breakdown between VPNs in the chart above. We track pricing across every VPN we review, and Proton lands just below the average we’ve seen of $10.30 for monthly plans. However, we consider it on the more affordable end compared with VPNs with similar product offerings like ExpressVPN, NordVPN, and Surfshark, which are often priced $3 to $5 more per month. For more on how Proton stacks up against NordVPN, specifically, see our detailed comparison.
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If you’re unsure about paying for the premium service, then you’re in luck, because Proton offers an industry-leading free tier. The free version provides access to eight servers (up from five in our previous review) located in Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Singapore, and the US. This plan supports a single device connection and requires a Proton account to use. However, creating an account will unlock the free tier versions of all Proton’s privacy tools, including Proton Pass and Proton Drive.
The free version of Proton VPN doesn't limit the amount of data you can use; as long as you're on one of the approved free servers, you can download and upload without restrictions. Meanwhile, competing free VPNs, such as TunnelBear, limit you to 2GB of secure traffic per month, and Windscribe restricts its free users to 10GB per month.
Some less feature-rich services offer better prices than Proton VPN. Private Internet Access, for example, offers annual plans for an affordable $39.95. Despite the potential savings, however, we recommend trying a monthly or free plan first to see how the VPN works with the sites and services you need before making a high-cost commitment.
Proton has also started offering group plans for its products. These include Proton Duo, a plan built for two people to access the same membership starting at $14.99 per month, and Proton Family, which starts at $23.99 per month. Proton Duo and Proton Family accounts have access to all the same features as Proton Unlimited, but offer slight discounts compared with buying individual subscriptions.
A Proton Family account allows six users on the same plan with an upgraded 3TB of available storage, each with their own 10-device limit. Extrapolate that, and you're looking at a discount of more than $50 per month. Lastly, if you want to go even bigger, Proton offers business subscription plans. Business plans start at $6.99 per user per month and can be scaled up from there with a custom-built plan tailored to your needs.
Proton VPN subscriptions can be purchased via a major credit card or PayPal. You can make bitcoin payments, but you must create an account first. Proton VPN states that it will also accept cash sent directly to its headquarters (although an email must be sent first), an option we have only seen with IVPN and Mullvad. All paid plans are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Paid subscribers can connect up to 10 devices simultaneously. While that figure is better than the industry average of five, competitors like Windscribe, Private Internet Access, and TunnelBear have eliminated connection limits entirely. Subscribing to a premium plan also gives you access to Proton’s entire server network. Unlike the free servers, these are likely to be less crowded, which usually means faster speeds and lower latency.
Proton VPN Plus subscribers also unlock multi-hop connections to Secure Core servers (see the next section for more information on these) and access to the Tor anonymization network via VPN—both rare features. You don't need to pay or use a VPN to access Tor, but it's nice to have an added layer of security. You’ll find advanced configuration options for the VPN, such as split tunneling, a kill switch, and the ad and tracker blocker called NetShield.
To ensure faster speeds on its servers, Proton uses a tool called VPN Accelerator to deliver better, more reliable speeds for all users. You can read more about how the company claims to achieve this in a detailed blog post. However, it is worth noting that we experienced high levels of latency during our speed tests (more on that in the speed test section).
As for the features available from Proton’s other privacy tools, you’ll be relegated to the free versions unless you sign up for the Ultimate plan.
Proton VPN Plus includes access to multi-hop servers, known as Secure Core servers. In most cases, when you connect to a VPN, your web traffic is encrypted and sent to a server operated by the VPN company, through which your traffic exits onto the open internet. In a multi-hop connection, your traffic connects to a server operated by the VPN company, then to a second server, before exiting onto the internet.
When you connect via Secure Core servers, your VPN connection makes two hops: once from your device to the Secure Core servers and then onward to the VPN server you have selected. Proton states that its Secure Core servers are located exclusively in countries with robust privacy laws and that it owns them directly. Physically, they reside in secure facilities (on an old military base, in one example).
While a VPN protects your data with its encrypted tunnel, you're out of luck if an attacker has taken control of the VPN server. That's an exotic, unlikely scenario, but the Secure Core server scheme guarantees your information is protected from your computer to the Secure Core server, which is under lock and key. If the next VPN server you connect to after the Secure Core server has been compromised, whoever has taken control won't be able to glean anything about you because your traffic will appear to be coming from the Secure Core server and not your actual computer. This setup is similar to what Tor uses, but Tor is much more complex, with many more hops in between you and your destination.
A regular VPN connection will inevitably impact your performance. Therefore, expect even further slowdowns when using Secure Core servers, as each additional hop will reduce your speeds.
Proton VPN offers the option to connect via IKEv2, OpenVPN, WireGuard, WireGuard over TCP, and Stealth (WireGuard over TLS). All platforms support WireGuard and OpenVPN. Windows and Android users also receive Stealth. macOS and iOS include IKEv2 in addition to all other protocols. Lastly, Linux users are currently limited to just WireGuard and OpenVPN.
To help you choose the right one, Proton's apps include a feature called Smart Protocol Selection (SPS). SPS will automatically detect and select the best protocol depending on your location and the device you're using to connect to the network. Protocols are also grouped by use case (reliability or speed) and include brief descriptions, allowing you to make an informed decision.
Proton has excellent coverage with servers in 127 countries, an increase of 15 countries since our last review in 2024. The majority of Proton’s servers are physical, but the company also uses virtual servers for its Smart Routing feature. Smart Routing offers virtual servers in countries with high censorship levels, where the company can’t or hasn’t been able to establish a physical presence.
While these servers aren’t clearly notated in the server list on Proton’s website, they are marked by a small globe icon in the application. Clicking on a server with a globe icon will reveal its exact location. For example, servers for Russia are physically located in Sweden. This company blog post provides more details about how and why Proton selects specific locations for Smart Routing.
You will find a number of different icons next to each server, which denote if the location supports TOR, P2P traffic, NetShield, streaming, and 10Gbps network utilization. Each country can be clicked on to expand a comprehensive list of city-level locations, ensuring you always know precisely where you’re connecting to.
Proton’s servers utilize full-disk encryption, which is backed by the company’s strict no-logs policy. We cover that privacy policy in-depth in the following section. The company claims that its dedicated servers are harder to attack than virtual servers, and any server that goes offline in "unforeseen circumstances" is immediately wiped and reprovisioned. Other services, such as ExpressVPN, have taken it a step further, deploying servers that run entirely in RAM.
A company representative for Proton told us the company doesn't deploy RAM-only servers, but clarified that Proton disagrees with the suggestion that diskless options are inherently more secure. "The claimed security benefits of RAM-only servers only apply if the server is turned off. And regardless of that fact, in our view, a reputable VPN service should never log anything that might compromise its customers’ privacy anyway (and produce third-party audits confirming that this is the case, as Proton VPN does)."
We evaluate every VPN’s privacy policy, audit record, and history. We also speak with company representatives directly to verify the information we find. The culmination of that research results in a judgment call on whether or not we feel comfortable recommending a VPN based on our findings. However, even the best companies have been subject to vulnerabilities and hacks. If, for any reason, you feel you cannot trust a particular VPN, look elsewhere.
Proton's privacy policy is concise and straightforward. It manages to be so brief because the service does not log any user data, analytics, or activities. The only activity that is monitored is data usage from free users, which Proton says they may limit if it exceeds reasonable individual usage.
The no-logs policy is just as quick a read, as Proton doesn’t log any session information. A representative from Proton VPN tells us the company only makes money through subscription sales, not by selling user information, nor does it "do any targeted advertising or any profiling."
Proton VPN is owned by the parent company Proton AG (formerly Proton Technologies AG) and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. It can be found in the Swiss Commercial Registry and operates under Swiss law. As such, it only responds to requests for information from an approved Swiss court order, which also requires that the individual who is the target of the investigation be notified. Even if Proton were required to respond to a request, it would have little or nothing to provide.
The company's transparency report indicates it has received 29 legal requests for user information as of June 2025. Information regarding the latter half of 2025 has not yet been published. However, all 29 legal requests have been denied. The only valid request to get through the Swiss court system came in January 2019, but Proton had no data to hand over.
This is already excellent from a privacy and security standpoint, bolstered further by the pedigree of Proton AG's primary shareholder, the Proton Foundation. The Proton Foundation is a long-standing group of engineers, journalists, researchers, and activists dedicated to maintaining the privacy-first mission of all products under the Proton umbrella.
Proton has open-sourced its apps, allowing any researcher to verify that there are no potential vulnerabilities. It also manages a bug bounty, paying researchers for the bug vulnerabilities they submit, and has had its apps audited by SEC Consult. In April 2022, the company released the results of an audit of its security policies by the European security company Securitum, which found Proton VPN fulfilled its promises of privacy for customers. In July 2024, another Securitum audit verified Proton's no-logs claims. Securitum completed another Audit in August 2025, once more verifying Proton’s no-logs policy. Audits are imperfect tools, but they are nonetheless useful for establishing trust.
The majority of streaming services employ some form of geo-restriction regarding the content available for viewing on their sites. For example, while some shows are only available on, say, Peacock in the United States, you'd have no issues watching the full series on Netflix in the UK due to local licensing deals with major studios.
We test every VPN we review to see if it can access regional Netflix content libraries in Australia, Japan, the UK, and the US. We qualify our results as Open (unrestricted access), Limited (only Netflix exclusives), and Blocked (VPN detected). You can see our full testing results in the chart below:
Proton excelled in our tests by providing Open access to every catalog we tested. You can read more about how we qualify these results in the chart above, as well as in our guide on how to unblock Netflix with a VPN. While you're at it, check out our recommendations for the best VPNs for Netflix overall.
When you use a VPN to secure your web traffic, your data won't take the optimal route to and from the internet. Generally, a VPN will increase latency while reducing upload and download speeds. To gauge the impact, we conduct a series of tests using the Ookla Speedtest tool and measure the percentage change between when the VPN is on and when it is off. You can read how we test VPNs for a complete breakdown of our methodologies, as well as the limitations of our testing. (Note: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag.com's parent company. For more, see the ethics policy in our Editorial Mission Statement.)
Proton performed well in terms of download and upload speeds with decreases of 20.11% and 43.21%, respectively. Those scores place it in the middle of the pack, but we observed a significant increase in latency across multiple servers near our testing location in Portland, Oregon. Latency increased by a median of 351.26%, which is one of the largest increases we have observed across all VPNs we have tested. You can see how it stacks up against other VPNs in the chart below:
Given the high figure, we tested a handful of nearby servers to get a better understanding. We found that the latency increase fluctuated between 60% to 350%. While you may not experience the same high ping that we did on our initial test, Proton still impacts latency more than its competitors, even when considering the lower end of that spectrum.
Please note that while our testing is useful for comparison, your results may vary significantly depending on the time of day and location from which you're connecting. We believe that security, privacy, and overall value are far more important differentiators than speed and that speed should not be the primary consideration when choosing a VPN.
We had no trouble installing Proton VPN's Windows app on our Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit ('Serpent Canyon') test PC, which runs the latest version of Windows 11.
All of Proton’s apps have a sleek purple and gray design. The Windows dashboard features a large map with clustered delta icons showing the locations of servers. The server list is located on the left-hand side of the interface, featuring a quick connect option for those who simply want the fastest local server. Otherwise, it was easy to browse the server list and fine-tune the connection down to the city level.
On the right-hand side, you’ll find a few handy icons. These icons can be clicked to open up configuration options for split tunneling, port forwarding, NetShield, and the advanced kill switch. Once you connect, the whole map will be vignetted by green to show you’re protected. Stats at the bottom indicate server load, protocol, total data transmitted this session, and your VPN IP address. You get a lot of information, but we didn’t find the dashboard to be overly cluttered or confusing.
Profiles are an uncommon feature of the Proton VPN desktop and mobile apps. These allow you to define specific parameters and settings for your VPN connection that can be saved in advance and applied with the touch of a button. For instance, you can specify that you want to connect only to Tor servers, regardless of their location, or set up specific parameters for the connection protocols used. You can create your own or use one of the included options. Profiles are a convenient way to customize your VPN connection to your preferences.
Clicking the three dots in the upper-left corner will let you navigate to a more traditional settings menu. You’ll find advanced configuration options, each accompanied by a brief description and a link to further reading if you’re unsure about how it works. You can easily access split tunneling, protocol options, profiles, and support options from this menu set. Overall, the Windows app for Proton VPN is sleek, streamlined, and user-friendly for both novices and experts.
We tested Proton VPN using a 2024 M4 Mac Mini running Sequoia 15.7.2. The app isn’t available for direct download from the App Store, so you’ll need to obtain it from Proton’s website.
The color scheme and overall appearance of the application are the same as on Windows, but navigation is slightly less intuitive. Every toggle is located on the left side of the interface, rather than being spread across the map. There, you can configure advanced options, set up profiles, and connect to servers.
We were impressed to see split tunneling on macOS, as it's a common omission from competitors, given the difficulty involved in implementing it. All protocols are available on macOS, with the additional inclusion of IKEv2.
We tested Proton on an iPhone 14 running iOS 16.3. The Proton VPN app for iOS is excellent for new users. Just log in, tap the connect button at the bottom of the screen, and you’re done.
Proton eschews a dashboard or home screen for the app, instead allowing you to access all core features through the navigation menu at the bottom of the screen. It’s easy to connect to a server, disconnect, switch to a new server, and change your settings from the navigation bar.
The iOS app has most major features aside from split tunneling. You can still configure a kill switch, use NetShield, and utilize SecureCore servers. The iOS version supports the same set of protocols as macOS.
We tested Proton's Android app using a Google Pixel 9 Pro running Android 16. The two mobile apps function in a nearly identical fashion. Menu placements and settings are nestled in the same locations. The main difference is that Proton’s Android app does not support IKEv2 but does support split tunneling.
A VPN should work without issue for the vast majority of the time. Even so, you may sometimes encounter a snag. We expect a comprehensive self-service support library, along with various contact options, so that you can get your connection back up and running with minimal downtime.
Proton has a search-based support library, full of information. Simply type in your issue to access a wealth of blog posts and guides covering the most common issues. Each guide has detailed steps, supporting pictures, and even videos for more complicated troubleshooting.
If the knowledge base didn’t answer your question, you can fill out a support contact form to get connected with an agent via email. Alternatively, you can email the support team directly at [email protected]. You can expect to hear back in one to two business days. Paid users can get a quicker response by logging in and going to their profile page on Proton’s site. Click the profile icon and go to the option that says “chat with us” to get a live support agent.
We asked the live chat agent about the differences between WireGuard and OpenVPN. We were connected in seconds, and the agent responded in just a few moments with a link to an in-depth blog post going over the differences between all protocols. They were friendly and asked us to reach back out if we had any further questions or if we needed assistance searching the knowledge base.
Overall, the support options are more than adequate, covering all common queries and issues you might encounter.
Proton VPN provides unmatched privacy, value, and features��with the industry's best free plan and an exceptional premium experience—making it the top VPN service we recommend.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Proton)
Proton VPN
- 5.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product
Read Our Editorial Mission Statement and Testing Methodologies.
Proton firmly holds its place as our top-recommended VPN, offering a combination of performance, security, and value that's hard to beat. Its free plan provides robust protection without compromise, while its premium subscription unlocks even greater speed, advanced features, and flexibility, all at a price that remains highly accessible. Proton's unwavering commitment to privacy ensures that your data stays secure, and its integration with other Proton services—including encrypted email, a secure calendar, and cloud storage—creates a comprehensive ecosystem for safeguarding your digital life. By continually raising the bar for functionality, usability, and security, Proton not only meets but sets the standard for what you should expect from a VPN. This is reflected in our five-star rating and Editors' Choice award, making Proton an easy choice for anyone serious about online privacy.
STILL ON THE FENCE?
About Our Expert
My writing journey started in 2012 and has taken me through various niches, but my main focus has always been on tech. I contributed to several growing PC hardware and software sites, focusing on gaming, peripherals, and privacy.
As the amount of information we put out on the internet has grown, so have the threats and the tools we use to combat them. With VPNs gaining traction in the late 2010s as a tool for the public instead of just an option for business security, I found myself reviewing countless options in this continuously changing landscape.
This led to my role before PCMag over at WizCase, where I honed my knowledge of VPNs and privacy tools and eventually oversaw all of the content produced. I led a talented team of fellow writers and editors to evaluate VPNs, password managers, antivirus, and parental controls.
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