At a Glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Excellent privacy and transparency
- Strong catalog of security features
- Unrivaled free plan
- Good connection speeds
Cons
- Premium plans aren’t the cheapest
- Not all features available across apps
Our Verdict
Proton VPN offers privacy- and security-focused features in droves, including an easy-to-use multi-hop feature and support for TOR servers. Privacy advocates will love the open-source app and multiple independent audits. Plus, it currently has the best free subscription option of any VPN provider.
Price When Reviewed
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Best Pricing Today
Price When Reviewed
From $4.49 per month for 2 years. Free VPN available.
Best Prices Today: ProtonVPN
Proton VPN in brief:
- P2P allowed: Yes
- Device connections: 10 simultaneous connections
- Business location: Switzerland
- Number of servers: 20,000+
- Number of country locations: 191
- Cost: $9.99 per month, $59.88 for 1 year, or $107.76 for 2 years
When you use a third-party VPN you have to place a certain amount of trust in your service provider. Some companies make that really hard by hiding who they are or confusing you with opaque data collection policies. Then there are services that make trusting them easy — like Proton VPN.
Swiss company Proton provides admirable transparency with all of its apps, even taking the extra step to make them all open source. In a VPN market where everyone is out to make a quick buck, Proton seems like an anomaly. Its privacy-focused services genuinely seem to want to make the internet a better place.
Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best VPNs for comparison.
What are Proton VPN’s features and services?
What’s new with Proton VPN?
Proton VPN has been busy in the last year. The service has massively upgraded its server network to over 20,000 servers across 191 locations. It also added DNS-filtering to its ad-blocker feature to filter subdomains on top of root domains.
It revamped its Windows and iOS applications to look more like its modern Android interface. It now sports a streamlined home screen that includes more data metrics on your connection including current traffic and total traffic as well as server load.
Additionally, Proton VPN expanded the servers available with its free tier up to 10—doubling the five that it used to have. These include new servers in Mexico, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, and Singapore.
Proton VPN hands on
Proton VPN’s redesigned homescreen is easy to navigate and provides useful connection data.
Sam Singleton
Proton VPN for Windows opens by displaying an interactive map of the world with dots signifying the countries where there are available servers. In the middle is a Connect button with a drop-down menu above it to quickly select between Fastest country, Random location, and Last connection.
On the left rail are your connection options and available servers. You can scroll down the list of all available countries or click on the tabs for Secure Core, P2P, or Tor optimized servers.
For more info about each country’s specific servers, you’re able to click on the downward-facing arrow to the right of each country name. This displays useful information such as actual server location by city, current server load, and information about potential “Smart Routing.” This is Proton’s way of saying whether the server is virtual and if so, where it’s actually physically located.
Once you connect to a server, the map transforms, showing a line to your virtual location and the home symbol at the top center of the map. Below the map you’ll see connection information such as session duration, up and down bandwidth volumes and speeds, as well as a bandwidth usage graph.
In the last year, Proton VPN has once again significantly increased its server network. While server network size is not entirely indicative of a good VPN, it does usually translate to lower average server loads, and more options to connect to servers closer to your physical location—meaning faster average speeds.
Proton VPN also offers a Secure Core feature, which is a multi-hop VPN connection that funnels you through two different VPN connections rather than one to increase anonymity. The inclusion of multi-hop is welcomed, but services such as Surfshark go even further by allowing users to customize their route by choosing their start and end points.
Proton VPN says Secure Core passes your traffic through “privacy friendly countries” (Iceland, Sweden, and Switzerland) before reaching the endpoint. The aim is to protect a user’s privacy as much as possible and defend against network traffic monitoring. Proton VPN says that this method makes it harder for an attacker to discover a user’s true IP address or attempt to match browsing activity to the user.
If TOR is your thing, Proton VPN supports TOR-friendly connections on specific servers. These can be found under the Tor tab on the homescreen.
There are also the usual VPN features such as DNS leak protection, an internet kill switch that halts your internet access should the VPN connection drop, and NetShield for blocking malware, ads, and trackers at the server level.
Proton VPN offers multi-hop, which funnels you through two different VPN connections than one to increase anonymity.
Like a lot of other top-tier VPN services, Proton VPN offers a split tunneling feature that allows you to include or exclude certain apps and IP addresses from your connection.
Sam Singleton
The service also offers split tunneling to choose specific apps to route into or outside of the VPN as well as an area to change your VPN protocols.
Finally, if you want to use different VPN connections based on contexts such as home, work, or travel, Proton VPN lets you set profiles using the tab in the left rail. Here you can lock in settings for each profile such as which servers to connect to, protocols to use, and connection type—Standard, Secure Core, P2P, or Tor.
Beyond VPN configuration, ProtonVPN also touts the security of the data centers it uses in Iceland, Sweden, and Switzerland—all of which are strong personal privacy respecting countries.
These are a collection of data centers in former military bases, remodeled fallout shelters, and other hard-to-reach locations. The implication being that these servers are physically, as well as digitally secure. Just in case, you know, you happen to live in the Fallout universe you can rest assured your data will still be safe.
Proton VPN is available for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linus, smart TVs, and some routers. For the purposes of this review, I tested the Windows and Android app versions.
How much does Proton VPN cost?
There are a few subscription levels for Proton VPN and price will vary with each. The basic free subscription is just that, free. At no cost, you’ll get a one-device connection limit and access to 10 servers located throughout the world.
Despite this you can’t actually choose your server; instead, Proton VPN will automatically connect you to the optimal server depending on your home location. Those restrictions might sound restrictive, but they are par for the course with most free VPNs. Besides, Proton VPN more than makes up for them with its other free subscription offerings.
The free tier is mercifully devoid of ads and abides by the same no-logs policy of the paid tiers. It also imposes no data or time limits—a rarity among free VPNs. Overall, you get a lot for paying nothing and it’s easily the best option for a trustworthy free VPN.
The next step up is the VPN Plus plan and it provides the full VPN experience for $9.99 per month, one-year subscription at $59.88 ($3.99 per month), or a two-year subscription for $71.76 ($2.99 per month).
The highest-tier plan is called Proton Unlimited and it provides not only the VPN, but also gives you access to Proton’s full suite of services including Proton Mail, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive, Proton Pass, and Proton Wallet. This will set you back $12.99 per month or $119.88 ($9.99 per month) if you go with a one year subscription.
On the whole, I wouldn’t call Proton a cheap VPN, but it’s more affordable than some other premium services. And if you like what Proton stands for, then the Proton Unlimited plan gives you good value for your money with all of the extra services.
For payments, ProtonVPN accepts credit cards, PayPal, and Google Pay.
How is Proton VPN’s performance?
As always, when testing a VPN’s speeds I measure connection speeds for multiple days across its servers in different countries around the world and then compare them to my baseline internet speed.
Proton VPN’s speeds were impressive. During the tests, Proton VPN was able to maintain 65 percent of the base download speed and 72 percent of the base upload speed. That puts it firmly in the top five speediest performers, right up there with NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and other top-tier services. For more blazing-fast services you can check out our list of the fastest VPNs.
The speeds were also incredibly consistent. Normally with VPN connections, servers that are further away are slower, but with Proton, pretty much every server I tested around the world had similar speed results. Proton attributes much of this consistency to VPN Accelerator, a proprietary technology designed to improve speeds on long-distance connections by optimizing routing and reducing latency.
The Secure Core feature from Proton VPN is a useful multi-hop connection that takes it one step further by routing connections through a handful of safer countries such as Iceland, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Sam Singleton
It should be noted that if you decide to use Proton’s Secure Core feature which provides additional privacy, it’ll incur a noticeable speed penalty due to the extra routing hop.
With these results, Proton VPN offers fantastic speeds for what most people wish to do with a VPN—browsing, streaming, and torrenting. The obvious caveat being that speed results can change based on the capability of your devices as well as your location, home internet connection, and overall user traffic on a given server.
As for gamers, latency remained low enough for online gaming on most servers, though competitive players will still notice some increase compared to an unprotected connection—it comes with the territory when gaming with a VPN.
For unblocking streaming content Proton VPN passed with flying colors. I was able to access streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney Plus, and HBO Max.
I was even able to access these streaming services without a hitch using Proton VPN’s free version as well. Considering there are no data limits or time limits, this easily makes it the top free VPN for streaming.
How is Proton VPN’s security and privacy?
Proton VPN offers WireGuard, OpenVPN, and its own proprietary Stealth protocol.
Sam Singleton
Proton VPN provides both WireGuard and OpenVPN protocol options and its own proprietary protocol called Stealth. Stealth is touted as an “undetectable VPN protocol that can bypass most firewalls and VPN blocking methods.”
This new protocol is open source and can be particularly useful in countries or networks where VPN traffic is actively detected and blocked.
It’s not just the protocol, but in fact all Proton VPN apps are open source. This means that independent researchers can inspect the code for vulnerabilities or hidden functionality, further bolstering Proton’s app security credentials.
Proton VPN uses modern encryption standards, including AES-256 with OpenVPN and ChaCha20 with WireGuard. It also comes with a dependable killswitch that worked flawlessly in my testing, preventing any accidental IP address leaks during an internet disconnection. Additionally, during testing I detected no IP, DNS, or WebRTC leaks.
Proton VPN’s privacy policy states that the company doesn’t track your browsing activity, your IP address, or bandwidth usage. It does track geographical distribution data on its users at an aggregated, global level. It says that it uses this data only to help allocate resources and to counteract government attempts to block Proton VPN.
To back up its no-logging policy claims, Proton VPN has undergone multiple independent security audits over the years, most recently in June 2026 by independent security firm Securitum. It also publishes an up-to-date transparency report as well.
Proton VPN is managed by Proton Technologies AG and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
Since Proton is based out of Switzerland, it operates under some of the world’s strongest consumer privacy protections and outside the major intelligence-sharing alliances—it’s not a current member of the Five, Nine, or Fourteen Eyes. So, you can feel safe that your data is not going to be logged or shared while using Proton VPN.
Overall, Proton VPN provides excellent privacy protections. However, it falls just short of the lofty standards set by Mullvad, our favorite VPN for privacy, which offers an anonymous account system and cash payment option.
Is Proton VPN worth it?
ProtonVPN is, simply put, a fantastic choice for a VPN service. Whether you’re interested in security, privacy, or streaming, it’s hard to go wrong here. Plus, it offers the best free VPN plan on the market—you’ll get a lot of the benefits offered by the paid service without having to open up the wallet.
Its only drawbacks are its premium pricing and the fact that some advanced features aren’t available across every platform. But those shortcomings do little to diminish what is otherwise an excellent VPN.
Users who want the broadest feature set may still lean toward NordVPN or ExpressVPN, but anyone who values transparency and privacy above all else will find Proton VPN difficult to beat. Proton is a great VPN for people who want a provider they can genuinely trust without giving up fast speeds, strong streaming support, or a capable free plan.
Editor’s note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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