Switzerland is known for its stringent privacy laws, making it one of the best legal jurisdictions for a VPN. In today’s Proton VPN review for 2024, we’re discussing one such provider. Proton VPN is renowned for its privacy-oriented nature and robust security.
However, the provider made some significant improvements in the past few years. Apart from its obvious advantages, the VPN offers plenty of servers, great performance, streaming, torrenting, and many more. Does it make it comparable to some of the top names, though?
Before we move on to our in-depth Proton VPN review, we must admit that it is one of our favorite options. Its privacy is on par with the best options like NordVPN and ExpressVPN. Additionally, it offers a handy free VPN plan that will undoubtedly attract many users.
Overall, Proton VPN seems like a complete package. This rings even truer considering its father company Proton which offers a few more security tidbits that you can get along with the VPN service. In today’s Proton VPN analysis, we’ll go over all of its offerings and at the end, answer the question of whether you should buy and use this provider.
Proton VPN
If you need a mighty VPN with non-negotiable privacy and plenty of servers, Proton VPN might just scratch that itch. It's a solid service overall, ultimately let down by the above-average price.
Pros
- Secure Core servers are incredibly safe
- Open-source applications
- 5,000 servers in 90+ countries
- It can unblock Netflix US
Cons
- Quite expensive
- ProtonVPN isn't working in China
- Not the best speeds
Proton VPN Pricing: How Much Does It Cost?
We’ll start this Proton VPN review on a, let’s say, bad note – its price. The service offers a great free plan that we’ll mention later but it’s primarily a premium provider.
The price you’ll pay for it is worthy of the “Premium” badge too, as it’s way higher than you’d expect.
Look at the so-called “Best Deal” from Proton VPN. It’s a 2-year plan that costs a whopping $4.49/mo. You’ll be billed upfront around $108 for the first 24 months. Absurdly, the 12-month plan is dangerously close price-wise to the 24-month deal.
As you can see, it’s just under $5 or around $60 for the first 24 months. The 24-month plan is incredibly expensive compared to NordVPN’s equivalent which costs just over $3 a month. Yet, NordVPN is in many ways superior to Proton VPN, even security-wise.
We also must mention the renewal price, which is way higher. Once the initial deal expires, Proton VPN charges you around $80 a year, which is around $6.67/mo. This is an identical price to ExpressVPN, which, as you can guess, is another superior service.
Proton doesn’t only offer a VPN. Users can enjoy its Mail & Calendar, Drive, and Pass. To translate, we’re talking about an email service, cloud storage, and a password manager. These three can be obtained along with the VPN in the Proton Unlimited subscription.
It’s insolently expensive, though, and the 2-year plan will cost you $7.99/mo, with the 1-year plan being a speck under ten bucks – $9.99/mo. In a bit, you’ll find out if Proton VPN is worth the asking price based on our experience with it.
Money-Back Guarantee and Free Trial
Proton VPN offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for all plans, including the monthly one.
There’s no free trial, however, so you must either buy it immediately or test it first using a free plan. Speaking of which, we mentioned it earlier in our Proton VPN review.
This plan offers unlimited traffic and is almost equally secure to the paid option. However, because you’re paying nothing, some corners have been cut. Proton VPN doesn’t let you pick the server location, so you’re locked to one “Fastest” server.
However, it offers 5 countries – the US, the Netherlands, Japan, Poland, and Romania and automatically connects you to one of these based on your location.
Another issue is slow speed, which can ruin your day on many occasions. The free plan isn’t streaming-optimized, it blocks P2P traffic and lacks features like Secure Core servers, Port Forwarding, NetShield, and others, all of which are mentioned in our test below.
Payment Methods
Proton doesn’t offer plentiful payment methods and we don’t like that. You can pay using credit or debit cards and PayPal.
For a VPN that prides itself on being a privacy giant, not offering crypto payments is a bit foolish. Do you agree?
But hey, we won’t be annoying nitpickers. Frankly, we use PayPal for our VPN purchases but if you’re a privacy geek and want everything under control, you’ll lament the lack of your beloved cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others.
Ease of Use & Compatibility
After trying out its apps, our team was pleasantly surprised with how capable they are. All Proton VPN’s apps look stunning and grace us with their presence on all devices. The screenshot below shows you its Windows app, which looks modern and sleek.
The situation is the same with mobile apps that support one-click connections and are snappy and quick. We must praise Proton VPN’s support for Linux. It’s the best VPN for Linux with a proper GUI, which lets even beginners use the service without issues.
Proton VPN’s device compatibility is great overall and users can install it on:
- Windows, macOS, and Linux computers and laptops
- Android and iOS tablets and phones
- Gaming consoles (PS, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, …)
- Routers (pfSense, AsusWRT, DD-WRT, FreshTomato, MikroTik, OpenWRT, Vilfo, …)
- TVs (Android Smart TV, Nvidia Shield TV, Firestick TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, …)
The provider supports both OpenVPN and WireGuard on routers too. However, you need a WireGuard-friendly router in this case. Simultaneous connections are its forte and you’ll find 10 of them in all plans, except for the free one that offers 1.
Compared to CyberGhost, Proton VPN offers 3 more simultaneous connections but is on par with NordVPN. For more concurrent connections, you can use Private Internet Access or Surfshark. They offer no limits in this regard.
Security Features of Proton VPN
So now, we move on to the Proton VPN review of security features. This, we believe, will be the most interesting part of our test. Our team has been with Proton VPN since its inception so we witnessed some interesting improvements in this field.
We love how the provider progressed and its trajectory is indeed going in the right direction. Here’s what we think of its security features based on our first-hand experience.
Basic VPN Features
When it comes to basic features, Proton VPN is no slouch. Like all of its mighty rivals, it includes well-known features, such as:
- 256-bit encryption. As you likely know, it’s the most powerful encryption in the world. Being impenetrable by brute force, worldwide authorities and the military use it to keep their vital information confidential.
- Automatic Kill Switch. A standard VPN feature that shuts down the internet if the VPN connection drops to prevent IP leaks. There’s even the “Permanent” version which prevents you from going online unless you connect to a VPN. In our Proton VPN test, the kill switch worked well amidst very few connection problems we experienced.
- NetShield. It’s an ad blocker that also blocks malware and trackers. We deem it a basic feature because it’s easily enabled and works in the background. Sadly, unlike NordVPN’s Threat Protection, we discovered that it doesn’t display blocked threats, which is a shame.
- DNS and IPv6 Leak Protection. It needs no special explanation. When enabled, these two prevent the leakage of your DNS and IPv6 addresses.
- Split Tunneling. It allows you to exclude or allow the apps or IPs to use the VPN tunnel. During our test, we used this feature for local banking and shopping sites where we didn’t need to change our IP address.
Advanced Security Features
Proton VPN isn’t all about numbers features-wise. NordVPN and Private Internet Access offer more, for example. However, Proton VPN is far from being underwhelming and the advanced features it offers are paramount for online privacy. They include:
Secure Core Servers
Secure Core servers are the highlight of Proton VPN. They’re quite similar to Double VPN or Multi-Hop, and in the same fashion, they route your traffic through multiple servers before it reaches the final destination. As a result, no one can trace the origin of the traffic.
These servers offer additional encryption, as expected, and because of that, they’re a tad slower. In our Proton VPN test, the speed reduction wasn’t very dramatic but indeed noticeable. However, this isn’t the goal of Secure Core servers.
The goal is to get you online anonymously and without snoopers breathing behind your back. Secure Core servers are stationed in hardened data centers in Sweden, Iceland, and Switzerland. They’re used in pairs with “normal” servers to establish a connection.
For example, you can select the US server via Iceland, Sweden, or Switzerland. This means your traffic will be routed first through one country and then the other before it reaches the destination. With two IPs and double the encryption, you’re basically a ghost online.
WireGuard Protocol
From our experience with Proton VPN, it works best when using WireGuard. However, the provider also has this Smart option, which automatically assigns you the protocol based on numerous parameters. In most cases, the provider will use WireGuard.
At least that was the case in our test. Some servers are more optimized for OpenVPN in which case, the service will opt for UDP or TCP. We noticed that UDP is slightly faster while TCP was great for overall reliability and sometimes bypassing firewalls.
Alternative Routing (Stealth VPN on macOS)
Since we mentioned firewalls, let’s briefly talk about Alternative Routing. It’s almost equivalent to Stealth VPN, which the VPN uses on macOS.
Alternative Routing is your means of getting over firewall restrictions if you encounter blocking problems.
The main purpose is to get to Proton’s sites if they’re blocked but the provider claims it’s also handy for general restrictions. We tested Alternative Routing in China but the results weren’t so great. More about that near the end of our in-depth review of Proton VPN.
macOS users have a better option – Stealth VPN. You won’t find it on any other system. Again, it’s not as great as you expect it to be, and while it does work in the case of many firewall restrictions, the Great Firewall will be an unbeatable obstacle.
Stealth VPN, however, masks your VPN connection and makes it look like a normal connection instead. It’s handy if you’re in school or the workplace and want to circumvent stubborn network restrictions. In this scenario, it works perfectly fine.
Dark Web Monitoring
Dark Web Monitoring isn’t an in-app feature. It’s instead found if you log in to your account from the website. You can, from here, enable Dark Web Monitoring with a simple click and protect your private information from public eye exposure.
It works the same as the Dark Web Monitor from NordVPN or Alerts from Surfshark. If your private information is exposed, the Dark Web Monitor informs you, letting you take action by changing your credentials if the email or password is endangered.
In our test, the tool found nothing because we used a new email address that we usually don’t associate with anything else than VPNs.
Private DNS
Private DNS servers are used by Proton VPN for added privacy. They handle your DNS requests and prevent third-party DNS services from seeing them. For added customization, the provider allows you to use a custom DNS server.
However, after trying out a few, we can tell you from experience that Proton VPN’s DNS is the best option. You have to really trust a specific DNS to use it and since most of them will track you in some way and store your sensitive data, this isn’t the smartest option.
As you’ll see soon in this Proton VPN review, the provider’s no-logging policy is perfect, so you can be sure nothing is stored on its servers.
Perfect Forward Secrecy
Forward Secrecy also known as Perfect Forward Secrecy or simply PFS, is another feature worth mentioning. Proton VPN prides itself on using this feature to protect you against data breaches by assigning unique encryption keys to each connection.
One connection with a specific encryption key will be unique, and once the connection is stopped, the encryption key is deleted and never used again. Even if the encryption key is compromised, which is impossible to happen, it would be useless, as a result.
Full-Disk Encryption
As expected from a privacy-focused service, Proton VPN’s server technology is impressive. Like other similar providers, it uses RAM to host its servers. Apart from that, the service went a step ahead to secure all of its servers with full-disk encryption!
This allows the provider to store config files and server certificates on the exit server to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. The attacker can’t steal the server certificate and compromise the server as a result, making Proton VPN’s servers “bulletproof.”
These servers aren’t used in all countries. Instead, Proton VPN reserved them for high-risk countries with frequent data breaches and surveillance. For instance, one such country is Russia, where the authorities are notorious for anti-privacy practices.
IP and DNS Leak Test
An integral part of our review of Proton VPN is an IP/DNS leak test. We performed quite a few, testing all 90+ countries that the VPN offers. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll show you our test results with the US server, which were, by the way excellent.
The screenshot above shows us the first Proton VPN test, which was performed on ipleak.net, a famous IP/DNS Leak Tester. You can see only US IP addresses here and no trace of our native IP or DNS, which was in Europe at the time.
Using another website, browserleaks.net, yielded excellent results too. Once again, we faced no leaks, as Proton VPN effortlessly preserved our privacy and ensured much-needed anonymity expected from this company.
Does Proton VPN Keep Logs?
When we discovered that Proton VPN doesn’t store logs, we were all but surprised.
After examining its background, the surprise factor dwindled further. We explained that the VPN is from Switzerland, a country with privacy laws so strong, that the authorities can’t impose logging obligations on the VPN services.
Interestingly, another provider, PrivadoVPN, is also from this country.
This VPN is another no-log option with extremely strong privacy and security. So, this is no accident. Proton VPN’s father company is Proton – again, a Swiss cybersecurity giant. More impressively, the provider’s VPN apps are open-source, which adds to transparency.
We have three important factors – a Swiss jurisdiction, Proton, as a reputable company, and its open-source nature. All three are already screaming security and privacy, ensuring us that a VPN like this would never store logs. You’d be a fool for not trusting this company.
Proton VPN’s Privacy Policy Review
The first glance at the privacy policy gave us goosebumps. It’s so short, yet so concise. The privacy policy states that Proton VPN doesn’t keep any logs of your:
- IP address
- DNS requests
- Visited websites
- Traffic and communications
- Session length
- Location-based information
Logging is extremely minimal and Proton VPN will store only the necessary data for the service to function. This data includes your email address and basic payment information, which must be familiar to the provider for it to work.
Proton VPN has proven its claims in 2019 in a legal case in which it was ordered to hand out the collected logs to identify a user. The company couldn’t comply because it held no logs on its servers. Besides, let’s not forget its open-source apps.
Cybersecurity experts can, if they want, examine all of them and get proof of the provider’s security and privacy. However, we don’t think that’s necessary given its outstanding reputation among people online.
Third-Party Audits
Our Proton VPN analysis of the privacy policy is nearly done – we have to mention its independent audits. In 2023, a famous auditor called Securitum audited the provider’s no-logging policy. Securitum is, not to forget, founded by CERN scientists.
This is a well-respected company forget of experts in the cybersecurity field. Earlier in 2020, the provider had another independent audit from SEC Consult on its apps for Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS. All four received praise from SEC Consult.
For all the reasons we have mentioned, Proton is an excellent no-logs VPN.
Proton VPN Review: Server Locations
With its server fleet constantly expanding, Proton VPN has arrived at quite an imposing number of around 5,000 servers in 90+ countries. This server network is far larger than that of ExpressVPN and Surfshark but smaller than NordVPN’s 6,300+ servers in 111 countries.
Regardless, this is one of the most impressive server parks we’ve tested. Bear in mind that these are RAM-only 10 Gbps servers too. In addition, the server variety is impressive, as Proton VPN offers specialty servers for:
- Streaming
- P2P/Torrenting
- Tor Over VPN
The latter are welcome for using Tor and venturing into the dark web, for instance. The former two are typical for premium providers such as CyberGhost or NordVPN. We mentioned Secure Core servers earlier and currently, there are 107 of them in 68 countries.
After trying out the majority of server locations, we found that the server distribution is phenomenal. Namely, Proton VPN has nearly 1,500 servers in the US, which is slightly more than CyberGhost. Also, it offers locations in many censored regions.
They include Russia, the UAE, Turkey, India, and so forth. So even if you’re a very demanding user, finding a server location that suits your needs will be pretty simple.
Speed Tests: Proton VPN’s Performance Evaluation
It’s time to divulge our speed test results in this Proton VPN review. We’ll begin by displaying our native internet speed without using a VPN. At the time of testing, we’re in Belgrade, and after evaluating our connection on Ookla’s Speed Test website, we received these results:
Our team tested Proton VPN for 3 days in a row, 3 times a day by connecting to 3 server locations – the UK, the USA, and Japan. We also used the Smart protocol option, which meant that the VPN would automatically decide on the protocol it’ll use.
All speed tests were performed with the VPN Accelerator ON, which can be found in the app. However, it doesn’t have a huge impact, as you see below. These are our best-case results from the extensive test performed during 72 hours.
UK Speed Test Results:
US Speed Test Results:
Japan Speed Test Results:
Based on our tests and overall experience, we’re satisfied with the provider. Its speeds aren’t the best compared to NordVPN and ExpressVPN. However, the speed reduction isn’t extremely dramatic in most cases.
We’ve had an anomaly where the US server was faster than the UK server despite the former being farther from us (screenshot #2). This happened in all tests, by the way.
In practice, Proton VPN performed well, with stable connections and a lag-free experience. It’s not particularly great for gaming but if you value this trait, again, you’ll want to use NordVPN instead. Glance at our NordVPN speed test results here.
Streaming & Torrenting With Proton VPN: How Good Is It?
The presence of streaming and torrenting-optimized servers reassures us that the provider will be reliable enough for these purposes. Starting with streaming, our team had a solid ride within this Proton VPN review. Netflix worked if that’s your concern.
We unblocked catalogs from the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK, while the Japanese library was a bit problematic occasionally. Our experts tested other platforms, such as Hotstar, MAX, and BBC, all of which would work flawlessly.
By working flawlessly, we don’t mean just unblocking the streaming service. The experience, in terms of smoothness, is also great, with only occasional buffering that would disappear after 1-2 seconds. Torrenting support is vital for Proton VPN as a premium service.
With or without its Port Forwarding function, torrenting is a breeze. We used a server in Serbia and downloaded Linux Mint in no time. The speed reduction was hardly noticeable, except for upload speeds that dwindled a bit.
This, after all, isn’t too important for torrenting for many of you. In general, Proton VPN can be compared to the top-rated VPNs in torrenting but not in streaming. NordVPN is again better, unblocking 20+ instead of a few Netflix libraries like this provider.
Using Proton VPN for Bypassing Censorship
It’s that time for the Proton VPN review where we’ll discuss the uselessness of this provider’s anti-censorship features. We’ve teased you a bit about it but now, it’s official. After testing the VPN in China, our experts discovered that it wouldn’t work.
On Windows, we used Alternative Routing to no avail. On macOS, we used Stealth VPN with the same results. We then found this article on its website:
This article confirms that it’s not working, as the provider itself admits it. If you’re in China or planning to travel there, this provider won’t be great. Consider NordVPN and its obfuscated servers that work incredibly well in China at the time of testing.
ExpressVPN and Surfshark also work well based on our tests. For more information, we have a guide on using a VPN in China successfully. In that guide, we also present you with a few of the most dependable providers for this country.
Customer Support
Proton VPN’s customer support isn’t the best around. If you haven’t bought it yet, you’ll be locked to email support, which can be pretty slow to respond. Only customers are allowed to use 24/7 live chat support, and by customers, we of course mean paid customers.
So again, if you’re a free user, live chat support is a no-go. This is in stark contrast to Hide.me which doesn’t exclude 24/7 live chat support from its free users. Whatever the case, live chat support is okay but not impressive. It is helpful enough.
On its site, you’ll find a wealth of guides in the Support Center. They will help you set up the VPN, unblock streaming services, get a refund if needed, troubleshoot issues, and so on. The provider is available on other platforms, such as Mastodon and Reddit.
Reddit users often communicate with Proton VPN’s developers and troubleshoot their problems. We found that the provider is very talkative on Reddit and ready to help and answer many feature requests.
Fazit
At the end of our Proton VPN review, we’ll answer the question from the start. Is the provider worth your money and is it any good? The latter question is easy to tackle – it is very good, yes. But is it worth your money? Well, that’s a complex conundrum.
As a whole, we think Proton VPN has a lot of amazing things going for it.
It performs decently, offers solid security, and comes with some of the best privacy features we’ve seen so far. Coupled with a robust server fleet and a free subscription plan, it’s hard to find something overly negative about the provider.
We’ll address the elephant in the room and that’s the price, which is a major letdown. Its 2-year plan is TWO times more expensive than the equivalents of PIA, Surfshark, and CyberGhost. Unfortunately for Proton VPN, these three cheap VPNs are better.
Even NordVPN, our #1 rated service is roughly 50% cheaper while offering more. Worse yet, Proton VPN isn’t working in China, isn’t the most capable for streaming, and doesn’t come with more powerful features like Threat Protection or Meshnet from NordVPN.
If you’re infatuated by its privacy and want to pay for it no matter what, then, by all means, go for this provider. If you’re more rational, you’ll realize that NordVPN is better and costs less, making Proton VPN quite a questionable and borderline poor choice in comparison.