Proton VPN lost 10.2% of our 190.36 Mbps baseline across three server locations in our September 2026 round, opened 10 of the 14 streaming platforms we tested, and still has no post-quantum encryption. The speed result surprised me. Proton VPN used to finish well behind NordVPN and ExpressVPN on our test connection, and it now comes fourth of the ten VPNs we measured, close enough that browsing and streaming feel the same either way.
Streaming improved too, and the free plan is still the only one we rank with no data limit. The missing post-quantum work is harder to forgive from a company that sells itself on cryptography. We measured everything below on a Windows 11 desktop and on a Galaxy S26 Ultra.
Proton VPN
Proton VPN is our number two VPN. It lost 10.2% of our connection speed across three server locations and opened 10 of the 14 streaming platforms we tested, both better than the last round. Smart DNS and post-quantum encryption are still missing, and the refund is paid pro rata.
Pros
- Owned Secure Core servers
- Open-source apps
- Audited no-log policy
- Swiss jurisdiction
- Unlimited free plan
- Port forwarding
- Stealth on every plan
Cons
- No Smart DNS
- No post-quantum encryption
- Refund paid pro rata
Proton VPN Review: Quick Look
| Starting price | $2.99 per month for 24 months |
| Money-back guarantee | 30 days, refunded pro rata |
| Protocols | WireGuard, OpenVPN, Stealth |
| No-log policy | Yes, audited by Securitum in five consecutive years |
| Servers | 20,798 across 149 countries |
| Average speed loss | 10.2% download, 2.7% upload |
| Multi-hop | Yes, 125 Secure Core servers |
| Ad, tracker, and malware blocking | NetShield, paid plans only |
| Streaming | 10 of 14 platforms opened |
| Torrenting | Allowed, with port forwarding |
| Post-quantum encryption | Not available |
| Smart DNS | Not available |
| Supported platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Android TV, Apple TV, browsers, routers |
| Simultaneous connections | 10 on paid plans, 1 on the free plan |
| Customer support | 24/7 live chat for paid accounts, email, help center |
Proton VPN Pricing and Plans
Proton VPN sells one consumer plan, called VPN Plus, on three terms. The two-year term costs $2.99 per month, a 70% discount on the $9.99 list price, totaling $71.76 for the first 24 months. The one-year term costs $3.99 per month, or $47.88 up front. The one-month term costs $9.99, the list price with nothing taken off, so paying monthly only makes sense as a short test.
Both the two-year and one-year terms renew at $83.88 every 12 months, or $6.99 a month. That figure is above NordVPN’s renewal and above most budget VPNs, so the first term is the cheap part. The refund policy has a condition competitors don’t attach. Proton VPN honors its 30-day money-back guarantee pro rata, covering only the unused portion of the term.
Cancel on day 17 of a two-year subscription, and the refund covers the remaining days only. NordVPN, Surfshark, and PIA return the whole amount within 30 days. Refunds also require downgrading the account to the free tier first, then submitting a request. Proton Unlimited costs $7.99 a month on the two-year term, compared to a $12.99 list price, and adds Proton Mail, Drive, Pass, and Calendar to the same VPN.
Proton VPN Free Plan
Proton VPN offers the only free VPN we rank with no data limit, and it brings the company a large share of its first-time users. We measured the free tier against the same 190.36 Mbps baseline: 176.41 Mbps on the Netherlands server at 32 ms ping, and 131.00 Mbps on the American server at 253 ms. That averages 19.3% loss, roughly double what the paid plan costs in speed.
Free accounts connect one device at a time. Server choice is removed, so the app assigns one of 10 countries at random, and that draw shapes the whole session. The free plan can’t open Netflix on an American IP address, and P2P is blocked. Free accounts do keep the Stealth protocol, so a disguised connection is available without paying. That makes the free tier useful on a school or office network that blocks VPN traffic.
There is no separate desktop trial. The free Proton VPN plan is the trial, and it covers enough of the UI and security behavior to judge the apps before paying.
Proton VPN Speed Test Results
Our baseline measures 190.36 Mbps down, 19.37 Mbps up, and 10 ms ping, with no VPN connected. We tested over Ethernet on a Windows 11 desktop, using WireGuard with VPN Accelerator, in our September 2026 round.
| UK server | US server | Japan server | |
| Download | 178.89 Mbps | 173.68 Mbps | 159.99 Mbps |
| Download loss | 6.0% | 8.8% | 16.0% |
| Upload | 19.21 Mbps | 19.01 Mbps | 18.31 Mbps |
| Ping | 49 ms | 109 ms | 249 ms |
Averaged across the three server locations, Proton VPN delivered 170.85 Mbps, a 10.2% download loss, placing it fourth of the ten VPNs we measured. ExpressVPN and NordVPN tied at 7.8%, and Surfshark came in at 9.6%. Upload cost 2.7% on average, from 0.8% on the UK server to 5.5% in Japan. VPN Accelerator is on by default. Switching it off dropped the same American server to 165.58 Mbps at 112 ms ping, a 4.9% penalty against the figure in the table.
At 49 ms, the UK server is comfortable for gaming on European servers. At 249 ms, the Japanese server is not, and no VPN fixes that distance. For the fastest option in the category, our NordVPN review has the full figures.
Speed on Android
Android has a separate baseline. Our home WiFi on the Galaxy S26 Ultra measures 54.7 Mbps down and 37 ms ping with no VPN, so the percentages below are calculated against that figure and not against the Ethernet one. A 27.0% average is roughly triple what the same VPN costs on Ethernet, and every app we measured on the phone showed the same pattern.
| UK server | US server | Japan server | |
| Download | 48.8 Mbps | 39.33 Mbps | 31.7 Mbps |
| Download loss | 10.8% | 28.1% | 42.0% |
| Ping | 52 ms | 128 ms | 205 ms |
The order stays, with Proton VPN fourth behind NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark. The Japanese server returned 205 ms ping compared to 249 ms on the desktop, and connections completed in one to three seconds where Windows took two to three. Battery drain over a 20-minute YouTube session at 1440p came to 4%, against 3% with no VPN connected.
Streaming and Torrenting
We tested 14 platforms on Windows 11, clearing cookies and cache before each session. Proton VPN opened 10 of them: Netflix in the US, Canada and Japan, BBC iPlayer, Channel 4, Prime Video, HBO Max, Peacock, Now TV and JioHotstar. All three Netflix libraries loaded on standard servers with no switching. Four platforms blocked it: Hulu, Disney+, Pluto TV and ITVX.
Disney+ blocked every desktop app in our round. NordVPN and ExpressVPN opened it through their browser extensions with location spoofing, and Proton VPN, which has no comparable extension feature, was blocked. ITVX is the other loss, and CyberGhost opened it from a dedicated UK entry after Proton VPN was blocked.
| Netflix US | BBC iPlayer | Disney+ | Hulu | HBO Max | Prime Video |
| Opened | Opened | Blocked | Blocked | Opened | Opened |
Viewers who want an American IP address for Netflix are well served. Viewers building a full streaming setup around Disney+ are not so much. Torrenting is the stronger half of this section. Proton VPN marks its P2P servers clearly and supports port forwarding on paid plans, configured from the settings instead of through a support ticket. Few of the best VPNs still offer it.
Seeding depends on upload, and our upload measurements cost between 0.8% and 5.5%, so there’s practically almost no difference.
Proton VPN Compared With NordVPN and ExpressVPN
Proton VPN, NordVPN, and ExpressVPN are the three VPNs we rank highest, and one September 2026 round covers all of them. Every figure here is one we measured or verified. NordVPN and ExpressVPN finished equal on speed, and both opened every streaming platform, though Disney+ took a browser extension in each case. Proton VPN is behind on speed, on streaming, and on Smart DNS.
| Average download loss | Streaming platforms opened | Smart DNS | Post-quantum encryption | Multi-hop | |
| Proton VPN | 10.2% | 10 of 14 | No | No | Yes, Secure Core |
| NordVPN | 7.8% | 14 of 14 | Yes | Yes | Yes, Double VPN |
| ExpressVPN | 7.8% | 14 of 14 | Yes | Yes | No |
The order reverses on architecture. ExpressVPN still has no multi-hop after years of requests, and NordVPN rents the servers behind its Double VPN. Secure Core is the only implementation of the three built on servers the company owns, and Proton VPN is the only one of the three publishing readable source code for every client.
Proton VPN Security and Privacy
Everyday Protection
Encryption is standard for the price category: 256-bit AES-GCM on OpenVPN sessions, ChaCha20-Poly1305 on WireGuard. The kill switch passed both failure modes we tried on Windows 11: an Ethernet cable pulled mid-session and the app process killed from Task Manager, with a continuous ping running throughout. No packets escaped either time. The Advanced Kill Switch mode blocks all internet access until a tunnel is established, including after a reboot.
Proton VPN hasn’t leaked anything; in fact, DNS queries or WebRTC data on eight server locations on ipleak.net and browserleaks.com remained hidden. NetShield blocks ads, trackers, and malware at the DNS level in three strengths, on paid plans only. On the strictest setting, it scored 93% on d3ward’s ad-block test, blocking 126 of 135 elements, and it covers every app on the device. The in-app privacy panel still read zero ads and zero trackers after the run.
Stealth disguises VPN traffic as ordinary HTTPS for networks that block VPNs, and it costs 1.9%: 175.41 Mbps on the UK server against 178.89 Mbps on plain WireGuard, with ping at 56 ms instead of 49 ms.
Split tunneling covers apps and IP addresses on Windows and Android. iOS receives none, a consequence of Apple’s sandbox design.
Secure Core
Secure Core is Proton VPN’s multi-hop implementation, and it differs from NordVPN’s Double VPN in one structural way. Traffic enters through a server in Switzerland, Iceland, or Sweden, then connects out through a standard server in the destination country. Proton VPN owns and operates those entry servers. NordVPN rents its Double VPN servers from third parties.
125 Secure Core servers cover 68 countries, available on paid plans. We measured what the second server costs. A chain entering through Switzerland and connecting out in the US delivered 152.71 Mbps at 193 ms ping, against 173.68 Mbps at 109 ms on the same American location without it. That is 12.1% slower with 84 ms of extra ping, and upload came in at 17.34 Mbps. For a second encrypted stage on servers Proton VPN owns, 12.1% is a small price.
Competitors cannot copy that ownership quickly. A rented double VPN server is only as private as the company renting it out, and owning the servers in countries with no surveillance-alliance membership removes that dependency. For a journalist or a researcher, that distinction is the product.
The Missing Piece: Post-Quantum Encryption
Proton VPN has no post-quantum encryption. NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, and Mullvad all have it working in their apps today. Proton VPN lists it as groundwork on its roadmap, tied to a codebase rewrite that entered beta in August, with no release date attached. Here the marketing and the product diverge.
Harvest-now-decrypt-later collection is the exact threat Proton VPN’s own audience worries about, and a company built by cryptographers at CERN should not be arriving late to it. I expected better from Proton VPN in particular. Until it arrives, NordVPN covers a threat that Proton VPN does not.
Audits, Swiss Law and the 2019 Court Case
Securitum has audited the no-log policy in five consecutive years, from 2022 through May 2026. The most recent inspection took place from May 20 to 27, 2026, at Proton AG’s Zürich headquarters, where two consultants spent six person-days examining production servers on free and paid tiers, configuration files, and deployment procedures. A SOC 2 Type II attestation followed in July 2025, and SEC Consult audited the Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS apps in 2020.
Every report downloads without an account or an email address. Every client is open source on GitHub, so the audits examined code any researcher can read instead of a closed binary. Switzerland belongs to none of the 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes or 14 Eyes agreements and imposes no data retention requirement on VPN companies. The no-log policy was tested in court in 2019, when Swiss authorities ordered Proton to identify a user in a climate activist case.
Proton supplied the recovery email address on file, which the user had registered with Gmail. No VPN connection records existed to hand over. The case concerned ProtonMail, and the two products store different things: the VPN stored nothing.
Five consecutive infrastructure audits, publicly readable code, and a legal proceeding that produced nothing add up to the most verifiable privacy record in the consumer VPN category. Most companies in this industry ask to be believed, but Proton VPN has been checked by outsiders, repeatedly, with the reports left in public.
Proton Protocols and the 2026 Rebuild
Proton VPN spent 2026 rebuilding its connection layer in Rust. The result, called Proton Protocols, entered beta in August across Windows, iOS, iPadOS, Android and the Linux desktop app, replacing platform-specific WireGuard implementations with one shared codebase. The Stealth protocol arrived on the Linux app, years after Windows and mobile received it.
The apps gained automatic detection of network conflicts, the failure most people experience as a VPN that connects but passes no traffic. Connection times also dropped. The longer-term work is unfinished: a networking layer that hides VPN API connections from internet providers, and the foundation for post-quantum encryption. Both are still behind the rest of the category.
Apps, Devices and the Smart DNS Problem
The Windows app opens on a map with server categories for P2P, Secure Core and Tor in the sidebar. It is well built and denser than NordVPN’s, and a first-time user should expect five to ten minutes before the layout makes sense. Connecting took two seconds on WireGuard and three seconds on OpenVPN or Stealth.
Proton VPN also connected normally with another VPN installed and sitting idle in the background. NordVPN’s Windows app fails in that state for us and requires a restart that logs us out. Linux receives a full graphical app instead of a command-line tool alone, which few competitors supply.
The macOS app and the mobile apps have the same feature set as Windows, apart from split tunneling on iOS. Coverage is broad:
- Windows, macOS and Linux desktops and laptops
- Android and iOS phones and tablets
- Android TV, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV
- Chrome and Firefox extensions
- Routers, including AsusWRT, DD-WRT, OpenWRT, pfSense and MikroTik
- PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, through a router
Paid plans cover 10 devices at once. PIA and Surfshark both allow unlimited connections at comparable prices, so a shared household subscription hits the limit here first. Smart DNS is absent, and I keep coming back to it. Smart DNS reroutes only the traffic a streaming platform uses to check location, which is how a Samsung or LG smart TV with no VPN app available loads an American Netflix library.
NordVPN and ExpressVPN both supply it. Proton VPN’s answer is a router configuration, which means flashing firmware or buying a compatible router. For a VPN that has otherwise improved its streaming record this much, leaving out the feature that opens televisions is a missed opportunity, and it costs Proton VPN customers it would otherwise win.
Server Network
Proton VPN operates 20,798 servers across 149 countries and 196 locations, with 17,984 of them on the paid tier. NordVPN covers the same 149 countries with roughly 9,500 servers, so the difference between them is density. The app separates categories cleanly: P2P servers with port forwarding, Tor Over VPN servers for .onion access without a separate browser, and the 125 Secure Core servers.
A Chinese location arrived on September 3, 2026, which supplies a Chinese IP address to users elsewhere and does nothing for people in the country. Proton VPN also avoids the RAM-only architecture that NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark use. It applies full disk encryption instead, with certificates stored on the server to block interception at the server itself, and uses the hardened configuration in high-surveillance countries such as Russia.
Wiping a disk on reboot is simpler and easier to verify. Proton VPN’s alternative is defensible, though most of the category chose differently.
Proton VPN in China
It’s unreliable in mainland China. The Stealth protocol and Alternative Routing connect on some networks and fail on others, and the outcome varies by city and by internet provider. Proton VPN says so on its own site, and our guide to using Proton VPN in China covers the settings that improve the odds. Travelers who treat a working VPN as a requirement there should subscribe to NordVPN or Surfshark.
Customer Support
Live chat is available 24/7 but only for paid accounts. Free users write emails, and replies took up to a full day in our testing. Chat opens with a bot, as it does everywhere now. Escalating to a human took about a minute. PIA, NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark all transferred us within 20 seconds on the same test; PIA in 10 to 20 seconds. The minute on chat is tolerable.
The day on email is not, from a company charging premium prices and positioning itself around trust. Proton VPN’s support disappointed me, and it has not improved between test rounds. The written documentation compensates. The help center covers router setup and protocol behavior in unusual technical depth, and Proton VPN’s engineers often answer questions directly on Reddit, which is useful before opening a ticket.
Proton VPN Review: Verdict
Proton VPN suits one buyer very well and another badly. Buying for privacy, nothing in the category matches five consecutive infrastructure audits, source code any researcher can read, Swiss jurisdiction, and a court case that produced nothing. Those who download torrents have port forwarding, which most VPNs dropped years ago. The buyer it suits badly watches television.
No Smart DNS means a smart TV or a console requires a router, and Disney+ and Hulu were blocked in our testing. Post-quantum encryption is absent, and the refund covers only the unused portion of the term. At $2.99 a month on the two-year term, the price is fair for what it does well, and the free plan shows whether the apps suit you before any money changes hands.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Proton VPN good?
Yes. Swiss jurisdiction, open-source apps and five consecutive no-log audits make it one of the strongest privacy VPNs available, though download speeds finish behind NordVPN and ExpressVPN.
Does Proton VPN work with Sky Go?
Yes, but only alongside a Sky subscription. Proton VPN supplies the UK IP address Sky Go requires, and the account itself still has to be a British one.
Does Proton VPN work with Netflix?
Yes. American, Canadian, and Japanese libraries all load without switching servers. Disney+ and Hulu remain blocked, so a full American streaming setup requires a second VPN alongside it.
Is Proton VPN faster than NordVPN?
No. NordVPN lost less speed on every location tested, and ExpressVPN matched NordVPN. The difference is small enough that video quality and page load times are the same on both.
Does Proton VPN keep logs?
No. The policy excludes IP addresses, DNS queries, browsing history, and session times, and independent auditors have inspected the live servers to confirm it. Swiss law requires no retention.
Does Proton VPN work in China?
Not reliably. Obfuscation is built in and sometimes connects through the national firewall, though success varies by city and by network. NordVPN and Surfshark are steadier for travelers there.