Yesterday, Proton quietly launched the one tool it was still missing: video calls. Proton Meet went live on March 31, and it is not a half-baked beta. It is available right now on web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux. Anyone with a free Proton account can host calls with up to 50 participants for up to one hour. Don’t have an account? You can still host or join a call instantly with up to four people, no signup required.
That last part is worth sitting with for a second. Zoom requires an account to host. Google Meet requires a Google account. Microsoft Teams needs a Microsoft account. Proton Meet needs nothing. You visit meet.proton.me, click a button, and you’re in an encrypted call. Proton says it keeps no logs and cannot access your audio, video, or chat messages. The company now has over 100 million users across its services, including Proton VPN, and around 100,000 enterprise customers.
What Proton Meet actually does
Every call on Proton Meet is end-to-end encrypted by default using the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol, an open-source standard that has been independently audited. This is not just encryption in transit, which is what Zoom and Google Meet offer by default and which still lets the provider access your data on their servers. With MLS, nobody can access your calls. Not even Proton.
Beyond video and audio, screen sharing and in-call chat are also end-to-end encrypted. You can schedule meetings directly from Proton Calendar, and there’s integration with Google Calendar and Microsoft Calendar too, so you don’t need to switch your entire setup to use it. Proton also offers private scheduling pages where colleagues or clients can book time in your calendar, with a Meet link generated automatically.
Proton is based in Switzerland, which means it falls outside the jurisdiction of the US CLOUD Act, a law that can compel American tech companies to hand over user data regardless of where their servers sit. The timing matters, too. Over the past year, major tech companies have updated their privacy policies to allow audio and video data to be used for AI training. Proton’s end-to-end encryption makes that structurally impossible.
The bigger picture: Proton now has a full Google alternative
Meet is the final piece of a puzzle Proton has been assembling for years. The company already offered encrypted email, calendar, cloud storage, collaborative documents, spreadsheets, a password manager, and a VPN. With Meet in the lineup, Proton Workspace now covers essentially everything Google Workspace does, except every layer is end-to-end encrypted.
For anyone who has been considering a move away from Google or Microsoft, the barrier just dropped significantly. And the easiest entry point doesn’t require switching anything. Proton VPN works alongside whatever setup you already have, encrypts your traffic, and gives you access to servers in over 110 countries. It even has a free tier with no data caps, which is rare in the VPN market. Once you have a Proton account, you also get access to Mail, Drive, Pass, and now Meet.
One honest caveat: Proton’s apps are good, but they’re not yet as polished as Google’s. Docs and Sheets are functional but still lack some power-user features. Meet is brand new and will likely improve over time. But for most people who value privacy over feature parity, it is already a credible alternative.