ProtonVPN Review
Built by the team behind ProtonMail. Privacy is the product.
ProtonVPN was built by the same team as ProtonMail — privacy infrastructure for journalists, activists, and people with legitimate reasons to distrust the VPN industry's marketing claims. The no-logs policy was tested in court when Swiss authorities requested user data in 2021. There was nothing to hand over.
Our scores
ProtonVPN
Overall score — April 2026
ProtonVPN is the strongest privacy-first choice if you distrust VPN marketing claims. The no-logs policy has been court-tested, the apps are fully open source, and the Swiss jurisdiction is the most legally favorable for privacy in Europe.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Strongest verifiable privacy: open-source apps, court-tested no-logs policy
- Swiss jurisdiction — outside EU and US data retention laws
- Secure Core routes traffic through hardened servers in Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland
- Stealth protocol bypasses VPN blocking in China, UAE, Russia
- Genuinely free tier with no data limits (speed-capped, limited servers)
Cons
- Speeds slower than NordVPN or ExpressVPN — 87% retention
- Streaming reliability less consistent than NordVPN or Surfshark
- Interface is more technical than average — learning curve for new users
- Fewer servers (2,900+) than NordVPN
Speed
665 Mbps
Download
420 Mbps
Upload
12 ms
Latency
87%
Speed kept
665 Mbps average download — 87% speed retention. Noticeably slower than NordVPN or ExpressVPN, though still fast enough for all practical uses. Secure Core (multi-hop) drops speeds further — expect 40-60% of base speed through hardened Swiss servers.
Tested: . 1 Gbps base connection.
Privacy & Security
Swiss jurisdiction is the gold standard. Open-source apps for all platforms mean any security researcher can verify the code. No-logs policy audited by SEC Consult (2022) and confirmed under real legal pressure in 2021. Port forwarding support is rare among privacy-first VPNs.
Streaming
Works on Netflix US and UK reliably. BBC iPlayer is hit-or-miss (roughly 80% success in testing). Disney+ and Hulu work but are not as consistently reliable as NordVPN or ExpressVPN. If streaming is your primary use case, a different VPN serves you better.
Pricing
$9.99/mo
Monthly
$4.99/mo
Annual plan
billed annually
$3.99/mo
2-year plan
billed every 2 years
At $3.99/month on the 2-year plan, it's priced similarly to NordVPN but with less streaming reliability. The premium is justified for the privacy architecture, not the streaming or speed performance.
User Ratings
4.5/5
Trustpilot
9k reviews
4.1/5
Google Play
60k ratings
4.5/5
App Store
40k ratings
71%
Community
Reddit sentiment
Ratings sourced from Trustpilot, Google Play Store, and Apple App Store. Community score is derived from Reddit/r/VPN sentiment analysis. Scores are aggregated periodically and may not reflect real-time data.
Verdict
ProtonVPN is the right choice if you're a journalist, activist, or anyone who needs verifiable privacy guarantees. For everyday privacy protection, it's excellent but overkill — NordVPN or Mullvad handle most use cases at lower cost.
ProtonVPN vs. Alternatives
| Feature | ProtonVPN9.1/10 | NordVPN9.2/10 | ExpressVPN8.6/10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Our Score | 9.1 | 9.2 | 8.6 |
| Monthly Price | $3.99/mo | $3.39/mo | $8.32/mo |
| Servers | 2,900+ | 6,400+ | 3,000+ |
| Countries | 91 | 111 | 105 |
| Simultaneous Devices | 10 | 10 | 8 |
| Speed (tested) | 665 Mbps (87%) | 730 Mbps (96%) | 755 Mbps (98%) |
| No-Logs Policy | |||
| Independently Audited | |||
| Kill Switch | |||
| Ad Blocker | |||
| Streaming | |||
| Torrenting / P2P | |||
| Port Forwarding | |||
| Obfuscation | |||
| Double VPN | |||
| RAM-Only Servers | |||
| Jurisdiction | Switzerland (outside EU/US jurisdiction) | Panama (outside 5/9/14 Eyes) | British Virgin Islands |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days |
All data verified April 2026.