Proton VPN

A Swiss company's VPN, sold alongside mail, drive and passwords

Proton VPN is the VPN from Proton, the company that also makes Proton Mail, Proton Drive, Proton Pass and Proton Calendar. The about page says Proton services are operated by Proton AG, "a Swiss corporation whose primary shareholder is the non-profit Proton Foundation," based in Geneva, and the footer of every page gives the address as Route de la Galaise 32, 1228 Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva. The VPN is sold on its own, and a Plus subscription also comes with free tiers of Proton Mail, Drive and Pass plus limited Calendar access; Proton Unlimited bundles the premium versions of everything.

On who can buy it, the pricing page shows prices in US dollars and lists payment by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, PayPal or Proton credits, and says that once an account exists, credits can be bought with cash, bank transfers or Bitcoin. Apps download from the site for Windows, macOS, Linux, Chromebook, Android and iPhone/iPad, with browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox and TV apps for Android TV, Apple TV and Fire Stick. The site does not restrict sales to any country, and it links a country-by-country guide on VPN legality rather than saying where the service can or cannot be used. There is also a free plan that needs only an account.

Five annual audits by Securitum, and what they covered

Proton VPN names its auditor and publishes the reports. The provider's post "For 5th year running, Proton VPN passes external no-logs audit," first published on April 22, 2022 and last updated on June 16, 2026, says the security firm Securitum has examined its VPN infrastructure every year, and lists reports for 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. According to that post, Securitum's staff "spent several days on site reviewing our VPN configuration files and server configurations, assessing our operating procedures, and interviewing our staff." The questions the post says each audit answered include whether user activity, DNS queries or session timestamps are logged on the production servers, whether traffic contents are inspected, whether the no-logs policy applies the same way across all servers, regions and subscription tiers, whether an automated process flags configuration changes that could switch logging on, and whether logging-related changes go through a dual-control "four-eyes" process.

The post quotes the 2026 report's conclusion: "The technical evidence reviewed during the engagement did not indicate that the examined Proton VPN server infrastructure logs users' browsing activity, DNS queries, destination services, network traffic contents or user-identifiable connection metadata." It also says the full reports are published for anyone to read, rather than kept behind a login.

Separately from the audit, here is what the provider itself claims. Its support page on logging says it does not log the websites visited, traffic or message content, IP addresses, session lengths or location data, and points to the privacy policy for what it does keep, such as account information. The provider says its no-logs policy has been "tested in over 400 legal cases," in which it was ordered to hand over logs and could not "because these logs did not exist," and the support page describes a 2019 case of that kind. It adds that under current Swiss law a VPN has no forced logging obligation, while noting that Swiss rules for email differ. The same audit post also mentions a separate Securitum security audit of all Proton apps, which it says "uncovered no significant security issues"; that was an app review, not part of the no-logs work.

The apps and the network

The features page says the apps are all open source and names WireGuard, OpenVPN and IKEv2 among the protocols, with encryption by AES-256 or ChaCha20. Its own additions include Stealth, which it describes as "our custom obfuscation VPN protocol based on WireGuard tunneled over TLS"; alternative routing through third-party networks such as AWS when its servers are blocked; Smart Protocol, which probes the network for a working configuration; and Tor over VPN for reaching .onion sites. Secure Core is its double-hop option, where traffic first passes through servers the provider says it owns in Iceland, Sweden or Switzerland.

The network is given as more than 20,000 servers in over 140 countries, with connections of "up to 10 Gbps," and the site claims its VPN Accelerator can raise speeds by up to 400% over long distances. That is the provider's figure; the site does not publish independent speed tests. Other listed features are a kill switch and always-on VPN in all apps, the NetShield ad, tracker and malware blocker, DNS leak protection, port forwarding, and split tunneling on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, Android TV and the browser extension. Servers are described as bare-metal with full-disk encryption.

For streaming, the site says paid plans can reach Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and "other major streaming platforms" from the VPN location, and its navigation names Amazon Prime Video too; streaming servers are for paid plans only. For torrenting, it describes servers "optimized for P2P file sharing." The site also runs the Proton VPN Observatory, which it says documents "spikes in Proton VPN use as people fight for online freedom," and a censorship simulator.

Plans, the free tier, devices and refunds

The plans named on the site are Free, Plus, Unlimited, Visionary and Family. The pricing page does not print an actual price for Plus in its text: the plan card and the renewal line show placeholder figures, so the site's own text does not settle what a plan costs or what it renews at. Its FAQ says the 1-year and 2-year Plus plans and the 2-year Unlimited plan carry a discount on the monthly price, without printing the percentage, and that switching plans applies prorated credit.

The free plan gets unusual space. The site says it has "no data limits, no artificial speed limits," has no ads, and still includes the kill switch; it connects to servers in a small set of randomly selected countries, and streaming, NetShield and the full server list are kept for paid plans. The FAQ says Proton can offer the free plan "thanks to the support of the Proton community," and asks free users to consider a paid plan. A paid subscription covers up to 10 devices at once. Refunds are on offer for all subscriptions requested "within the first 30 days," with the terms of service holding the full policy. Paid plans add live chat support; everyone else gets the help center and the published contact addresses.

The about page adds history: Proton was launched in the summer of 2014 after a crowdfunding campaign in which it says over 10,000 people gave over $500,000, and it says it has no venture capital investors.

What the site leaves open, and who it fits

The main gap is price. With the pricing page showing placeholders instead of figures, the site does not state what Plus or Unlimited cost for any term, how large the long-term discounts are, or what a plan renews at. The number of countries on the free plan is also stated inconsistently: the homepage says 5 and the pricing page says 10, both "randomly selected." And the claims about streaming reach, speed and censorship performance are the provider's own, with no dated test behind them on the site.

Much of the rest is laid out plainly. The owner is named down to its main shareholder, the audit firm and its method are spelled out for 5 separate years with the latest conclusion quoted, the app code is public, and the free plan has no data cap. The site quotes outside press praise, including a Which? "Best Buy" endorsement, which is the provider's own selection of coverage.

Proton VPN suits someone who wants the paper trail first: a named Swiss operator, a yearly external no-logs review and open-source apps, plus tools like Stealth and Secure Core for restrictive networks. It also suits anyone who wants a free VPN with no ads and no data cap. Someone who shops strictly by headline price will need to open the checkout, because the site's own text does not give the numbers.