ProtonVPN Free Version Review

Unsubscribed after <30 days usage in 2020 due to not working as advertised with streaming services as well as horrendous speed throttling when active.Recently received an auto renew bill for a year and took 10 days to receive a refund. Communication is sparse and blunt.

Medium speed but overall good product. However, when you cancel subscription, you will lose access to your plan immediately and they will put the rest in as “credits” for if you renew your plan with them. Horrible way to do business in my opinion. Only use Proton if you do not mind this.

Used to be flawless, in my opinion. Started with the free trial, and ended up purchasing the upgraded version, along with my Protonmail. About a month or so ago, the VPN service has just crashed and burned. It doesn’t hardly ever let me connect to the countries I want to connect to, I’m finding myself at risk constantly because it kicks me off of servers and won’t tell me. Please undo whatever you guys have done to make a great VPN service into a subpar VPN service.

ProtonVPN is the best for security, privacy, and transparency. All clients and extensions are 100% open-source. However, users looking for the absolute fastest connections or to unlock the most overseas content may want to look elsewhere. Other than the billing process, which I agree can be confusing. The largest complaints are related to not understanding the concept behind Proton. The cost can seem high to users looking for those other features and not privacy as the #1 focus. Price comes down drastically if bundling services. ExpressVPN will likely be better at content unlocking and speed. Others like Nord as well, although they have been caught breaching their own security before. No other major is 100% open-source. Some do not support nearly as many platforms, and some of the best security-focused ones ever created. Still, many of those best ones are relegated to Linux only due to security. ExpressVPN only makes a couple of items open-source, but their no logging guarantee had held up even when authoritarian regimes physically seized physical servers. Others like NordVPN have been caught logging despite all the paperwork certifying otherwise. They have been compelled by court orders and provided information that a no-log provider would not have.Express and Nord are examples because of their size and recognition, not to call them out specifically.ProtonVPN also provides a free VPN service. This includes authoritarian and war-torn areas where privacy can literally be life and death for journalists and regular people trying to send out photos or videos of atrocities. The UN literally called out using them during the Myanmar coup by the military. You are supporting a larger social good when you pay for a subscription, and that is part of why the price can seem higher compared to others. ProtonVPN has other quirks because of its secure nature. It has built-in protection that can block many ads, trackers, malware, etc., or you can throttle it down, but sometimes the feature being on at all can cause issues with websites. It is also more heavily guarded and has built-in support for secure core plus servers optimized for Tor and P2P, depending on what you need. With the additional layers, some websites dislike it. I use third-party tools for ads, trackers, cookies, etc., because I have to open up to all third-party cookies for sites to work, rarely at all but sometimes for sites to work with Proton. Those who break do so because their disregard for privacy is so great they would rather break the site for those who want to protect their own than allow access. The content unlocks functionality is very good, but I can understand why some people could have issues where other VPN providers can unlock more content. I have had no issues, though.Proton does not back down on security. That means no access to China or very limited. Other services, notably ExpressVPN, have had the best luck with this while not sacrificing security. Proton has been blocked through for their refusal to take even basic steps that could degrade security. That is by far the largest downfall that will be a deal-breaker for some. So if you need access to China, you likely need another service, but you are always taking a risk with privacy there, hence why the Great Firewall locked out Proton.WireGuard, which many rants about today and down Proton for not hopping on, is never coming unless a technology change occurs. It requires identifiable information of the host. Services make elaborate claims about how they hide this away, but if they are logging like Nord got caught doing or compromised, all your privacy is gone. Custom MTU size is also allowed, something that can make Proton faster than anything else and mask you against corporate VPNs. The amount of custom config is crazy if you are technically inclined and want to mess around.Proton is all about security, and you can validate that because everything is open source. They have also outsourced ownership to non-profit for oversight, so no profit motive. Speeds are great, and the content unlocks as well, but others may be better if that and price are the priority. Proton has a larger mission. It provides the benefits of a VPN, but privacy and transparency will always come first, even if it costs them on other functions. The choice is yours.

I was searching for a good, free VPN to protect my data while on vacation as I have to use the hotel’s WiFi because of my poor cellular connectivity inside. Got this, works pretty well so far. I only see a minor drop in speed compared to connecting without the VPN. I just wish it had Shortcuts compatibility, as it’s a bit annoying having to go into the app whenever I want to connect/disconnect. Other than that, pretty nice so far. Edit: I am stupid. Right aftet sending this review I noticed there is, in fact, Shortcuts compatibility. Bumped up to 5 stars.

The most secure VPN provider I’ve ever used. The speeds are decent and allows great torrenting

Beware their payment option in cash. If something goes wrong you are on your own.ProtonVPN – thanks for your reply, but this review has been written already after a lengthy exchange of emails with ‘contact at protonvpn dot com’ with no support being offered whatsoever, even though a lot could be done on your side to try and resolve this unfortunate issue. At this moment I stand by my review.

Updated, I found out how my IP was exposed, so everyone knows not to do this, here it is: If you enter a profile while it’s on, it shuts the VPN off and your IP is exposed. So don’t do this! —————————————————— This is my first day on Plus. So far I am very pleased. Been testing it going in and out of airplane mode. I did have an IP leak, once, prior to testing airplane mode, thus I am trying to figure out how this happened. It certainly wasn’t purposeful. There is no button for preventing DNS leak in IOS. Is this already enabled on all plus accounts? Dunno.. Also, I have IOS tracking across apps disabled. Hope this doesn’t affect how it operates with apps. Because I previously had that setting disabled and something recently turned it back on. And I turned it off again.

I wasted my time in installing this ProtonVPN. It’s not working

I have paid for my second month subscription days ago and every time I login to my account it says unpaid.. sent a lot of emails and all of have been ignored. The question is; are they planning for exit scam? They used to respond within hours but look at them now…

WARNING I WAS A CUSTOMER OF THIS COMPANY FOR A YEAR AND WAS SHOCKED WHEN THEY JUST TOOK A PAYMENT WITHOUT NOTICE. I TRIED TO STOP IT BUT IT WENT THOUGH ANYWAY. WANT TO CLOSE ACCOUNT BUT THEY WILL NOT CLOSE THE ACCOUNT.

This app works great. There are a couple of issues. The biggest one is that I wish there was a way to enable a notification when a connection is lost.

There are two issues both of which combined make it a 1 star app.

Having experienced ProtonMail and found it very good I decided to take out a subscription with ProtonVPN for my iPhone and iPad. It’s the very best, right? Or so I thought.All was fine for a while – until after the trial period was up – but then I started experiencing WiFi hangs and dropouts whilst using my hardware. It made working almost impossible. Several emails back and forth, messing with the security protocols made no appreciable difference. ProtonVPN blames an Apple software release and says there’s nothing they can do about it. The crunch point came today when I lost WiFi connection mid-transaction whilst making a large transfer of funds.Worst of all I am now being refused a refund as I am now outside the month’s trial period. The reason I requested the refund is because the VPN is not fit for purpose, not because I got bored of it. Clearly the notion of merchantable quality doesn’t seem to hold in Swiss consumer law as it does in English law.There are plenty of other VPN services out there and they’re nearly all cheaper. If you run iOS I suggest you avoid ProtonVPN and look at one of the other providers instead. And for heaven’s sake don’t commit to a year’s subscription, as I did – take out a couple of months and see how you get on.

I had some issues setting proton VPN up, but they have been resolved.Edit: the support team was very helpful. I am new to VPNs so it had a bit of a steep learning curve but once you get it set up it runs really smoothly. Like any VPN it slows down my internet and I’ve had some big websites (Google once for sure) not let me use there search engine because there was ‘unusual activity in my account’ (All the more reason to use DuckDuckGo), which was a very odd one off thing but at least tells me that the VPN is working because this incidence shows that ProtonVPN is protecting my meta data from google(which duck duck go doesn’t do).

Iam using proton services for years now and if iam to be fare i should say this: PROTON IS FANTASTIC!!! The most reliable vpn in the entire app store is this one, its durable and with reasonable speed and it keep you secure on web!!! And thats all for the free version imagine that you actually buy a membership, i cant even think of the speed and extra services and stuff that they offer in pro versions, i cant buy it though because i live in iran and we have almost no access to the international banking transactions thanks to the unlawful US government.? but it doesnt stop me from using the free version and it make a whole lots of different for us in limitation, thank you proton for providing this service for us, its so hard to find a good, reliable and trustworthy vpn out there who wont steal your data or use them in whatever shady plan they have in mind, thank you indeed, you are truely the best.????

The VPN part of their service is a joke. Just like the support that cannot resolve anything. In fact, free version I was using stopped immediately functioning after I’ve upgraded a package for 163 CHF. No one reacted for a while so I had to download another VPN (while having paid for this one) to talk with my family over Easter. Pathetic. A lot of marketing about their servers being in Switzerland and no functioning VPN in the end. What is the use having servers in Switzerland if they cannot be used? And, it does not work to downgrade too…although, they say it can be..Mail works ok so far, but we will see…

Used to download movies n still got a massive influx of strikes. S T A Y A W A Y , Requested money back n still no reply in days.

Easy to tryThe free version actually worksEasy to upgrade and downgradeThe upgraded version actually works 🙂

My brother turned me on to Proton as he has been a loyal customer for years. I like the app and it seems to work great without issues. No dropped connections or anything like I’m reading in the other older reviews. However, yesterday I listened to a couple 3+ hour podcasts with the VPN on all day and I noticed by supper time my battery was much lower than normal. I looked at what it was and ProtonVPN has used 30% of my battery usage for the day. I’m new to VPNs and this might be normal, but if it’s not I had to knock one star off. So if it’s a normal thing for VPNs on mobile devices, then consider this a 5 star review. If it’s not, then that’s my only complaint.

I have had Proton mail and Proton VPN for years. I read several reviews that were bad. Almost all was because the person just did not know where to look to change a preference or just does not know anything about how a VPN works. I have set up several profiles as to where I want to connect. Always use Secure Core. I like that I can change to any location, just by clicking on a profile I created. If one profile server speed is slow, I click on another. Guys, read the instructions and learn how a VPN works, it’s capabilities and how to customize it like you want it. Whatever VPN you use, make sure the servers are not in the U. S. And a country that is big on people’s right to privacy. Sad but true, the U.S is at the top of collecting, mining & spying. And I don’t support using VPN’s for criminal activities. I was an LEO for 27 yrs and I do not believe in just grabbing everyone’s metadata off their cells at a Super Bowl just because they can. Get a warrant!!

Lots of serversIt is the best wonder in the world and safe extra fastI needed a lot of options for thatthese vpn will stay with me foreverI recommend it to everyone

Here’s how to tell a first class VPN.One: check on Trust Pilot to see if they answer any complaints.Proton VPN always replies to comments. Two: How fast do they reply to emails for support and queries?They always reply and are always polite.Three: How good is the VPN? It is excellent. It is easy to use whether it be paid or free. It is also fast.Four: Are their Terms Of Service clear and easy to understand? Yes. Moreover their web site is easy to use with explanations for all the questions you may ask.Four: Security. Where are they based? Switzerland, that’s where. The Swiss laws are very strict on privacy. You can rest assured they are based in Switzerland and not based in another country who only have a server in Switzerland. It is not the same thing.Five: The free service.They give an option of three countries with various servers with no issues. Ideal for those on the move or are a bit strapped for cash. That said, the basic plan is not expensive given they come under Swiss jurisdiction.Six: Why don’t they get more publicity?Be wary of so called “Top Ten VPN’s” shown on web sites and magazines. Ask how much the promoters are charging for promotion and a referral. Go direct to Proton for pricing and always check independent sites for unbiased opinions. Better still, try Proton VPN for yourself. You will not regret it.This is truly independent review from a paying customer who is not sponsored by anybody.

Transparent, clear ToS, good features, secure core is great, nice clean UI, support for tor and p2p and so much more. Me and the boys scraped together enough to get plus, and it’s completely worth it for under £2 a month each. I couldn’t recommend this VPN more 🙂

I don’t understand why ProntonVPN has such a low review score, because after 2 year of utter frustration with CyberGhost, and after testing 6 other services like NordVPN and SurfShark, I decided to give ProtonVPN a try as well.And I have to say that, although a tad expensive compared to the other services, it does deliver where the others fail. CyberGhost was really bad when my computer had to reconnect after it woke up from standby, and others were slow with their P2P speed. I do have trouble streaming certain videos, maybe that’s something that can be looked into. But generally, ProtonVPN has delivered me from my VPN frustration, and I find it preposterous that the review score is so ridiculously low.

Not bad for a free vpn, however the servers do go down every few hours.

I took advantage of their 7 day free ALL servers… I am now very much thinking of buying a subscription or keep the free version with just 3 servers… I am impressed by their privacy but I want a VPN mostly to access BBC iPlayer….

Installed their VPN and used the free version, was excited that something is free nowadays. Worked ok a few hours then internet stopped working completely, with or without using their VPN. Only then also noticed that there had appeared a time counter that said 6 days left of free trial version, then I must pay. Was disappointed as thought this was free, nowhere when downloading or installing was there any mentioning of this. The only way to get any internet back was to uninstall Proton VPN. Waste of time! (I use Windows 10).

Servers work fine usually, but when there is high traffic for a server, my vpn sometimes crashes

UPDATE 2-1-21: Unfortunately the usual ProtonVPN bug is back where all traffic ceases but VPN seems to be connected. Normal function resumes (for awhile) if you connect to a different server. This bug has plagued me for many, many versions of ProtonVPN and I’d hoped it was gone, but unfortunately it’s still a part of my routine now to have to switch servers in order to have internet connectivity on my device. A shame because things looked to be headed in a better direction for a short while there.

About proton: transparency, ethics, strong security, no logs, email service; dedicated to combating the intrusion of privacy and many other qualities

very good, very ethical

Fair price, decent connection speed (70-80 Mbps from Italy), and additional features that can come handy (NetShield). Some instability and occasional congestion on weekends. not critical anyway (speed remains between 15 and 30 Mbps). However, my speed with another VPN is much higher (3x), on the very same setting grounds (same protocol, port, cipher, machine and ISP).Other more or less useless frills like “secure core VPN”, which is only a classic multi-hop between servers of the same company with a fancy name (false sense of security, a chain that’s secure for real in routing is adding Tor, not servers of the same VPN).Customer service reactions should be faster, I waited for a first reply almost 48 hours last year. On the other hand, I needed customer support only once in 4 months, and at the end of the day it was a problem on my side.By adding more performance (perhaps less users per server?) and maybe a faster customer service, it will be an excellenct service.

I got this with my proton mail. I’m working from home in customer service and was hacked via the PC I bought for my pandemic work-from-home-gig. I went three months without income last year because of hackers trying to steal my Unemployment the previous year, so this second security breach was the last straw. Much more cautious about online security now, and don’t use the PC for anything outside of work with their VPN. (I’m typically an Apple user anyway) Mostly using this VPN on my iPad and it’s working for me, but it does slow things down a bit, and just this morning I had to de-install and re-install because the iPad wasn’t making the connection. I was mostly in need of a couple of secure email accounts, so this is a great bonus for my needs for now.

UPDATE: After 3 weeks, we were able to resolve the dispute. Although it took so long, they were helpful. Please read all of the Terms and Conditions before agreeing to anything.Customer service is absolutely horrible. Signed up for the paid service (through PayPal) and canceled it within 3 minutes because I could not get the account set up. Got notification on my credit card bill that I was charged. I immediately made a dispute and emailed Proton of what was happening. Support emailed me back saying that I needed to show the dispute was closed before they could proceed, “so we can enable your account and proceed with the refund process for your payment.” I closed the dispute with PayPal and received “It appears that the Dispute was resolved in our favor by PayPal. Therefore, as per our Money Back Guarantee policy, we will not be able to issue a refund for the payment.” Because I canceled the service that I was unable to use and disputed the transaction, I cannot get a refund based on their Terms and Conditions, which after I closely reviewed after all of this, the company has made themselves untouchable.

Very good VPN, I have been using good protection for a long time (from shutdown for service repairs) as well as good speed. I recommend!

Nikola (ProtonVPN)Jan 14, 2021, 15:10 GMT+1Hello, Thank you for the follow-up and for the clarification. Please note that the refunds are issued prorated for the unused portion ( unused days of the subscription ). This is also explained in our TOS under the “Money Back Guarantee” Based on this, we have issued a refund for the unused portion ( unused days ) of your subscription since your subscription was activated on Dec 24 and was canceled on Jan 11.

Probably the only free VPN, if you choose free plan, you will be able to connect to some European servers, Japan, South Africa and USA.Of course free servers are worse than paid, but you do your job with it.

ProtonVPN/ProtonMail is known for their concentration on protecting the privacy of their customers. This they do very, very well. But the IOS version of their VPN is always disconnecting or facing extreme speed issues.

After a monthly purchase, I wanted to remove my recurring subscription, instead of just cancelling the recurrance, they removed all feature that I paid for.Instead of a month of use, I got a nice 8 minutes for the price of a month. Literal scammers.

I downloaded this app 11 days ago and I was happy with it. It works in the back ground and I wasn’t aware of any issues I didn’t even know I was on the 10 day trial for the premium version. Although I downloaded the iOS version for my Apple products, after the 10 days and I didn’t step up to the premium, I wanted the free version at this time, all of a sudden I was unable to access the internet with WiFi. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, my husband was getting WiFi, so I knew it wasn’t that. When I picked up one of my apple products that i had not downloaded Proton VPN yet, i had WiFi on it! So I uninstalled this app from my phone and ipad, suddenly I had WiFi. Just so you know, you may not get WiFi if your not on the premium version. We live in a canyon where there is no cell service, so we do rely on WiFi emergency notifications.

Excellent customer service.I’ve been with Proton for about a year now. I subscribe to their email and vpn services. My technical know-how is modest. Proton makes digital security accessible to those who are limited on time and experience. Their products are also flexible so as I become more knowledgeable, I don’t have to find something else.Every time I need help, their team is responsive and personable. The blog is great for understanding the company’s philosophy. The knowledge center has great primers on digital security fundamentals.I highly recommend Proton for mail and vpn.

got hit with an Abuse / Fraud error today, disabling my free account, 1 star from me.

offers free vpn they works without hassle, also nice variety of customizations in settings to fit just your needs, for example browser vpn enabled and application runs without vpn, to not impact connection speed of applications

I use free plan. its fast

My concern for privacy and security has grown immensely the past few years, as my awareness grew. After much research and trials, Proton Technologies Mail + VPN services have truly been the best thus far to my experience, of course. I began with the free email account and made my way to the free VPN. Ultimately, I grew to enjoy & appreciate both Mail + VPN; therefore, I decided to upgrade to the Mail + VPN Plus (combo) subscription. The rest is history…I have no complaints. My transition from other mainstream services for personal email to Proton Mail have been relatively painless. There FAQs and fidelity in step-by-step guidance via their web-page(s) makes “doing it yourself” plausible. The intricacies to computer technology and all it entails can be intimidating, but do not worry, help is standing-by. Thank you Proton Technologies personnel from the bottom-up (& vice versa) for making this possible. I certainly appreciate all your efforts. Take care & Peace!

I’ve tested a lot of VPN services over the year and so far it’s been the most reliable, stable and better UX i’ve seen. Highly recommend!

Let me honest, I’m not a customer of ProtonVPN. I wanted to ask a pre-sales question which wasn’t covered on their website. The only method of contact was via Support and messaging them which I did. The answer to my question came 24 hours later which told me a lot about what to expect if I’d paid my money and had a real support need. As you can maybe guess I bought my VPN service elsewhere with online live chat support (Surfshark).UPDATE following ProtonVPN’s response, which doesn’t make sense. I didn’t think that ProtonVPN had any free users, only paid for subscriber users? If anyone asking a pre-sales question is considered a low priority for a response that’s abominable sales practice!

I work for the US government where all our communications are encrypted. I am trained on e-mail security so when I am not in the office, I want the same level of security. Two factors are what I look for in any product: quality of the product and quality of support. ProtonVPN meets those requirements for NET security and outstanding customer service. If you want top level security for your e-mails, photos and documents plus great customer support, get this product. Keep your communications private. You wont be disappointed and big brother won’t be listening.

I had initially signed on for a year of ProtonVPN and found it to be very frustrating to use on my iPhone. The VPN connection would essentially be paused while the phone was not in active use and it would take more than 10s, sometimes 60+s if on LTE, to reestablish a connection. Sometimes a connection could not be established via LTE. I emailed support and after collecting info it boiled down to the way iOS handled VPN connections and I wasn’t the only one experiencing issues. They told me that they were actively working with Apple to try to fix it. And they have! Now I can remain connected all day without having any delays when picking up my idle phone. There are always plenty of servers available and I’ve never had slow data speeds.