Proton VPN Review

Community-sourced VPN review based on real Reddit & Twitter discussions

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Community Verdict
Recommended

Proton VPN has a solid reputation as a privacy-focused VPN, and a lot of people like it because it feels trustworthy and reliable day to day. The free plan gets praised a lot as one of the better “act...

71%
positive
1,012
reviews
Best for: People who want a good free VPN that doesn’t feel sketchy Privacy-focused users who like the Proton ecosystem Folks who want optional anonymous payments Everyday users who want a reliable VPN for general browsing
71% Positive Reviews
493 recommend, 203 warn
High Data Quality
1012 reviews from 836 people
Best For
People who want a good free VPN that doesn’t feel sketchy, Privacy-focused users who like the Proton ecosystem, Folks who want optional anonymous payments
Approval Rate
71% positive
493 recommend · 203 warn
Reviews
1,012
411 Reddit · 552 Twitter
Unique Reviewers
836
Data Quality
High

What the Community Says

Community Rating 7.5/10

Proton VPN has a solid reputation as a privacy-focused VPN, and a lot of people like it because it feels trustworthy and reliable day to day. The free plan gets praised a lot as one of the better “actually usable” free options, and the paid plan is often mentioned as a good pick if you care about things like no-logs, audits, and even anonymous payment options. It also comes up often alongside other privacy tools (like Proton Mail), which makes it appealing if you want everything under one roof.

The biggest complaint is speed: some people switch over from other VPNs and find Proton noticeably slower, especially depending on the server. A few also don’t love how certain torrenting setups work, since things like port forwarding can be a bit annoying to manage if the port changes when you reconnect. And while many trust Proton more than typical “affiliate-list” VPNs, there’s still a slice of people who are skeptical or just prefer competitors like Mullvad.

Strengths

  • Strong privacy reputation
  • Best-in-class free tier
  • No-logs and audit-focused image
  • Anonymous payment options
  • Good reliability overall

Weaknesses

  • Can be slower than competitors
  • Port forwarding can be annoying for torrenting setups
  • Auto-connect behavior can be frustrating
  • Not everyone trusts it as much as top privacy rivals
Best for: People who want a good free VPN that doesn’t feel sketchy Privacy-focused users who like the Proton ecosystem Folks who want optional anonymous payments Everyday users who want a reliable VPN for general browsing
Not ideal for: People who need consistently top speeds for gaming or heavy downloads Torrent users who want a set-it-and-forget-it port forwarding setup Anyone who’s extremely picky and would rather stick with Mullvad-style simplicity

Summary generated 1 week ago from 1012 community mentions

Reviews about "Split Tunneling"

7 reviews

"Proton VPN is good in free tier. You will not have any nice features like port forwarding, split tunneling or killswitch but it will work for web browsing and connecting to internet from a device. In my case on 800mbs I am getting about 720..."

r/vpn_reviewer 3 weeks ago View on Reddit →

"Recommended by the earlier video: TunnelBear, Mullvad (Mozilla VPN), IVPN, VyprVPN, Proton VPN I use PIAVPN as my trusted VPN, the only internet service I currently pay for. Very simple install on Linux with additional useful features, de..."

r/linux4noobs 1 month ago View on Reddit →

"I've used ExpressVPN, NordVPN and most recently ProtonVPN (all paid tiers). I ended up sticking with Nord for a couple of reasons. 1. They seem to have less issues with blocks from Cloudflare. I often found ProtonVPN endpoints being blocked..."

r/vpnreviews 2 months ago View on Reddit →

"Within the proton paid version, you can select the apps you want to use the vpn tunnel for"

r/tivimate 1 month ago View on Reddit →

"@n30n5223434 I'm having the same issue with Cloudflare WARP. Proton kinda works but it doesn't have tunneling..."

@taukingur 1 week ago View on Twitter →

"Oh, that's a shame. I was just going to go to SurfShark because I got Proton and the same split tunneling problem happened. Sucks that even Windscribe I have now handles this better. But with crappy speeds. I was just about to get Surfshark..."

r/vpnreviews 2 months ago View on Reddit →

"...ng and data mimeography is just a myth and I was completely wrong. Knowing that David PETERSON personally vouched for this, I am 200% confident using Proton VPN now!! Thank you DAVID!"

@HitDaWallAgain 3 weeks ago View on Twitter →