Proton VPN Free is a VPN service that was launched in 2017. It's owned and operated by Proton AG, a Swiss company that also operates Proton Mail, an encrypted email service. It's the free version of Proton VPN, which we tested separately. Compared to the paid version, it lacks some key functionalities, like the ability to select which country's servers to connect to and the ability to download torrents. See the rest of their differences in the Differences Between Variants section.
Our Verdict
While Proton VPN Free has no data limits, downloading torrents and P2P files is reserved for the paid Plus version. Also, download speeds are throttled compared to the Plus version.
Proton VPN Free is good for private browsing. The service has excellent security that effectively protects your IP address and DNS queries. Beyond that, its policies and company practices are just acceptable. Its policies aren't written in a way that's easy to understand for everyone, and specify that they collect more of your personal information than is absolutely necessary for the service to function. They also employ aggressive marketing tactics that encourage you to stay subscribed for as long as possible.
Kill switch works properly.
Doesn't leak your IP address or DNS queries.
Proper TLS implementation doesn't leave you vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.
Generally transparent in its user interactions.
Jargon-filled policies are difficult to understand.
Proton VPN Free has passable policies and business practices. Its privacy policies and terms of service are not written in a way that's easy for anyone to understand, and allow the company to collect more of your information than necessary for the service to function. Proton publishes frequent third-party security and policy audits that return positive results, but the latter's scope is somewhat limited. Proton generally conducts itself in a way that instills trust, but a few scattered incidents, mostly pertaining to other services under the parent company's umbrella, are enough to raise an eyebrow.
Generally transparent in its user interactions.
Jargon-filled policies are difficult to understand.
Proton VPN Free has excellent security. It keeps your IP address or DNS queries anonymous while you're connected to it, and it has proper TLS implementation, protecting you from man-in-the-middle attacks. Additionally, its kill switch works as intended, blocking unencrypted data from leaking from your system in case of a reboot or reconnecting after a loss of internet connection.
Kill switch works properly.
Doesn't leak your IP address or DNS queries.
Proper TLS implementation doesn't leave you vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.
We're testing this VPN's speed on an ongoing basis and will update this verdict when we have more data. See the Performance section of the review to look at the data we've collected so far.
Performance Usages
Changelog
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Updated Jan 23, 2026:
We've updated the text throughout the review to reflect the changes from test bench 0.10.1.
- Updated Jan 23, 2026: We've updated this review to Test Bench 0.10.1! This is a minor update to how we conduct our speed tests. Read the changelog for more info.
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Updated Dec 16, 2025:
We've added text throughout the review to correspond with the new privacy tests in Test Bench 0.10.
- Updated Dec 16, 2025: We've updated our review to Test Bench 0.10! This update focuses on privacy and evaluates the trustworthiness of a VPN in keeping your personal information private. Read the changelog for more details.
Check Price
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
Proton VPN has both a paid Plus tier and a free tier, which we tested in this review. We also tested the Proton VPN paid tier separately.
| Plan | Maximum Devices | Torrents (P2P) | Country Selection | Speed Throttling | Split Tunnelling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 1 | No | No (5 available countries, fastest chosen automatically) | Yes | No |
| Plus | 10 | Yes | 117 | No | Yes |
Popular VPN Comparisons
Proton VPN Free is good for browsing the web privately, but it lacks some important functionality that puts it behind other free VPNs. While it has no data limits, it doesn't allow you to download torrent files, as that feature is reserved for the paid version. Additionally, you can't manually select the country you want to connect to; instead, it automatically connects to the fastest server, which is usually the closest, rendering it ineffective for bypassing georestrictions. Its speeds are throttled compared to the paid version, but that's par for the course for free VPNs.
On the plus side, Proton VPN Free has generally acceptable privacy policies and business practices, which make it much more trustworthy than the numerous unproven free VPNs on the market. That said, its privacy policies are difficult to understand if you're not familiar with the legal jargon it uses, and the company employs some tactics that aren't the most consumer-friendly.
Check out our articles on the best VPNs and the best free VPNs to see which services we recommend. If you want a VPN that can hide your IP address while downloading torrents, check out our article on the best VPNs for torrenting.
Test Results
Like most VPN providers, Proton VPN Free doesn't secure its internet routing (BGP) properly. This means that even if your ISP protects against attacks like route hijacking, your traffic could still be misdirected once it enters Proton's network. This is only a concern for highly targeted and resource-intensive attacks that are feasible only for governments or large corporations to orchestrate.
Note that Proton VPN Free's privacy policy is a sub-policy of Proton AG's (the parent company) privacy policy that applies when you create a Proton account, which is mandatory to use the VPN service.
While a no-logs policy that specifies Proton doesn't log your traffic or IP address while connected to the VPN, there are several instances in the privacy policy that claim to record your IP address for various, sometimes vague purposes and for unspecified periods of time.
Proton commissions clear and detailed third-party audits yearly, but the scope is limited to the no-logs policy and not the wider privacy policies.
Proton VPN Free's company practices are just okay. The terms of service can be difficult to understand if you're not familiar with the legal jargon that's used to write them. They also lack information about data retention, disallow class action lawsuits, and require arbitration instead of going to trial in public courts, demonstrating a lack of confidence in their ability to publicly settle disputes with users.
Proton also engages in pushy marketing practices, such as offering large discounts to the paid version exclusively to new subscribers, encouraging the use of their other apps, and sending marketing emails. These practices don't make the service worse, but they indicate where the company's priorities are.
Otherwise, Proton is generally communicative and transparent with its users about the service, but there have been incidents in the past where executives haven't rigorously upheld the company's policy of political neutrality.
We're testing this VPN's performance on an ongoing basis, and will update the text for the download speed, upload speed, and latency tests when we have more data.
Proton VPN Free doesn't allow you to download torrents, as this feature is reserved for the paid version.
This VPN has native Linux apps for Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora GNOME desktop environments. Proton indicates that the app should work on most derivative distributions, despite not being officially supported. You can also manually configure OpenVPN or WireGuard on Linux.
Stealth is a proprietary protocol that utilizes obfuscation to disguise your VPN traffic as HTTPS traffic. This is useful if you're dealing with internet censors that block access to a site through a VPN.
While it has servers in five countries, Proton VPN Free automatically connects you to the server it deems fastest, so you can't manually choose which country to connect to. That said, if you configure a headless setup, you can choose which country to connect to by downloading the appropriate .conf or .ovpn file.
