A very confident homepage
Proton’s site opens in soft lavender with a big serif headline, ‘The best VPN to take control of your online world’, a purple ‘Get Proton VPN’ button and a quieter ‘Business VPN’ link. Right under it you get the trust wall: a Which? Best Buy badge, Wired, Mashable and PCMag Editors’ Choice logos, and a ‘Trusted by over 100 million users and organizations’ line. Then a phone mockup showing NetShield at work, 21 ads blocked and 14 trackers stopped. It’s polished, calm and very purple, and it doesn’t hammer you with countdown timers the way some VPN sites do.
What you get, in their words and mine
The headline claims are 20,000+ servers in 140+ countries, a DNS-level ad and malware blocker, and a ‘VPN Accelerator’ for speed. I can’t measure the server count from a homepage, but that’s what Proton advertises. The useful bit is the comparison table further down, which lines Proton up against ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, NordVPN and Surfshark on open-source apps, public no-logs audits, ad blocking and jurisdiction. Proton is Switzerland; the others are listed under the British Virgin Islands, Romania, Panama and the Netherlands. The footnotes are pointed: they call out competitors whose audits sit behind an NDA or a customer login, and note that Kape owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost and PIA. Obviously this is Proton grading its own homework, but the claims are specific and checkable, which I respect.
The menu also links Secure Core (routing through extra servers in privacy-friendly countries), a streaming page and a Netflix page, plus the wider Proton family: Mail, Calendar, Drive, Pass and a private AI chat.
Apps and platforms
The download list is long: Windows, macOS, Android, iPhone and iPad, Linux, Chrome, Firefox, Chromebook, Android TV, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV. The Linux and TV apps are a nice touch, since plenty of rivals treat those as an afterthought.
Pricing
Proton is one of the few VPNs with a free plan that’s actually usable, with no data cap, though it’s limited compared with Plus. Funny detail from my visit: the plan section literally read ‘Get VPN Plus for only $XX.XX’, so the price hadn’t loaded for us. Check the pricing page for current plans. There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans, stated right under the main button.
Ads and speed
No ads, naturally, and only one third-party domain, Proton’s own CDN. The upsell is constant but polite. The page is image-heavy and felt a touch slower than a simple site, though perfectly fine on mobile.
Who it suits
Privacy-minded people who want a provider that publishes its audits and code, and anyone who wants to try a VPN for free before paying. If all you care about is the cheapest possible plan, shop around. The ninja’s verdict: rare to see a sales page this keen to show its receipts.
