In this review, we will dive into ProtonVPN and how secure their free and paid plans are. Do they offer no-logging? Do they throttle the speed? Is it based in the United States? We will answer all of these questions and more below. Stay tuned!

You can also check out our review for another wildly popular FREE VPN called TunnelBear! That full review can be found HERE. Enjoy!

 

Our Discovery

 

ProtonVPN’s free tier is splendidly unlimited and fairly versatile, however it’s still a bit too slow to interchange a paid service.

 

PROS

 

• Unlimited data
• Wide platform compatibility
• Excellent interface

 

CONS

 

• Middling network speed
• Only 3 server locations

 

To show however serious ProtonVPN is regarding keeping your identity safe, the company houses a number of its servers in an exceedingly Cold War-era Swiss shelter, 3,000 feet below the surface.

 

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ProtonVPN Free Subscription Options

 

 

1 month set up – US$0 per month (US$0 total cost)

While the free version of ProtonVPN falls a touch short on speed, it delivers the maximum amount data to non-paying customers as you’d need. Nevertheless, it’s most likely still too slow to be anyone’s 24/7 home VPN connection. For a touch more speed, try Windscribe, that offers the most effective free VPN service.

 

Beware of Completely Free VPN Services

 

 

We can’t suggest any entirely free VPN service as a result of too many of them borrow your bandwidth, sell your browsing history or inject ads into the websites you visit. they have very little incentive to keep your personal data private.

Instead, try the free service tiers offered by “freemium” VPN suppliers. Such offerings are simply samples of what you’d get from paid service, however they are generally quite generous. The catch is that almost all cap data usage or, as ProtonVPN will, throttle upload and download speeds.

Because of those restrictions, the free tiers are best for folks that use laptops to occasionally use public Wi-Fi networks like those in airports, cafes, hotels or parks. Anyone who needs a permanent home VPN connection to shield all of their traffic ought to select a paid service like Private Internet Access or Windscribe.

 

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PROTON FOR FREE!

 

What You Get For Free

 

ProtonVPN has client software package for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS, furthermore as a command-line tool for Linux.

It’s on-line tutorials walk you thru manually putting in place Windows ten, Android, iOS and BlackBerry devices victimization IKEv2/IPsec rather than OpenVPN. you’ll conjointly set up a router running AsusWRT, DD-WRT or pfSense firmware to tap into Proton’s network.

ProtonVPN’s free tier gets you an infinite quantity of data. however the network speed is slower than with the paid service, and you are allowed to connect solely to ProtonVPN servers in Japan, Netherlands and also the U.S.

If you would like quicker speed and ProtonVPN’s full array of about 340 servers in thirty countries (as of this writing), you will have to spring for the basic ($5 U.S. per month or $48 per year), and ($10 U.S. per month or $96 per year) or Visionary ($30 U.S. per month or $288 per year) plans, the last of which supplies you all the protection bells and whistles you may ask for.

 

 

ProtonVPN’s opening screen displays a map of the globe, your current ip address, potential connection servers and one thing that all VPN-service applications ought to have: a fever chart of data, traffic and tabular details like time connected and total data transferred.

Based in Switzerland, ProtonVPN is in theory out of the reach of U.S. and European Union law-enforcement agencies, though Switzerland may be a member of Interpol. The company’s “Secure Core” servers — its inner ring — are based mostly in Switzerland, Sweden and Iceland, all of which have robust privacy laws; it’s regrettable users of the free service cannot access them.

 

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Performance

 

 

We tested ProtonVPN and eight alternative VPN services with a free tier — Avira Phantom VPN, Hide.me, Hotspot defend, the Opera browser VPN, Speedify, SurfEasy, TunnelBear and Windscribe — at a residential area new york home provisioned with regular consumer cable-company broadband service.

Using Ookla’s Speedtest.net service, we measured connection times, network latency (i.e., delay), upload speeds and download speeds. every parameter was tested 3 times per service, then averaged. The averages were then compared to baseline network performance measurements taken before every VPN service was switched on. the majority of the tests were conducted on an HP EliteBook x360 1020 G2 notebook.

It took U.S. about five minutes to download and install ProtonVPN client software package on our laptop computer. on the way, the software package asked if we wished to add the encrypted email service provided by proton VPN’s sister company, ProtonMail.

Despite ProtonVPN’s admonition that users of its free service can see slow speeds, the check results weren’t terrible overall, though it took a touch long (an average of eight.2 seconds) to connect to ProtonVPN’s U.S. servers.

ProtonVPN’s free service downloaded data at a median rate of forty seven.4 Mbps — seventy three % slower than with none VPN connection. transfer speeds averaged twenty two.0 Mbps — thirty seven % slower than before a VPN was switched on.

Those results might sound dire, however they are truly close to the typical for the eight regular free VPN services we tested, which, as a group, saw a 65-percent call in download speeds and a 34-percent delay in transfer speeds. (We’re leaving out Speedify, that uses its own technology to dramatically boost network speeds under the proper conditions.)

 

 

Only Windscribe and Hotspot Shield suffered less than a 50-percent average delay in download speeds. TunnelBear, the Opera browser VPN and SurfEasy all fared worse in downloads than ProtonVPN.

However, ProtonVPN’s network latency — the amount of time it takes for an overseas server to respond to a request — rose nearly quintuple from pre-VPN levels, from twenty two milliseconds (ms) to 102 ms. that is the second-longest latency of the 9 services we reviewed. solely TunnelBear was worse.

On a tablet and smartphone, ProtonVPN was ready to dependably play video and music while not stammering or slowdowns.

 

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ProtonVPN – Conclusion

 

 

ProtonVPN’s free tier is actually a reasonable way to secure your on-line world, as long as you reside near to one among its server locations and do not expect super fast speeds. Of all the free VPN services we’ve reviewed, it comes the nearest to a full-fledged paid unlimited service. However if you would like a lot of VPN speed for no cash, Windscribe’s 10GB monthly tier would be a stronger bet.

 

VPN STATS

 

Client Platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and Linux

Protocols: OpenVPN, IKEv2/IPsec

Servers/countries: 325/29

Restrictions: Will use solely 3 connection locations; speed is throttled.

 

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PROTON FOR FREE!

 

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