Proton VPN Reviews 912

Its' a scam, once you start download and use too much bandwidth say a 10gb file , they will automatically connect you to another country, i got redirected to Cambodia then could not longer connect to vpn for awhile , there's a timeout.

This is my second time trying out Proton VPN after a year and on their front page of their website it says "30-day money-back guarantee". Understanding this I thought it was low risk to just try it out again, but big mistake. They say after the first refund in their TOS, they can't give a refund. Felt deceived that they had to hide that fact in their TOS, so I went and did a chargeback with my Chase. They resolved it without issue, so yeah I will never use Proton VPN again after this.

I bought two years of VPN on Black Friday, as I really like the policies of Proton and they seem, well, trustworthy.

Unfortunately, their VPN doesn't actually work — and it won't tell you.

I'm on macOS, and I was using the VPN application here. Connecting to a server, checking my IP address in Firefox, and seeing that it indeed switched to the chosen country. In System Settings, "ProtonVPN" is registered and active.

In Terminal, I can also use curl and confirm that here, too, I'm using the VPN.

Crucially, though, in qBittorrent I'm NOT using the VPN. I use "checkmytorrentip" to check, well, my torrenting IP. This reveals to be my actual, non-VPN'ed, IP address.

How this is even happening, I'm not sure. Neither is the friendly support guy I spoke to, Zoran. He could confirm, though, that this is a known issue, and that enabling the "Kill Switch" fixes it. I can confirm that it does fix it — but then your local network is 100% inaccessible, and you can't access network shares, use Airplay, use SSH, etc. Nothing. So that's useless.

I've been given a refund, so that's good, but it's seriously disconcerting that the VPN works like this. I'm a retired developer myself, and I cannot fathom how code like this gets greenlit and built for production.

I also have to think that the VPN code itself actively chooses to route the qBittorrent traffic outside of the VPN. The VPN is correctly registered at the system level with macOS, so ALL traffic WILL go through the VPN. It's not macOS that's deciding to not use the VPN for some apps (as evidenced by Proton working correctly when configuring the kill switch). It's Proton itself.

I won't be going back to Proton, even if they fix this, because honestly — any development team that produces code like this and behavior like this is completely untrustworthy. If it were my employees, they would, well... Not be my employees anymore.

That said, stay CLEAR of this VPN. And thank you Zoran for a friendly support, and no hassle for issuing the refund. I'll look for a proper VPN elsewhere.

Attempted to buy a 24 month deal from ProtonVPN. They took the credit card payment, then their web site failed before the registration was completed. I am now £49 out of pocket and despite seeking help (11 emails to 5 different departments) they continue to ignore requests for refund. Be very careful with this outfit.

This will not be nice reading for you Mr Proton.
As requested....
ticket 4224898 Zendesk 3rd Dec No reply
ticket 4243967 ProtonVPN support 4th Dec No reply
ticket 4229718 Proton VPN Supp 4th Dec No Reply
ticket 4231875 Zendesk 6th Dec No Reply
ticket 4243969 Proton 9th Dec No Reply
I'm now taking action via my CC merchant as Proton dont give a .......

I was satisfied with Proton, until a couple of weeks ago when they started with more free countries. It is now a hell to get connected to my country, as well as if I finally have connection, many times Proton did disconnect. And now it is almost all the time you can get only the USA and Canada. And many, many , many times they send you to the subscripcionpage and you cannot connect at all to a country.....Strange that after my complaint for a week I could connect me with my country for free, it is one of the countries free available, but after a week it is the same. Try it for days with 3 different ones....laptop, tablet and cellphone.....but it is 90% of the time USA, 5% Canada, 2% Mexico, 2% Romania and the other 1 % is divided over the other free countries....so almost mission impossible to use proton free if you are not from the USA......Proton = worthless as a free server when you are not from the USA. They force people to pay for a subscripcion and I dont need that (and the unwanted upgradepage which constantly came on and blocked the Norton is luckely gone) I try now already for an hour on 3 different devices to connect me with my free country netherlands, but its all USA, USA and USA. Hundred clicks on connecting me does not wotk. PROTON seems to be from the Trump family.......USA First!!! A shame.....

I discovered that no matter how many times I kept reinforcing that my one country was the be the UK, I was having difficulties with using the web due to the fact that my VPN kept changing countries. I couldn't order from Tesco because I was in Paris, Zurich, or even Miami, Florida, and I would not know that they had put me in other countries until my web searches would either come up in different language s which I do not speak, or my Tesco account would not work because they do not deliver outside of the UK. I tried to get in touch, but only got people who couldn't answer that simple question: can you help me to make that stop happening so that my VPN remains in the UK. I was only using Proton for a couple of weeks, and was not willing to pay for one more week. I got the monthly plan so that I could cancel any time, and I am glad that I did. Be aware that you will not be able to control where your VPN is, or what language you might suddenly be expected to speak. Even if you check your VPN when you first open your browser, you do not know what it will change to at any point during that day. There are no intelligent people to speak to at all, and they will simply take you in circles. In fact, I just spent more than an hour starting new chats only to get the same two people over and over again. Not interested!

Just signed up on a 24 month contract.

Easy enough to sign up, good rate. Port forwarding allowed but default. Unfortunately ephemeral (forwarded port changes each time there is a reconnect/disconnect.

Speed seems okay. But again I an new. It will be interesting to test out the Linux support and to see if they provide a live chat feature/AI chat feature to handle basic issues.

The Linux version of the app is cutdown from the other ones. But honestly, it looks better as to not be cluttered with the world map.

Cool features: creating tray shortcuts to servers as well as selecting the quick connect server. Very handy the Port Forward IP is displayed straightaway.

App improvements:
- Showing the latency to a server. Not everyone, but maybe when you "drop down": send out pings to the servers.
- Allow requesting a second or third (whatever is permitted) port forwarding number in app.
- I would allow the user to also request/check a port forwarding number to see if it is available (user assumes risk here)

When connecting to the AU servers (first few numbers), the public IP is the same. Thought this was a bit odd, unless the servers are in the same DC and they are using port number or SNI to load balance. On the browsing side the IPs look unique.

Will re-review again at the six month mark.

Even as a paid user the VPN is slow and disconnects frequently. I've tried everything they suggest and it's still not good at all. I never have these problems with Mullvad or even my own Wireguard setups. It's been quite a waste of money for my monthly membership. The whole point was to not have to pay for VPN from Mullvad monthly. Unfortunately I still need to pay for a VPN service from them because ProtonVPN is just that unreliable. It's too late for a refund and I have paid for 2 years already. I could not recommend this service to anyone at all. Save your money.

Have been having buffering issues for several weeks now on numerous streaming platforms.
Thinking that it my be my internet provider throttling my speed, I decided to do a speed test on Fast com speed test.

The speed without the Proton vpn connected, my internet speed was 480 Mbps. After connecting Proton vpn, my internet dropped down tp 48 Mbps. Now to be fair, I was using their free product, but still, that's a huge drop.

Most useless VPN

It’s very rare that I leave negative reviews, and I don’t do so lightly. If you’re considering using TopCashback or any other cashback service with this company, be aware that they do not honour cashback claims. They will claim that your cashback provider was not the “final referrer,” even though the price you pay through these platforms is higher and clearly specific to cashback users—making their excuse impossible to justify.

Emailing them results in one initial reply followed by complete silence. They dragged out my claim past the 30-day money-back period, leaving me unable to get a refund. Even when I offered to pay for what I had used so far and start a new contract, they refused and continued to ignore me.

The service itself is unreliable. I’ve lost count of how many times they’ve pushed an update only for the app to fail, forcing me to uninstall and reinstall it just to get it working again.

They are more expensive than many other VPN providers, yet seem more interested in taking your money than providing support. I genuinely regret ignoring the one-star reviews, and I will not be renewing my contract.

Please don’t make the same mistake I did.

In 2-3 week ago i got lost connection to Stealth and WireGuard because firewall in my country so crazy and block ALL openvpn, wireguard and vless. So i dont think that problem of proton-vpn. They have SO GOOD speed for their cost (70-80mbps when without VPN i have 100mbps) btw for free that best VPN what i can see. For premium better can be only mullvad VPN or urs VPS with shadowsocks .
So if you dont like this = dont use, that my opinion.

had some issues during the setup - the onboarding process is clumsy, but once finished, works like a charm. Cheaper than alternatives, 1 euro for the first month is enough for me, since I need to use it only a few times per year.

Extremely slow, no refund possible.

I got banned from proton vpn for "flagged suspicious activity by automatic system". Wonder why, because I didn't do anything "suspicious". But it looks like they're monitoring your activity and tying that to your account. So it's hard to believe that they really have a "no logs" policy, what they claim. I didn't have the same issue with other even free VPN-s. Very disappointed in this service, it's not a real anonymous VPN, just a simple corporate product.

just not good. simple

Proton provided quality services at a correct price. I've been using Proton Duo for half a year, and I'm entirely satisfied by the services I use: Proton VPN has very good speed, in a lot of countries, Proton Pass and Proton Mail work perfectly on all my devices, as Proton Drive do, with a large amount of storage at a decent price (2TB for 2 persons).
The only bemol resides in the lack of Proton Docs functionalities. It's a great tool, but it misses a lot of format options, like math expressions, moving images, etc. In this state, it can't be used for professional purposes.
Thanks to the Proton Team for all their amazing work!

i purchased a sub on 3 November, for a year, everything went ok, until i thought ill purchase another sub with lumo+ unlimited the other day. in my head i was thinking that would continue until 2027, well i was wrong it still said 3 nov 2026, i spoke to customer support which takes ages to respond, n they said it lumo+ is a seperate package, so ive wasted £94.00 for what i believed was going to be an extra year on top of what i already payed on 3 nov. im still waiting for refund ticket number 4180900.

I connect to one country, but it does always show websites in other language of country nearby. If there is any protection for website that does not allow VPN it will not work and you need to turn the VPN off to go to website.
For streaming every platform does detect it and it is not working properly. It is VPN on papper but not worth buying at all, because their severs and ip's are not reliable.

Very dissatisfied with Proton VPN.
I experience very slow connection speeds daily, despite having a breakneck internet speed. Their customer support is crap, and they take no responsibility for the slow speeds.
They lock you out of the Plus service, so you need to contact their useless customer support to fix it, which takes days. They don’t provide any compensation for the days you haven’t been able to use the service or for the slow connection speeds. This is the worst VPN service I’ve ever used. Once my subscription has expired, I’ll never use them again.

It has bad connection, slow, and it made me completely lag out when it just opened itself randomly one day, then when i closed it, it opened itself and connected to like antarctica or some shit and made me completely lag around, if u need like a quick vpn for something sure but would not recommend for long-term use at all.