ProtonVPN Free Review

The privacy policy for the paid version of ProtonVPN also applies to ProtonVPN Free. The logging policy is as close to no-logs as you can get without sacrificing VPN server performance.

The connection data that is collected is used to protect user accounts from password brute force attacks, and also to determine that nobody else is using your account.

ProtonVPN’s logs don’t contain any identifying information such as:

• Your true IP address or physical location
• The apps and websites (DNS requests) you visit while connected

ProtonVPN also operates under the jurisdiction of Switzerland. This allows you to benefit from some of the world’s strongest privacy laws, which are outside of EU data laws and the 14 Eyes surveillance alliance.

This, along with ProtonVPN’s private minimal-logs policy, means that nothing you do while connected to ProtonVPN Free can be linked back to you.

ProtonVPN is a trustworthy service

ProtonVPN is a very trustworthy and reputable VPN service. The VPN is provided by the same team as the highly-respected encrypted email service, ProtonMail.

The company is active in the privacy community, making donations to protect digital freedom in Hong Kong, and even influencing Swiss surveillance law.

Unlike many free VPNs, ProtonVPN Free does not make money by collecting and selling user data.

Instead, the VPN generates revenue from its paid VPN, with these paying customers offsetting the costs of running the free service. This business model is ideal for a free VPN, since it does not invade your privacy.

Unlike many free VPNs, ProtonVPN does not impose any data or bandwidth caps to slow you down. Our tests have measured slower speeds during peak times, though, as there are not many servers to share the load.

Here are the full results we recorded when connecting to all three ProtonVPN server locations from London, UK with a 100Mbps internet connection:

As ProtonVPN Free only offers three server locations, your speeds will depend on how close you are to these locations. For example, you can expect very slow speeds if you’re connecting from Africa, as there is not a single server in the continent.

These free servers are less advanced than the plus servers, too, with each having a server capacity 90% smaller than those available to paid users. As ProtonVPN only provides 23 servers for free users, these servers are often congested — which can lead to further slowdowns and buffering.

ProtonVPN Free can access YouTube and other open video platforms, as these don’t typically detect and block VPN connections.

However, the free VPN didn’t work with Netflix, Prime Video, HBO and many other streaming services. We recommend other free Netflix VPNs verified to work.

To unblock geo-restricted streaming content with ProtonVPN, you’ll have to upgrade to one of the service’s paid plans.

In fact, the paid version of ProtonVPN consistently worked with US Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and Disney+ in our streaming tests.

Streaming US Netflix with the paid version of ProtonVPN.

While ProtonVPN is safe and secure enough for P2P, it blocks torrenting traffic on all its free servers.

When we tried to download a torrent file using BitTorrent, the ProtonVPN app blocked our traffic and issued an error message: “Torrenting is a feature reserved exclusively for paid subscribers.”

Torrenting is blocked on all ProtonVPN Free servers.

Similarly to streaming, you’ll have to use the premium version of ProtonVPN for torrenting. Or, use a secure free VPN that allows torrenting.

Just like the paid version, ProtonVPN Free doesn’t work in China. Our regular China VPN tests on our Shanghai server confirm this has been the case for many months.

However, the paid version of ProtonVPN includes dedicated Tor servers, which we found to work every now and again.

The problem is that Tor is much slower than VPN traffic, and therefore isn’t a practical solution in our opinion.

ProtonVPN is one of the first VPN services to publish its source code and become wholly open-source. This means ProtonVPN can be inspected by anyone, ensuring user data is not being mishandled and that ProtonVPN’s encryption and security techniques are watertight.

On top of this, ProtonVPN published a third-party security audit of its VPN service on all platforms, with all vulnerabilities being either accepted or fixed.

The free VPN comes with a range of security features, including a VPN kill switch. This prevents your true IP address from being exposed in case of an unexpected connection drop. Split tunneling is also available, allowing users to exclude some internet traffic from the VPN tunnel.

ProtonVPN Free includes a kill switch.

Data is encrypted using the unbreakable AES-256 cipher and all its use OpenVPN. OpenVPN is the most secure VPN protocol, so you can be sure that your personal information will be protected.

ProtonVPN Free also protects you against DNS and IPv6 leaks, as confirmed by our IP and DNS leak tests.

ProtonVPN Free concealed our true IP address.

Sadly, there are a handful of features that are limited to paid users, such as ProtonVPN’s Secure Core servers. This feature increases privacy by routing traffic through multiple VPN servers, so its absence makes the free version less secure than the paid offering.

Nevertheless, thanks to its use of best-in-class encryption protocols and ciphers, ProtonVPN Free is the most secure free VPN we’ve seen and you can rely on it to encrypt your online traffic.

There’s an online support center that will cover basic VPN queries and troubleshooting issues, and there are also step-by-step installation guides for all supported devices, including those that need to be manually configured.

The best way to get assistance, though, is through ProtonVPN’s email support. The email support team is very knowledgeable and answered our technical questions without any problem. The disadvantage to this method is that they are slow to respond. We sometimes had to wait over three days for an answer.