Proton VPN Reviews 912

Terrible connection, keeps me throwing out of games of the poor quality connection.

The company's service itself seemed to work as advertised. What I did not appreciate was the bait-and-switch tactic, which claimed I would pay only 1€ a month and then surreptitiously increased to 10€ after 30 days. This was not disclosed on the website, nor in any of the emails they sent. This isn't just unethical, it violates EU consumer protection laws, which require full details of the offer to be clearly stated BEFORE a purchase is made.

Port forwarding does not work on Mac, and it was the ONLY reason I signed up

Thanks for nothing

I been with Protonmail for a very long time and used to trust them 100%. I subbed to ProtonMail despite not using any of the features, just to help out the company who I believed to be doing good. I was an "early bird" supporter of Proton Pass, despite being a happy BitWarden user, and paid for Proton Pass up until the 4th August 2025. I have been having problems with my ISP interfering with my secure connections, and decided to take up the offer of 24months of Proton VPN. Paid for it and was setting it up on my devices when I suddenly realised that Pass was no longer auto-filling my one time passwords and it was trying to get me to "upgrade" because I'd used my "free" aliases. Turns out Proton CANCELLED my Pass Plus service, I had already paid for and down graded me to free plan. They claim on their website that "24/7 customer support and live chat support", so I opened a support ticket and got a reply 3 days later, so much for 24/7 support! The "customer support" agent basically told me that I'd have to pay more and upgrade to the Unlimited Plan, because "You cannot have two separate subscriptions such as Proton Pass Plus and VPN Plus under one account." Proton have basically TOOK AWAY a service I have already paid for and have an invoice until the 4th August 2025! I have cancelled the VPN (within the 30-day money back guarantee and the agent now says I need to speak to the Proton Mail team regarding my Pass Plus access. Why didn't you tell me this before now? At this point in time, I just want access to my Pass Plus to migrate away from Proton entirely and cancel everything with them, but they won't even reply to my support tickets. It's now been 8 days with being locked out of my online accounts because of this mess. I have recommended Proton to hundreds of friends, family and online colleagues over the years and now very much regret this. This "plan" and up-selling non-sense is very like what drove me away from Microsoft, so well done Proton for driving away a loyal customer.

23/6/25 - 10:30
Funny how Proton can reply to me on here, yet won't reply to my tickets!
#3755262 - Opened 13/6/25 - Last reply 20/6/25 Saying my ticket was being forwarded to ProtonMail/Pass team
#3770042 - Opened 20/6/25 - Directly to ProtonMail/Pass, no reply
#3771105 - Opened 20/6/25 - Directly to Payments and Billing, no reply

Overall review of Proton VPN with a history. Currently 2026-03-31, Proton VPN is well functioning but have had some historic troubles. Due to Proton VPNs resurgence it is once again awarded 5 stars from 1, 2, and climbing. Note that the review and rating only concerns the VPN and not Protons other businesses.

Proton VPN is a very expensive VPN with shit-quality, bugs, and Proton VPN likely employs cyber criminals who ply their trade through Proton's systems.

I have complained numerous times to Proton VPN and informed them of their problems. All the time, Proton employees have been serially rude and pretending that everything is alright, while Proton delivered around 4 critical bug fixes and updates. After stopping to communicate with Proton, the VPN started functioning.

Performance: Proton has good speed but is limited due to its use of high-level PLs. Proton has stability problems and is not suitable for streaming due to Proton's many bugs and criminal employees.

Security: Never use Proton for anything important, and never use Proton on an important computer. Proton's low security has caused technical issues on two machines due to Proton's inability to even protect Proton itself from hackers, employees, and likely also customers due to Proton's alleged customer base with Ukrainians, Russians, Iranians, Israelis, etc.

To sum it up, Proton is extremely expensive, and all its bugs and technical problems are extremely time-consuming. IF you buy a Proton VPN license expect to spend 50-100 hours a year with Proton technical problems and reinstallations of destroyed computers.

Proton VPN was once on the top-5 list in all measurements for VPNs, nowadays, it is not on the top-50 list.

Concerning Proton's reply;
* Self-described trustworthiness has the value of nothing
* Open source also means that anyone can access and see the code
* Proton's audits are failures and likely total fraud, given the enormous need for stability and security updates in all of Proton's programs and systems
* Strict no-logs seems to be untrue
* Swiss privacy laws only govern or guide Swiss state authorities, not Proton employees, consultants, criminals, or anyone else
* Switzerland is not considered an expensive country
* I bet you have all my tickets, most of which are unresolved despite many months of "proton teamwork."
* Proton has a product with huge potential, but this potential is squandered by bugs and hacks created by Proton's employees
* The pattern of Proton internal sabotage is obvious from TrustPilot reviews. It is also obvious that the sabotage consists of global problems and aggression against individual customers from employees with root access

Update 2025-August-22:
* Proton has been functioning a lot better since the review; 2 new patch updates, inter alia addressing stability issues, have been published. And some of the technological problems with the platform have been resolved, although the damages remain. Consequently, Proton will be upgraded to 2 stars.

Update 2025-October-26:
* Proton has been functioning a lot better since the review+August update; 2 new patch updates, inter alia addressing stability issues, have been published. Lots of from-the-ground-up new Apps have been published today. And a lot of the described technological problems with the platform have been resolved, although the damages remain. Consequently, Proton will be upgraded to 3 stars.

Update 2025-December-23:
* Proton VPN has been functioning a lot better since the last update; New patch updates, inter alia, addressing stability issues and security. New other useful things. As it appears problems and bugs have moved to Proton's other parts, whereas the VPN has performed well.
Proton VPN will therefore be upgraded to 4 stars, whereas Proton.me has been downgraded to 1 star.

Terrible connection. No matter which server I connect to it's always stuttering in connection with sometimes even kicking me out from the connection.
And yes I use the latest version Proton VPN and sadly no even if I tell you the server I am experiencing the problems to you nothing ever happens so don't bother replying.
All of your budget seems to be going to support about writing so -charmly- instead of the servers

Don't buy if you are planning to use it for gaming. Even for youtube it stutters

Claim its free but its not, its a scam dont waste ur time..

Just like many services they offer you a free month. There is then never any communication from the company before the free trial ends and the money (in this case for 12 month period) gets booked. This is unserious behavior and should be always boycotted.

When I cancelled the service, proton continued to not only bill my credit card, they found a way to go on charging it after I cancelled the card all together.
Proton is now (like many companies) a criminal enterprise that cannot be trusted with your credit card numbers.

Alright, a lot of problems were fixed. Some problems persist, but since it always after Windows (scew Microsoft) updates I have another suspect. I am no longer mad at you and trying your Drive now.
To believe I left a good review here.

Thank you.

Do yourself a favor, and look at the Proton's score, even with the Trustpilot "filter", then compare it to the scores of the real VPN services, on the same page. By the way, most of the few positive comments are about the free services, The problems start when money, unfortunately yours, is involved. Free is good by definition.
Dear Trustpilot moderators, even an idiot could easily understand that THIS IS A REAL EXCHANGE OF MESSAGES BETWEEN ME AND A PROTON'S SUPPORT GUY.
I'm shocked by your horrible behavior. A few weeks ago I contacted your support for some technical problems THAT WEREN'T FIXED. Then I asked about the subscription renovation, and the operator told me that I would have received an invoice a few days BEFORE the expiration date, with the sum to pay for the renovation, and the service would have terminated if I didn't pay in A COUPLE OF WEEKS AFTER THE EXPIRATION DATE. Instead, YESTERDAY, I received an email from PAYPAL telling me that you STOLE 80 euros, without any kind of invoice or message TO ME, BEFORE OR AFTER the payment. As soon as I opened a procedure with PAYPAL, you disconnected me from the email and the VPN. So, you want my money, but if I argue about the sum and the procedure, you don't even give me the service! I alerted the bank too, and if you don't fix all this, I'm ready to open a legal procedure too.
Best regards

Janko (ProtonVPN)

May 31, 2025, 14:30 GMT+2
Hello,

Thank you for reaching out.

It appears that you have opened a dispute with PayPal regarding your payment.

Activating a Dispute is not the proper way to ask for a refund. Our refund policy is quite straightforward, and if you are interested in proceeding like this, all you need to do is contact us once the subscription on the account is canceled so that we may process the refund from our side.

As per our Refund Policy, you may cancel your account with a refund within 30 days of the initial purchase.

However, if you rely on dispute or chargeback mechanisms of third-party payment processors, you waive your right to the above-mentioned refund from the Company. Furthermore, if the result of the dispute or chargeback mechanisms causes the Company to be liable for an amount exceeding the price paid for the service (e.g. dispute fee), you authorize the Company to charge that amount on your account.

You can navigate here for more information: ....

That said, as long as the dispute is active, I cannot operate, and your account is automatically disabled. Please close the dispute and let me know when you've done that, so I can enable your account and proceed with the refund process for your payment.

Looking forward to your reply.

Kind regards,

Janko
Customer Support
Proton VPN

1) It seems that, for some strange reasons, Trustpilot doesn't find this real enough
2) Janko is saying that I must give up the protection that Paypal, or my card or my bank, could give me against their scam, hoping in their good faith in order to get my money back, otherwise they keep the money, try to steal some more with "dispute charges", and DON'T GIVE ME THE ONE YEAR OF SERVICES THAT I'VE JUST PAYED FOR, even without knowing it.
3) I looked at the HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE HERE THAT DIDN'T GET THEIR MONEY BACK, and observed that, TILL NOW I DIDN'T GET ANY BILL OR INVOICE FOR THE MONEY THAT THEY STOLE FROM ME, so I didn't stop the procedure that I opened.
4) After my negative answer, I never heard from Janko or any other Proton guy again
5) They kept the money, they didn’t send any kind of bill or invoice, they halted my access
6) I was forced to go back to Surfshark, the last VPN that I used for a few years, before that I had the TERRIBLE IDEA TO SWITCH TO PROTON
7) Surfshark AND ANY OTHER DECENT VPN SERVICE (I used, in the years, quite a few, as ExpressVPN and NordVPN) has MORE THAN TWICE THE SCORE OF PROTON ON THIS SITE
8) The reason is that they all have technical issues and some kind of lack of support, BUT THEY ARE NOT SCAMMERS.
9) I looked around and found out about the class action that a Manhattan law firm is trying to start against Proton
10) ON THEIR PAGE ABOUT THEIR INVESTIGATION ON PROTON THEY SAY THAT PEOPLE COMPLAINED FOR THE EXACT SAME REASONS I AM DOING IT. What happened to me happened to A LOT OF PEOPLE, and you can find hundreds of them on THIS PAGE

PROTON NEVER GIVES BACK THE MONEY THAT IT TAKES WITHOUT ANY BILL OR INVOICE, IT HALTS THE SERVICE, THREATENS YOU WITH “DISPUTE CHARGES”.
Sorry Janko, this is what scammers do. I never had this kind of problem with any other VPN service. By the way, meanwhile Surfshark improved a lot it’s Linux access, that now is much better than the Proton one.

I got a months prescription as I was going to China and after seeing a guy on YouTube recommending it I just assumed it would work. It didn’t. So much wrong with this. Why would Proton sponsor a vlog in China if its services don’t even work there ?! Anyway. I only signed up for a month, so no big deal. Then I discovered that their subscription was on auto-renew by default (3 months later). This is an evil practice that destroys customers trust in companies like this and I shall be asking for a full refund. Particularly as on the signup page it’s made clear that you are signing up for ONE month, and they DONT warn you the filling month that they will be taking further payments. I hate this practice and will blacklist and out any company that uses auto renew on subscriptions. Shabby behaviour. Feel let down and robbed.

After paying $ 80 for a yearly VPN and using it for 2 months Proton cancelled my service and kept my money. No explanation was given. When questioned and shown proof of purchase the response was ... and you are who ? Dont get ripped off. The phone number isnt a really number and the answers you get are just AI. Dont pay them ANYTHING !

ProtonVPN is a total scam. They advertise a 30 day money back garantee, but they never adhered to their own policy and did not react to repeated emails ON THEIR OWN SUPPORT EMAIL ADDRESS well in advance before the 30 day limit. Ibidem web support page. How? After a third refund request I stated that I will block the credit card if I do not get any reaction. AT THE SAME DAY of my third email, 3 days before the 30 day refund would expire, they stubbornly deducted my money from my creditcard. So much to their reaction below; they react on Trustpilot but I have never received any reaction to my emails. I will take this up with my bank, but what a bunch of ignorant people there. Never again!!

P.S.:
from the ProtonVPN website: "If you would prefer to contact us without using this form, you can email us at 'ProtonVPN support email address' " (which cannot be shown here due to trustpilot policy).

Very slow. Speed from 0 to 20kbt/s on most of their servers

It will protect you from spam while browsing, sure, but then it will open pop-ups through their own VPN client, in your desktop, showing THEIR ads.

Cancelled my sub.
Good Job Proton, nice idea, it must have been worth it.

I had been using Proton's VPN service for several months that's when I started to get Error 1005 Access denied on some of my favourite websites.

I have now cancelled. Don't waste your money.

Their (around 60) servers for Greece are overloaded every afternoon, like from 18:00 to around 23:00.
All of them.

You may jump from one server to the other, things will improve for a couple of minutes and that's about it.

It's their promos and discounts and whatever they offer to bring more people to the platform when they can't even handle the current traffic.

Moderating doesn't allow me to post speed testing results from the well known place of speed testing (oh god the expressions I use to pass the review), so unfortunately I can't show you the 600-800ms ping and 50ms jitter but here's a copy paste from my command line to CF without the dots:

Pinging 1 1 1 1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 1 1 1 1: bytes=32 time=2777ms TTL=58
Reply from 1 1 1 1: bytes=32 time=3716ms TTL=58
Reply from 1 1 1 1: bytes=32 time=2621ms TTL=58
Reply from 1 1 1 1: bytes=32 time=3456ms TTL=58

Update on you reply:

You keep trying to swift the responsibility to the user. Do I look like the person who's in need of "try to run if off and on again" advice?.
UPGRADE YOUR CAPACITY.

It gets better with every update. The latest interface is really sleek. Love the randomly assigned port numbers for faster downloads, NetShield for ad blocking, kill switch and tons of countries to choose from.
Finally, I'm really impressed with the download speed. Most VPN's significantly throttle the speed of your downloads. My internet package offers me 350 Mbps download. My online speed test with Ookala revealed only a 1% decrease. Very impressive.