Proton VPN Free vs Plus: What Do You Give Up?

This page is part of the Proton VPN FAQ Hub.

Servers and countries: how wide is the gap?

The Proton VPN free vs Plus comparison is at its starkest here. Free connects you to servers in a small group of countries and picks one for you based on load and location, so there is no country selector worth the name. Plus opens the full network, currently more than 20,000 servers in over 140 countries, from a list you choose yourself.

Proton’s own free country count has been quoted as five on one page and ten on another, which is a fair signal that the figure is not fixed. What is fixed is the shape of the restriction: a handful of locations you do not select, against an entire network you do.

• Free: servers in a small set of countries, assigned automatically
• Plus: 20,000+ servers in 140+ countries, chosen manually or by saved profile
• Free: medium speed tier on heavily shared servers
• Plus: 10 Gbps servers and the highest speed tier
• Free: 1 device connected at a time
• Plus: 10 devices connected at once

Speed: what the medium tier actually feels like

Proton does not throttle free users artificially and says so plainly. The slowdown is congestion: a small pool of servers carrying every free user in your region, which bites hardest in the evening. Off-peak, a free connection can be perfectly quick. At nine on a weeknight it often is not.

Plus routes you onto 10 Gbps hardware with far more of it to go round, so the variance drops as much as the ceiling rises. If you test your connection once on a free server at lunchtime and conclude the free plan is fine, run the test again at the hour you actually use it.

Streaming and P2P: the two hard blocks

Streaming platforms are not supported on free. Proton does not maintain the free servers against streaming detection, so Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video will generally refuse to play. Proton draws this line deliberately, and no amount of reconnecting or switching servers gets past it, though Netflix blocking on the paid servers is a separate question with a better answer.

BitTorrent is blocked outright on free servers. P2P traffic is confined to the Plus network, where it comes with port forwarding for anyone who needs it. If torrenting is your reason for wanting a VPN, the free plan will not serve you at all, so budget for the subscription from the start.

Secure Core, NetShield and Tor over VPN

Secure Core is Proton’s double-hop routing, which sends your traffic through a hardened server in Switzerland, Iceland or Sweden before it exits elsewhere. It defends against a compromised or monitored exit server, and it is Plus only. Free users get standard single-hop routing, which is what most VPN companies sell as their entire product.

NetShield is the DNS filter that blocks adverts, trackers and known malware domains at the network level, and it is also Plus only. So are Tor over VPN, split tunnelling and port forwarding. Free covers the tunnel itself and stops there, without pretending otherwise.

One device versus ten: where Proton VPN free vs Plus is really decided

Free covers one device at a time. Connect the laptop and your phone drops off. For a single person with a single machine that is liveable, and for anyone juggling a phone, a laptop and a tablet it quickly becomes the most irritating limit on the plan, more so than speed, which is why how many devices Proton VPN covers is worth checking first.

Plus covers 10 simultaneous connections on a single Proton VPN Plus plan, which is enough for a household or for one person who has stopped counting their devices. That gap, one against ten, is usually what decides the upgrade rather than any of the headline features.

What you do not give up

The security model is not tiered. Free and Plus use the same encryption, the same DNS leak protection, the same kill switch, the same Stealth protocol for restrictive networks and the same no-logs policy. The apps are the same open source, independently audited clients, built from the same code, and both tiers build the same virtual private network tunnel with only the network around it differing.

That is the honest summary of Proton VPN free vs Plus, set out at length in the full Proton VPN review: you are buying capacity, choice and convenience features, and you are not buying extra safety. Anyone telling you the free tier is less private than the paid one is guessing. BAIZAAR would say so plainly if the evidence pointed the other way.

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