Proton vs Tuta (2026): Should You Switch After Proton’s AI Row?
Encryption, Prices in Pounds, and How to Move Your Mail Either Way

Last updated: 12 November 2026 · Author: Baizaar Lee · Primary sources: Tuta’s pricing, support and security pages (read from the UK), Tuta’s GitHub releases, Proton’s support pages, Proton’s 10 November security post, Privacy Guides

BAIZAAR is a Proton affiliate and earns a commission if you subscribe through our links, at no extra cost to you. Tuta has no affiliate programme, so recommending it earns us nothing, which is exactly why we’ve been careful to say where it wins.

You’ve read the Proton headlines, you’ve seen “loser thinking” quoted at you a dozen times, and somewhere in the replies a stranger has told you to move to Tuta. Fine. But Tuta is a different kind of email service, with its own trade-offs, and swapping one for the other in a fit of pique can leave you without your old mail, your desktop client or your passwords.

So this Proton vs Tuta comparison does the dull work first. We read both companies’ support pages from a UK connection, priced everything in pounds, checked both sides’ marketing claims against their own documentation, and worked out exactly what moving your mail involves, in both directions.

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Proton vs Tuta at a glance: the differences that decide it

Both are end-to-end encrypted email services from privacy-minded European companies, both publish their app code, and both will happily tell you the other one is worse. These are the differences that change real decisions.

	Proton Mail	Tuta
Based in	Geneva, Switzerland	Hanover, Germany
Subject lines	Not end-to-end encrypted	End-to-end encrypted
Post-quantum encryption	Opt-in since May 2026, new mail only, still rolling out	On by default, every account since March 2026
Contacts and calendar	Partly encrypted. Names, addresses and event times readable by Proton	Fully encrypted, including the search index
Email to non-users	PGP, or password-protected messages	Password-protected messages only, no PGP
Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail	Yes, through Bridge on paid plans	No. Tuta’s own apps only
Other apps	Pass, VPN, Drive, Calendar, Wallet, Lumo	Calendar. Drive is in closed beta
Cheapest paid plan	Mail Plus, £1.59 a month in the Black Friday sale, then £38.28 a year	Revolutionary, €3 a month billed yearly (about £2.50)
Free plan	500 MB (up to 1 GB)	1 GB, deleted after 6 months without a login
Money back	30-day money-back guarantee	No guarantee, just the legal 14-day withdrawal right
Importing old mail	Easy Switch from Gmail, Outlook and other IMAP services	Desktop app on the Legend plan only

Read that Proton vs Tuta table as a sorting hat. Most of the rows that favour Tuta are about how much of your email stays scrambled. Most of the rows that favour Proton are about how easily it fits into the rest of your life.

Did Proton’s AI row make Tuta the safer bet?

Not on the evidence so far, though it did put Proton vs Tuta back on everyone’s lips and made Tuta a lot more popular. Readership of Tuta’s English Wikipedia page jumped more than sevenfold on 30 October, the day after 404 Media’s story, and has been settling back down since.

The short history goes like this. In late October 404 Media reported that Proton’s chief executive, Andy Yen, had dismissed a staff request for a few days of security testing as “loser thinking” and was pushing engineers hard towards AI-written code. Proton cancelled planned AI “re-interviews” of staff, apologised for how it had communicated, published its CTO’s AI manifesto, and on 10 November set out how it reviews code: a person must approve every change, and changes to the cryptography always go to its crypto team. Our full write-up, Is Proton still safe?, goes through every claim and what’s confirmed.

As of 12 November 2026 there’s no reported breach and no evidence that Proton weakened its encryption. Privacy Guides still lists Proton Mail first, ahead of Mailbox and Tuta, and its email page hasn’t changed since 28 September. What changed is trust in how carefully new code gets checked, and that worry applies to the apps doing your encrypting. A rival with a quieter newsroom doesn’t fix it by default.

Tuta, for its part, has said nothing about the row. Its statement on AI is about features, promising no AI that “abuses your data”, and we couldn’t find any Tuta policy on whether its own developers use AI coding tools. So if the row is your main reason for leaving, be clear about what you’re buying. You get a company that hasn’t publicly gone all-in on AI-written code. You don’t get proof that it never uses any.

Which encrypts more, Proton or Tuta? Subject lines, contacts and post-quantum keys

Tuta does, and by a margin that matters if metadata worries you. Both encrypt the body and attachments of your mail end to end, but the stuff around the message is where they part company.

Start with subject lines. Proton’s own help page says they “are not end-to-end encrypted to remain compliant with standards and ensure interoperability”. Tuta encrypts the subject, the content and attachments, and the sender’s display name. If your subject lines tend to say things like “Re: the tribunal” or “test results”, that difference is not academic.

Contacts and calendars go the same way. Proton says your contacts’ display names and email addresses are encrypted at rest but not zero-access, so it can read them, and its calendar policy says it can see event times, repeat rules and status. Tuta encrypts the entire address book, entire calendars including event notifications, your inbox rules, and even the search index.

What neither can hide is the envelope. Tuta’s FAQ says it can read sender and recipient addresses and the date, and Proton’s position is the same plus the subject line. Email between the two services, or to Gmail, has to travel with those details exposed, because that’s how email works.

Post-quantum encryption: default versus opt-in

Tuta switched every new account to TutaCrypt, its hybrid of classical X25519 and the post-quantum Kyber-1024 (now standardised as ML-KEM), in March 2024, and finished moving every older account across in March 2026. You don’t have to do anything.

Proton added post-quantum protection on 5 May 2026, on every plan including Free, but it’s a switch you flip yourself under Encryption and keys, and as of 12 November Proton’s support page says it’s still “being rolled out gradually”. It only covers new mail, it pauses end-to-end encrypted forwarding, and your apps need to be up to date. Plenty of comparison pages, including Tuta’s own, still claim only Tuta has post-quantum encryption, which hasn’t been true since May.

Is the quantum bit urgent? Not for most people. The worry is that someone hoards encrypted mail now and decrypts it once quantum computers are good enough, so it matters most for secrets that need to stay secret for a decade or more.

PGP, forward secrecy, and the audits nobody mentions

Proton speaks OpenPGP, the old standard for encrypted email, so you can exchange encrypted mail with anyone running PGP elsewhere. Tuta deliberately doesn’t, arguing that PGP can’t encrypt subject lines and has no forward secrecy. Fair point, though Tuta admits it doesn’t offer forward secrecy yet either, only that it plans to.

Neither has a recent independent audit of its mail service. Proton’s Mail web app was last audited by Securitum in 2021. Tuta’s FAQ points to a penetration test by SySS from 2013, plus a peer-reviewed analysis of TutaCrypt published in 2026 by University of Wuppertal researchers who are Tuta’s partners on a research project, which is useful, if not arm’s-length. Both publish their app code on GitHub. Neither publishes its server code.

Swiss or German, which jurisdiction is the better place to keep your email?

On Proton vs Tuta jurisdiction, the gap is smaller than the marketing suggests. Both companies can be forced to hand over what they hold, and both have been.

Proton answers to Swiss law. Its transparency report shows 9,301 legal orders for Mail in 2025, of which it complied with 8,313, and in 2021 a Swiss order made it log one French activist’s IP address. Tuta answers to German law, and in 2020 a Cologne court ordered it to build a monitoring function for one account used in an extortion attempt, covering unencrypted mail arriving after the order. In both cases the end-to-end encrypted content stayed out of reach, because neither company holds the keys.

Germany is in the EU and the wider 14 Eyes intelligence-sharing group. Switzerland is in neither. That gets a lot of airtime on forums, but for an ordinary user the practical protection is the same on both: what’s encrypted can’t be handed over, and what isn’t (addresses, dates, your IP if a court orders logging, payment details) can. If that’s a live concern for you, our guide to whether police can track Proton Mail covers the habits that matter far more than the postcode.

Proton vs Tuta prices in pounds, and why Tuta charges you in euros

Tuta’s website shows UK visitors prices in euros, and Tuta says card and PayPal payments are taken in euros with your bank doing the conversion. Buy through Apple or Google and you pay in pounds instead, at a higher price. Proton’s partner pages showed us pounds, which is what the table below uses for Proton.

Plan	First year	After that
Proton Mail Plus15 GB, 10 addresses, 1 custom domain	£19.08Black Friday, new users	£38.28 a year
Tuta Revolutionary20 GB, 15 extra addresses, 3 custom domains, no import	€36 (about £30.10)£39.99 on the App Store	€36 (about £30.10) a year
Proton UnlimitedMail, Pass, VPN, Drive, Calendar, 500 GB	£62.28Black Friday, new users	£95.88 a year
Tuta Legend500 GB, 30 extra addresses, 10 custom domains, mail import	€96 (about £80.26)£99.99 on the App Store	€96 (about £80.26) a year

For email alone, Tuta Revolutionary costs roughly £30 a year, every year, which beats Proton Mail Plus from the second year onwards by about £8, and it throws in more storage, more addresses and two more custom domains. In year one Proton’s sale price wins. Monthly billing on Tuta is €3.60 and €9.60, so the yearly plans are the sensible ones if you’ve made up your mind.

The bundle maths goes the other way. Replace Proton Unlimited like for like and you’d want Tuta Legend for mail, calendar and storage (about £80), a VPN such as Mullvad at a flat €5 a month (about £50 a year), and a password manager, where Bitwarden’s free plan will do. That’s around £130 a year against Unlimited’s £95.88 renewal, and you’d still be waiting for Tuta Drive to leave its closed beta.

One thing to know before you pay Tuta: there’s no money-back guarantee. Its terms give private customers the legal 14-day right to cancel, but if you’ve started using the service it can keep a proportionate amount. Proton offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on plans bought directly, once per account. If you’re unsure, Tuta’s free plan is the safer place to kick the tyres.

Tuta hadn’t launched a Black Friday offer when we checked on 12 November, though it has run one in past years, and its website already contains text for a “2 years for the price of 1” deal on new yearly plans. We’ll add it here if it goes live.

Living with Tuta after Proton: no IMAP, no Bridge, and a very good catch-all

This is the part of Proton vs Tuta that sends most people back. Tuta doesn’t support IMAP, POP3 or SMTP on any plan, and its FAQ says that’s deliberate, because it can’t guarantee end-to-end encryption once your mail sits in someone else’s app. So no Outlook, no Apple Mail, no Thunderbird in the usual sense, and no syncing with the mail app your phone came with.

Tuta did release Thunderbird add-ons in February 2026. They open Tuta’s web app in a Thunderbird tab, which is handy for having everything in one window, but there are no notifications and you can’t drag messages around between accounts. Proton’s Bridge, included with Mail Plus and the bundles built on it, gives you proper IMAP into whatever desktop client you like.

Tuta’s own apps are good, mind you. There are free desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux, open-source mobile apps (including on F-Droid, with notifications that don’t route through Google), and search across your whole mailbox on paid plans. If you already live in a web or phone inbox, you won’t miss much.

Addresses are where Tuta beats Proton for some people. Every paid Tuta plan includes unlimited addresses on your own domains and a catch-all, so [email protected] lands in your inbox without setting it up first. Proton counters with hide-my-email aliases from Proton Pass, random addresses you can switch off the moment one starts attracting spam, and that’s the feature forum regulars say keeps them on Proton. Tuta also doesn’t support plus-addressing (you+shopping@), according to Privacy Guides.

Two smaller things worth knowing. Tuta’s free accounts are deleted after six months without a login, and new sign-ups from a VPN or Tor can be held for manual approval, usually within a working day. Proton’s free plan is stingier on storage but more forgiving of neglect, since Proton only clears out free accounts after 12 months without a login, and emails you warnings first.

Who should switch to Tuta, and who’s better off staying with Proton?

Most of the Proton vs Tuta decision falls out of two questions: how many Proton apps you use, and whether you need your mail anywhere other than the provider’s own app.

You only use Proton Mail, and encryption is the point

Switch, if the AI row has dented your trust. Tuta encrypts more of each message, has post-quantum protection on by default, costs about £30 a year, and its desktop apps are free. Budget for Legend if you want your old mail inside Tuta, or keep the Proton export on your own drive and start Revolutionary with a clean inbox.

You pay for Proton Unlimited or use three or more Proton apps

Stay. Tuta replaces your mail and calendar and nothing else, so leaving means rebuilding Pass, VPN and Drive somewhere new, paying more for it, and running four accounts where you had one. Spend half an hour on the steps in our Proton safety guide instead, so leaving later would be easy if you ever needed to.

You need Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail or PGP

Stay, because Tuta can’t do any of it. That includes anyone whose work involves exchanging PGP-encrypted mail with outside contacts.

Journalists, activists and anyone protecting a source

Split, don’t just swap. Your risk is metadata and client code, and moving every service from one company to another moves the single point of failure with it. Tuta for email is a reasonable call, alongside Signal for messages, a separate VPN and a separate password manager. None of those pays BAIZAAR a penny.

How to move from Proton to Tuta without losing your old mail

It’s doable in an evening, but only one route is fully public today, and it needs Tuta’s top personal plan. Tuta’s mail import works only in its desktop app and only on Legend, so a Revolutionary account can’t bring your history across. There is a newer One-Click Migration that pulls mail over IMAP, and Tuta’s 10 November desktop release even mentions migrating through Proton Mail Bridge, but it’s been a closed beta since July.

1. Pick the right Tuta plan. Legend if you want your old mail inside Tuta. Revolutionary if you’re happy to keep the archive on your own drive and start fresh.
2. Export your Proton mail. Download the Proton Mail Export Tool from proton.me and nowhere else, because cloned copies of Proton’s help pages have turned up in search results. It runs on Windows, macOS and Ubuntu, saves every message as an EML file plus JSON details, and can take hours on a big mailbox without being able to pause.
3. Import into Tuta’s desktop app. Install it, sign in, and import the EML files. Check the message counts per folder before you go any further.
4. Move contacts and calendars. Export contacts from Proton as a VCF file and each calendar as an ICS file, then import them in Tuta, which works on any plan.
5. Move your domain, if you use one. Add the domain in Tuta, then change its MX and other DNS records from Proton’s to Tuta’s. Mail sent to your usual address then lands in Tuta, and nobody needs telling.
6. Sort out the other Proton apps. Export Proton Pass from the web app, browser extension or Windows app (the phone apps can’t export), and check the file includes your passkeys, which Proton says it does. Download anything you keep in Proton Drive.
7. Keep Proton until it renews. Cancel before the renewal date, and log in once more just before it ends to catch anything that arrived at your old address.

If you use your Proton address itself ([email protected]) and not your own domain, there’s no way to redirect it permanently once you’ve left, so give yourself a few months of overlap and update your logins one by one. Our comparison of the most secure password managers is a decent place to work out where Proton Pass’s contents should go.

Going the other way: Tuta to Proton

Proton’s comparison page says you can migrate from Tuta to Proton with Easy Switch, but for email that’s a stretch, because Easy Switch needs IMAP and Tuta doesn’t offer it. The working route is Tuta’s desktop app, which exports your mailbox as EML files on any plan, and then Proton Mail Bridge with a desktop client such as Thunderbird to copy those files into Proton. Bridge needs a paid Proton plan. Contacts and calendars move as VCF and ICS files.

Three claims from Proton’s and Tuta’s own comparison pages, checked

Both companies run a “them vs us” page, and both rank for Proton vs Tuta searches. We checked three of their headline claims against the companies’ own documentation.

Claim	Our rating	Why
Tuta: “Only Tuta uses quantum-safe algorithms to protect your emails, calendars, and contacts.”	Partly true	Out of date for email. Proton Mail added opt-in post-quantum encryption on every plan in May 2026. Tuta’s is on by default and also covers calendars and contacts, which Proton’s doesn’t.
Tuta: “Proton Mail’s Bridge stores emails unencrypted on third-party clients.”	Partly true	Bridge decrypts mail on your own computer so Outlook or Thunderbird can read it, and those apps keep their copy on your disk. Turn on disk encryption and the risk is the same as any desktop mail app.
Proton: “You can migrate from Tuta to Proton Mail using Easy Switch for your emails, calendars, and contacts.”	Misleading	Easy Switch imports email over IMAP, which Tuta doesn’t offer. Mail has to go through Tuta’s EML export and Proton Mail Bridge, which needs a paid Proton plan.

Swipe the table sideways for the reasoning.

Proton’s page is also dated “as of June 2026” and says Tuta has no free email migration tool. That’s roughly fair, since Tuta’s import only comes with Legend, but it skips the subject-line and calendar encryption Tuta does better, so neither page is a neutral referee.

Not sold on either? Mailbox and Fastmail in a paragraph each

Mailbox (formerly mailbox.org) is German, sits second on Privacy Guides’ list, and gives you IMAP, POP3 and PGP on every plan, from €3 a month (about £2.50) on Standard with a 30-day free trial. The snag is that your mail isn’t zero-access by default, so you switch on its encrypted inbox if you want that.

Fastmail is Australian, charges in pounds (£4.50 a month billed yearly for one person), has excellent apps and full IMAP, and publishes a guide to moving from Proton. It isn’t end-to-end encrypted, though, so it’s a convenience pick for people who’ve decided they want less hassle more than they want maximum privacy.

We’ve also reviewed StartMail, the Dutch option, which offers IMAP and PGP and suits people who want a quieter, simpler inbox.

Staying with Proton, or joining it? This year’s Black Friday prices

If the comparison has left you on Proton’s side, or you’re choosing a private inbox for the first time, Proton’s Black Friday prices are the lowest it offers all year, and they’re for new users only.

Plan	Black Friday price (new users)	Then renews at
Mail PlusEncrypted email, 15 GB, 10 addresses, 1 custom domain	£1.59 ($1.99) a month for 12 monthsbilled £19.08 ($23.88)	£38.28 ($47.88) a year
Pass PlusUnlimited logins, hide-my-email aliases, built-in 2FA codes, Dark Web Monitoring	£1.59 ($1.99) a month for 12 monthsbilled £19.08 ($23.88)	£28.68 ($35.88) a year
VPN Plus10 devices at once, servers in 140+ countries, ad and malware blocker	£1.99 ($2.49) a month for 24 monthsbilled £47.76 ($59.76)	£67.08 ($83.88) a year
Proton UnlimitedMail, Pass, VPN, Drive and Calendar, 500 GB storage	£5.19 ($6.49) a month for 12 monthsbilled £62.28 ($77.88)	£95.88 ($119.88) a year

The renewal column is there on purpose. A first-year price that doubles at renewal is normal in this business, and Mail Plus at £38.28 a year is still a bit more than Tuta Revolutionary from year two, so weigh that against Bridge, PGP and the aliases.

What would make us change our answer on Proton vs Tuta?

We’ll keep this Proton vs Tuta comparison current and flag changes at the top. These would move our answer:

• Proton discloses a security flaw that reached users, or doesn’t publish the AI policy it promised on 30 October.
• Proton turns post-quantum encryption on by default, or starts encrypting subject lines.
• Tuta opens its One-Click Migration to all paid plans, or adds mail import to Revolutionary.
• Tuta Drive leaves beta, or Tuta adds IMAP (it says it won’t).
• Either company commissions a fresh independent audit of its mail service.
• Privacy Guides changes its email recommendations.

Changelog. 12 November 2026: first published, with prices and features checked on 12 November 2026.

Proton vs Tuta: quick answers

Is Tuta better than Proton Mail?

For encryption, yes: Tuta encrypts subject lines, contacts, calendars and the search index, and has post-quantum encryption on by default. For everything else, usually not: Proton has IMAP through Bridge, PGP, aliases and a full set of apps, which Tuta doesn’t. Mail-only privacy users lean Tuta, everyone else leans Proton.

Is Tuta safer than Proton after the AI row?

There’s no evidence either way yet. As of 12 November 2026 Proton has had no reported breach, and Tuta has published no policy on AI-written code. Tuta does encrypt more of each message, which protects you whatever happens inside either company.

Does Tuta have IMAP?

No, on any plan, and Tuta says it has no plans to add it. You use Tuta’s own web, desktop and mobile apps, or its Thunderbird add-on, which just opens the web app in a Thunderbird tab.

Can I move my emails from Proton to Tuta?

Yes. Export them with the Proton Mail Export Tool as EML files, then import them in Tuta’s desktop app. Import needs Tuta’s Legend plan, and Tuta’s IMAP-based One-Click Migration is still a closed beta.

Does Proton encrypt subject lines?

No. Proton says subject lines are not end-to-end encrypted, to stay compatible with email standards. Tuta’s are.

Which is quantum-safe, Proton or Tuta?

Both of them, now. Tuta has used post-quantum encryption by default since 2024 and covered every account by March 2026. Proton added it in May 2026 as an opt-in setting for new mail, still rolling out in November 2026.

How much is Tuta in pounds?

Tuta charges in euros on its website: €36 a year for Revolutionary (about £30.10) and €96 for Legend (about £80.26) at the 12 November 2026 exchange rate. Through the UK App Store it’s £39.99 and £99.99 a year.

Does Tuta have a money-back guarantee?

No. UK and EU customers have the legal 14-day right to cancel, but Tuta can keep a proportionate amount if you’ve started using the service. Proton has a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Is Tuta free?

There’s a free plan with 1 GB of storage and one calendar, but no custom domains or extra addresses, and Tuta deletes free accounts after six months without a login.

Is Tuta open source?

Its apps are, under GPLv3 on GitHub. Its server code isn’t published, which is also true of Proton.

Is Germany or Switzerland better for privacy?

They’re closer than forum arguments suggest. Both countries’ courts have forced these providers to monitor or hand over account data, Tuta in 2020 and Proton in 2021, and in both cases end-to-end encrypted content stayed out of reach.

Proton Unlimited vs Tuta Legend: which is better value?

Proton Unlimited, if you’d use its Pass, VPN and Drive. Tuta Legend gives you mail, calendar and 500 GB for about £80 a year, but matching Unlimited means adding a VPN and a password manager, which takes the total to about £130 against Unlimited’s £95.88 renewal.

Does Privacy Guides recommend Proton or Tuta?

Both. As of 12 November 2026 its email page lists Proton Mail first, then Mailbox, then Tuta, and it hasn’t changed since the AI row.

How we checked this

Between 10 and 12 November 2026 we read Tuta’s pricing, support, security and terms pages from a UK connection, its blog posts on post-quantum encryption, migration and payments, and its desktop release notes on GitHub. We read Proton’s support pages on encryption, contacts, calendar, post-quantum protection, Bridge, Easy Switch and exporting, its 10 November security post and its transparency report, plus the Privacy Guides email page and forum. Tuta’s prices are converted at the European Central Bank’s reference rate on 12 November 2026.

We haven’t run a full mailbox migration between the two for this page, so the steps above follow both companies’ documentation, and we’ll add our own timings once we have. BAIZAAR is a Proton affiliate. Neither Proton nor Tuta saw this page before publication.

Sources

• Tuta pricing, Tuta FAQ, Tuta security and Tuta terms, read 12 November 2026.
• How to pay for Tuta, Tuta blog, 22 October 2026, and the Tuta Mail UK App Store listing.
• Post-quantum cryptography, Tuta blog, 26 August 2026, and Tuta development feature list, updated 8 September 2026.
• Migrating to Hybrid Cryptography in Practice: The TutaCrypt Protocol and Its Security, Holler, Jager and Neuschulten, IACR Communications in Cryptology, 2026.
• Tuta add-on in Thunderbird, Tuta blog, 18 February 2026, and One-Click Migration closed beta, Tuta blog, 7 July 2026.
• Tuta desktop release 368.261109.0, GitHub, 10 November 2026.
• German court orders Tutanota to backdoor one account, The Register, 8 December 2020.
• Proton Mail encryption explained, Proton Contacts, Proton Calendar privacy policy and post-quantum protection, Proton.
• Proton Mail Export Tool, IMAP, SMTP and POP3 setup, Proton Pass export and Easy Switch, Proton.
• How Proton keeps your data secure in the age of AI, Proton blog, 10 November 2026, and Manifestos, Fear, and ‘Loser Thinking’, 404 Media, 29 October 2026.
• Proton transparency report and Proton terms of service.
• Recommended email providers and forum thread on the Proton news, Privacy Guides.
• Mailbox prices, Fastmail pricing, Mullvad pricing and the ECB euro reference rate.

Related BAIZAAR guides

• Is Proton still safe after the AI code row?
• What Proton Mail does not encrypt (subject lines, senders, times and more)
• Is Proton Mail safe?
• Proton Mail Plus review 2026
• Proton Unlimited review 2026, is the bundle worth it?
• Proton Mail pricing 2026, every plan explained
• StartMail review 2026, the Dutch alternative
• Proton Mail FAQ: every common question answered