ProtonVPN after six months: what actually works, what doesn't, and who it's actually for

Is it fast enough? Depends entirely on what you're comparing it to and which plan you're on.

On the free tier, speeds are genuinely slow, often in the 15–30 Mbps range. On a paid plan, that changes substantially, typically 200–350 Mbps on nearby servers, with plenty of users reporting speeds close to their full connection, some maxing out a 750 Mbps line entirely. For IPTV specifically, several long-term users rank it ahead of NordVPN, Surfshark, and TorGuard for stability.

So the honest answer: paid ProtonVPN is fast for most people, occasionally exceptional, and the free tier is genuinely slow. Any review claiming uniformly blazing speeds across every plan skipped the free tier on purpose.

The complaint that comes up more than any other

CAPTCHAs and site blocks. A simple article or an ordinary site like DuckDuckGo can throw up a Cloudflare challenge or a flat block, even on a lightly loaded server.

It's a real issue. It's also not unique to Proton. Datacenter IP addresses get shared across many users, and when a fraction of them get abused, automated abuse-detection lists flag the whole address for everyone behind it. The blame sits with sites that block data center IPs categorically, not with which VPN you happen to be using. Every VPN runs into this, some worse than others.

That doesn't make it less annoying when it happens to you. It does mean it's a structural feature of how shared-IP VPNs work everywhere, not a defect you'd avoid by going elsewhere.

What people actually trust it for

The pattern isn't a feature list, it's a distinction people keep landing on: this is a company whose core business is privacy, not a VPN company that talks about privacy.

The specifics behind that: every app is open source, meaning the code is publicly inspectable rather than a black box. The no-logs policy has passed 5 consecutive independent audits. Open source, third-party audited, proven in court, that's the short version people give each other when someone new asks if it's actually trustworthy.

Streaming and torrenting

Mixed, but leaning positive, and the specifics matter.

Netflix has worked reliably across a wide range of regions, Korea, Japan, UAE, Turkey, Singapore, Indonesia, the US, Sweden, for people using it regularly. One streaming use case where Proton holds up especially well is F1TV, where other VPNs have reportedly failed. A more cautious estimate puts real-world streaming reliability around 80%, versus roughly 95% on NordVPN, depending on the day and the service.

For torrenting, there's a specific structural advantage worth naming directly: port forwarding, which puts it ahead of Mullvad's paid tier for this use case. Heavy, long-term torrent users report years of use without issue, largely because of it.

The free tier, without the sales pitch

The complete list, not the flattering half of it: no torrenting, no port forwarding, a small handful of server countries, and streaming that mostly doesn't work. A basic, slow service, subsidized by paying customers who get the full version.

The part worth knowing, because it's genuinely rare: no data cap. Most free VPNs throttle you after a few gigabytes a month. This one doesn't. For basic, occasional browsing protection, that's a real, usable free option, not a trial designed to expire on you.

The thing people still bring up from 2021

The short version, for anyone running into it for the first time: Proton Mail, the email service, complied with a binding Swiss legal order tied to one specific account. That's a different product, under different legal obligations, than the VPN. Worth knowing. Not evidence about how the VPN itself handles data, which has its own separate, repeatedly audited history.

One more thing worth knowing before you sign up