Mullvad vs. Proton VPN: Two Privacy Powerhouses Compared

Mullvad and Proton VPN are two of the best VPNs in the business when it comes to privacy. I’ve tested each extensively and use them regularly, and I’m always impressed with how both services keep pushing the boundaries of what a virtual private network can do. Each provider handles privacy a bit differently, but both offer solid core protections along with a few standout advanced features.

Either one is a great choice if you’re an activist, whistleblower, attorney or anyone else with critical privacy needs, but Proton VPN has wider appeal for casual users.

I recommend Mullvad for privacy purists who don’t need extras, don’t want to share personal information and prefer to avoid long-term subscriptions. Proton VPN is a better fit for those who want strong privacy alongside everyday usability — like streaming — plus access to a large global server network.

Speed winner: Both are fast, but Proton VPN was faster in our latest tests

Mullvad and Proton VPN were two of the fastest VPNs we tested in 2025, but the 16% speed loss we calculated with Proton VPN gives it a slight edge over Mullvad, which came in at 24%. Considering that using a VPN can often cut your speeds by 50% or more, Mullvad and Proton VPN deliver excellent speed performance that’s plenty fast enough for data-heavy activities such as streaming, gaming, torrenting or video calls. For the fastest possible speeds, use the WireGuard protocol with both providers.

If you have a fast, stable internet connection, then either VPNs’ speeds should suffice for basically anything you’d want to do online. But if your internet connection is slow or unreliable, Proton VPN is the better choice — and not just because it was faster in our latest speed tests. Proton VPN offers a VPN Accelerator feature, which the company says can boost your VPN speeds by up to 400%. In my tests, I didn’t notice a significant difference in my speeds through Proton VPN with and without VPN Accelerator enabled, but if your internet is slow or spotty, you might notice a more pronounced improvement after toggling the feature on.

Value winner: It’s tough to beat Mullvad’s straightforward, budget-friendly price

Mullvad costs 5 euros (about $6) per month, whether you use it for a month, a year or 10 years. There is no fine print, and, unlike many other VPN providers, Mullvad doesn’t have long-term subscription plans that skyrocket in price after the initial billing period. In fact, to cut down on the amount of payment data it needs to collect and store, Mullvad has done away with recurring subscriptions altogether. You can prepay for up to a year at a time, but you can add additional months to your account at any time.

This does mean you have to manually manage your access to the service. On the other hand, it also means that you have ultimate flexibility in how long you commit to the service and you don’t run the risk of forgetting about an automatically renewing subscription.

If you prepay for a year of Mullvad, you’ll pay around $70, which is cheaper than most of its competition’s regular annual price. But if you purchase a Mullvad subscription card through Amazon, you can get a year for around $55. Mullvad gives you access to about 700 servers in 50 countries and allows up to five simultaneous connections. A 14-day money back guarantee is available in case you’re not satisfied with the service.

But if you don’t want to pay for a VPN at all, Proton VPN’s free tier is legit, and the only free VPN we recommend at CNET. There are some limitations: Proton VPN’s free plan doesn’t support torrenting or streaming, and you’re limited to a single connection at a time and access to servers in 10 countries (United States, Canada, Singapore, Japan, The Netherlands, Poland, Norway, Mexico, Switzerland and Romania). But you get the same basic privacy protections as its paid subscription plan — no limits on bandwidth or usage.

Proton VPN’s paid subscription plans can’t match Mullvad’s flexibility, but are still relatively budget-friendly compared to much of the competition. Proton VPN costs $10 per month, $60 for the first year (then $80 per year) or $108 for the first two years (then $80 per year). That’s a reasonable price, considering you get Proton’s full suite of premium privacy features, up to 10 simultaneous connections, access to over 15,800 servers in 126 countries and an ad, tracker and malware blocker.

If you want to bundle your VPN with other privacy and security tools, Proton VPN is the way to go. While Mullvad only offers a VPN service, the Proton Unlimited plan includes a VPN, secure mail service, password manager, secure storage, calendar and bitcoin wallet.

Privacy and security winner: Both deliver airtight privacy, but Mullvad has a slight edge

Mullvad and Proton VPN do things a little differently, but either one is an excellent choice if you have critical privacy needs. Mullvad offers RAM-only servers, post-quantum protections and cutting-edge defense against AI-guided traffic snooping. Proton VPN offers full-disk encryption on its servers and advanced privacy features such as Tor over VPN. Both offer open-source apps, undergo regular audits and are based in privacy-friendly jurisdictions, but Proton VPN’s Switzerland headquarters sits outside of the 14-Eyes data-sharing alliance.

On top of doing everything it can to know as little about its customers as humanly possible, Mullvad offers advanced privacy features that go above and beyond to protect users from various threats. With Mullvad, you’ll get standard privacy features including a kill switch and DNS leak protection, along with post-quantum encryption — one of the most interesting emerging features which helps protect against potential future threats from quantum computers. Mullvad also allows you to double-hop through any two server locations, giving you the flexibility of choice while delivering an extra layer of encryption.

But Mullvad’s innovative Defense Against AI-guided Traffic Analysis is one of the main things that sets it apart from the competition and really drives home its commitment to protecting user privacy. The concept behind DAITA is simple yet ingenious, and protects users against threats from outside entities leveraging artificial intelligence to expose online traffic even when encrypted through the VPN tunnel. The problem is that data packet patterns can be used as a sort of fingerprint to decode your online activity. But when you enable DAITA, Mullvad automatically injects junk data and makes all packets you send the same size, effectively wiping the fingerprint clean and making your traffic patterns through the VPN tunnel indecipherable.

Proton VPN doesn’t yet offer post-quantum protections, or anything resembling Mullvad’s DAITA functionality, but it’s nevertheless a top-tier VPN for privacy that has its own approach to protecting users. Instead of relying on RAM-only servers, which get wiped of data upon being shut down or rebooted, Proton VPN uses full-disk encryption to secure data on its servers. Data on Proton VPN’s hard drives remains fully encrypted when a server is shut down, and are inaccessible without the encryption keys, which the company stores off-site and not on the servers themselves. This approach can help ensure that no data can be extracted from Proton VPN’s servers should any of them be seized — which is essentially the same objective behind running servers on volatile memory like Mullvad does. And if a VPN doesn’t keep logs, it shouldn’t have anything useful to hand over anyway.

Proton said in its winter 2025-2026 roadmap that it’s working on a new VPN architecture which will allow it to provide post-quantum encryption alongside other privacy enhancements such as Stealth on Linux. Proton VPN has been deliberately cautious about its approach to rolling out post-quantum encryption, citing risks with new cryptography not being battle-tested and potential security vulnerabilities resulting from misconfiguration.

Both VPNs offer obfuscation, which disguises your VPN traffic as standard web traffic to help avoid censorship and bypass firewalls, but Proton VPN’s Stealth protocol was designed specifically for robust obfuscation that thwarts deep packet inspection. Proton VPN’s fleet of Secure Core servers deliver double VPN functionality, but instead of letting you choose any two servers to double hop through like Mullvad does, Proton VPN only lets you choose the exit server location. However, when you connect to Secure Core servers, your traffic is first routed through a secure server located in Sweden, Iceland or Switzerland. Additionally, Proton VPN’s Secure Core servers are housed in facilities with extreme physical security in place, like a decommissioned military base or an underground bunker. Proton VPN also offers Tor over VPN servers, which can give you access to onion services while adding additional layers of protection.

One crucial thing you need to be aware of if you’re using Proton VPN on MacOS is that your connection will break when jumping from one server directly to another — meaning that your IP address and online activity will be exposed momentarily when switching servers. Experienced users might anticipate this behavior and take the proper precautions prior to jumping to another server, but some users may not, and potentially putting their privacy at risk when doing so.

Although this is normal behavior with many VPNs on MacOS, Proton VPN doesn’t warn users ahead of the server switch that their IP address and activity could be exposed, like others, including ExpressVPN and Surfshark do. The app does issue a message that says “Not Connected” when jumping from one server to another, but the message comes up after you’ve already initiated the switch — by which point, it’s already too late. A proper warning message needs to come up before the switch happens to ensure users are aware of what’s happening. Considering Proton VPN’s otherwise extremely solid stance on privacy, I’m disappointed that its MacOS app still doesn’t issue a warning ahead of a server switch. Notably, Mullvad (like NordVPN) is able to keep the tunnel intact during a server switch on MacOS to ensure your IP address and online activity remain private.

Usability winner: Proton VPN’s usability outshines Mullvad’s on several fronts

Whether you’re a VPN veteran or have never used one before, you shouldn’t have much of an issue ramping up with either Mullvad or Proton VPN. Both VPNs offer apps for Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android and iOS, but if you want a native app for streaming devices like Fire TV Stick or Apple TV, go with Proton VPN. Mullvad works on Android TV and you may still be able to sideload the app onto a Fire TV Stick (although there are rumors that Amazon is beginning to crack down on sideloaded Fire TV apps), but using Proton VPN’s native apps for streaming devices is a far more convenient way to go.

Mullvad’s app is simple and straightforward, but almost to the point of feeling a little outdated. That said, I like how easy it is to connect to a server from the home screen and to access settings. You can easily toggle features like DAITA, DNS content blockers, quantum resistance or multihop connections, and I like that Mullvad offers split tunneling on MacOS, which is still somewhat of a rarity in the industry (Proton VPN’s split tunneling on MacOS is currently in an experimental phase). If you’re an advanced user, you’ll appreciate the option to customize your WireGuard settings and choose the specific port and obfuscation method you want to use. I also like that Mullvad’s app lets you block a wide range of content, including ads, trackers, malware, gambling sites, adult content and social media sites.

By contrast, Proton VPN’s app interface is more modern and gives you the ability to connect to a server from a list or from pins on a world map. I like how key settings such as Secure Core, NetShield (adblocker) and the kill switch are accessible directly from the home screen. You can also choose a specific server within a country location based on things such as server load, P2P support, fastest speeds, Tor over VPN or streaming optimized, which can be helpful depending on what you’re using the VPN for.

Additional settings are nicely organized in the settings menu. While advanced settings including alternative routing, custom DNS and moderate NAT are available, Proton VPN’s app doesn’t allow you to get as granular with custom settings as Mullvad does. However, I like how Proton VPN lets you create custom profile shortcuts for connections based on things like location, specific server (including standard, Secure Core, Tor over VPN or P2P optimized servers) and VPN protocol — something that’s likely more widely useful for most people.

If you want to stream tons of content across devices, Proton VPN is the clear choice. In my latest tests, Mullvad struggled to give me access to geo-restricted streaming content from nearly all sites I tested on — with Netflix and HBO Max being the exceptions. Proton VPN, on the other hand, excelled in our latest tests across devices and streaming platforms, unblocking content from all streaming sites we tested, proving to be much more reliable for streaming than Mullvad.

Bottom line

If airtight privacy is your main reason for using a VPN, then either Mullvad or Proton VPN is a solid choice. Mullvad is the way to go if you’re on a strict budget, want the flexibility of not being stuck in a subscription, don’t want to provide personal information at signup or if you’d benefit from features like DAITA and post-quantum encryption. If you want something a little more well-rounded that’s a bit faster, with a ton of server locations, wider device compatibility and excellent streaming capabilities, but don’t mind paying a little more, then Proton VPN is the VPN for you.