Beware of changing your account back to Free after upgrading to a paid subscription.
I only wanted a month of a paid plan with ProtonVPN, payment was smooth - everything was working fine. I decided to ‘cancel’ my monthly subscription right after my payment was processed as I know I tend to forget about monthly subscriptions and wanted to avoid the hassle of an automatic payment, but right after doing so my account immediately got demoted back to a free account.
Quite upsetting to be honest, I had heard many good things about ProtonVPN. Seems quite shadey as there was no warning or anything of the sort either… Most subscription services let you keep paid privileges until your next payment cycle was due (1 month from now), but I had barely used the paid privileges for 10 minutes before being automatically forced into a free account just because I clicked the free button for precautionary purposes…
yeah this has popped up a few times, but yes cancelling indeed cancels it straight away, which is at odds with how online purchases work, especially subscriptions. Indeed, reach out to support!
Depending on your country, you might also have legal rights regarding subscriptions and fulfillment of those
Unfortunately, all plan changes are immediate. If you cancel your subscription today, even if the renewal date is in the future, your account will be immediately downgraded to Free. That’s why we advise users to cancel their subscription near or on the renewal date. Note that the unused portion of your payment will be transferred back to the account in the form of unused credits. There’s also an option of getting this unused payment back as a refund.
Could you please contact our support team for help on this? https://protonvpn.com/support-form
We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and will align with the team on making this clearer to users.
Contact ProtonVPN support.
Add a reminder next time instead 
Contact support I’m sure they will fix it. Agreed that it should continue until the next billing cycle. Is there a possibility that they credited your payment (or in the process of) because of the short time from subscribing to canceling?
This PM policy actually means you pay only for what you use. Maybe unexpected, but fair.
maybe just add a warning when users are downgrading. I’ve read the exact same complain many many times over a 1y in this sub.
Can I ask why it just doesn’t function like any other internet service?
The way PM does it seems exceptionally fair. Maybe they should make it clearer that once you cancel your service, the service will end, and you will get your money back, instead of keeping it like most other companies do.
Don’t you pay a month in advance though as opposed to paying for the time for use?
Edit: I’m assuming you mean to cancel you should (or need) to enter a support chat?
I get that can be the thing, but why have a cancel button say all then, especially if it doesn’t work like most expect (which is also not great from an accessibility perspective either)
