I’m using Mullvad and have been pleased with the service but I’m wondering how your experience with Proton VPN compares.
My Mullvad yearly subscription is running out and as a longtime paid proton user I have access to their VPN which seems to be pretty much as great as Mullvad, and it’s pretty stupid to pay for a service when I have a very good option already paid for right?
Then again Mullvad is as much activists as VPN providers. Without them I wouldn’t even be aware of EU pushing the chat control-legislation. Also they straight up released all the documents (warrants etc) after being raided by the Swedish police. That’s some OG shit!
I will probably continue to support them as I’m already the kind of broke ass privacy nerd pirate philanthropist that donates to my favorite FOSS software whenever I can.
If you want a richer company with more servers etc pick proton (even tho Mullvad has more than I’ll ever need in that regard). If you are a hardcore privacy nerd that reacted to the one time Proton have out information about some criminal a couple of years ago - pick Mullvad. We have the documents to prove that they do not in fact keep any logs whatsoever and they have been around since 2009(!!!)
This is coming from a 5 year long paid plan @ proton (unlimited)
I would stick with Mullvad if you only want one provider. I have both, as Proton has servers in some locations that Mullvad does not. For me, Mullvad is more reliable with fewer dropped connections and fewer captcha. I have Mullvad wireguard installed on a small GL=inet travel router, which has been rock solid.
Mullvad is a really good VPN provider. Make no mistake about that. For me, I ran into too many captcha’s, they no longer do port forwarding, and my speed has dropped off in the past 2-3 months. I signed up to try ProtonVPN and 9 days in it’s been very good. If this stays consistent, I will make the switch to Proton.
Consumer Reports, a U.S. based independent, nonprofit organization that is a well-respected non-biased source of reviews of a wide range of products, sponsored an unbiased in-depth evaluation of VPN services.
It’s a long read but very worthwhile.
Security and Privacy of VPNs - Consumer Reports VPN White Paper (This is the full report of the VPN comparative testing in .pdf format.)
If you don’t want to invest the time to educate yourself, here is the conclusion:
Recommendations for Users
Of the 16 VPNs we analyzed, Mullvad, PIA, IVPN, and Mozilla VPN (which runs on Mullvad’s servers)—in that order—were among the highest ranked in both privacy and security. However, PIA has never had a public third-party security audit.
Additionally, in our opinion, only IVPN, Mozilla VPN, and Mullvad—along with one other VPN (TunnelBear)—accurately represent their services and technology without any broad, sweeping, or potentially misleading statements.
In my experience, mullvad is better. The mullvad linux app actually working without a hard dependency on networkmanager (which I don’t use) is one of the biggest selling points to me. Also, my work wifi blocks vpn, but on my phone mullvad is usually able to get around it, whereas protonvpn was almost never able to. Plus they generally seem more aligned with open source ideals.
Do you use Protonmail and if so which level? (Free, Plus, Unlimited)
Didn’t know this existed, thanks!
Do they have black friday sales ? Also do they conduct third-party audit ?
that paper is probably old. not to challenge its findings because IVPN and Mullvad are likely still the gold standard but PIA was bought 4 years ago by a data mining company . the same company that used to own hotspot shield…
I’m sure Mullvad and Proton are both great in terms of security but what about usability? How does the connection, number of servers, and the app compare?
Plus they generally seem more aligned with open source ideals.
How so? The released apps are open source.
and PIA has been audited as of last year.
It really doesn’t seem to matter, there’s a million posts/replies on VPNs prob in the last 2 years, and the same stupid repetitive questions constantly come up.
Just don’t use free VPNs and oddball ones you’ve never heard of for 99% of anyone in here’s actual threat level for what they do online.
Yeah, I wonder the same thing. I started with PIA about 6-7yr ago and at the time it was one of the better VPNs on the market. Nowadays you don’t hear much about it anymore. It seems like they never update the app because the last time I tried to install it on my Mac, it didn’t even support silicon processors.
I would say that Proton is better in each of those ways. They just have more of every resource. Security-wise, I would still pick Mullvad though.
Taking a quick look at https://mullvad.net/en/help/open-source/ vs https://protonvpn.com/blog/open-source/ (both accessible from the footer of the corresponding website), the mullvad one includes code and dev keys, but proton having the audits is a huge bonus.
On reflection, that comment is more coming from of my frustration that the protonmail app depends on google play services for notifications and isn’t on fdroid, and less to do with the vpn service itself. That plus linux support not being very good gives me the general impression of proton as a company not caring as much about open source as other companies
That is comparing apple and pears. The mail source code is open sourced as well: GitHub - ProtonMail/proton-mail-android: Proton Mail Android app
Not being available on f-droid (it can’t yet, as it is dependant on the google notification framework) doesn’t mean it isn’t open source.
Once a product is exiting beta, the source code has to be cleaned up and is then open sourced. Mail and VPN both are out of beta for a very long time and all these source codes are available.
right, but my general impression is that mullvad as a company cares more about open source software and ideals than proton. Especially in light of the quality of linux support between the two vpn services.
In terms of branding, the general message I get from those two pages is “we inherently value open source software/practices” from mullvad and “we’re making a private/secure service and so allowing anyone to audit the source code for themself is a part of that” from proton. That’s good, but open source ideals don’t come across as a top priority from proton, whereas mullvad seems to hold both open source and security as primary goals.
Yes, the mail app itself (and all released proton apps afaik) is open source, but if proton really valued open source ideals it seems like at minimum they’d release an fdroid mail app that doesn’t support notifications, or host a proton fdroid repo with all the proton apps (like the guardian project, izzyondroid, monerujo, microg, bromite, newpipe, briar, etc), or do what signal and tutanota do for people who don’t use google services.
edit: also worth noting “open source ideals” is a fuzzy term we might have pretty different ideas about