Proton VPN vs NordVPN: A Free Tier Against a Bigger Network

Both of these are competent VPNs from companies that have been doing this for years. Neither is a scam, neither is hiding anything obvious, and both will encrypt your traffic and move your exit point somewhere else.

So the comparison comes down to two things that are easy to state. Proton VPN publishes its client source code and offers a free tier with no data cap. NordVPN publishes nothing and offers no free tier, and in exchange has a larger, faster network in more countries.

If money is a constraint, the answer is Proton and it is not close. If it is not, the question is whether verifiability or coverage matters more to you.

The specs side by side

Two rows carry the decision. Licence and free tier both go one way; countries goes the other. Everything else is close enough not to choose on.

What open source means here, precisely

Proton VPN publishes the source of its client apps. It is worth being exact about what that does and does not buy you, because the phrase gets used loosely.

What it gives you: anyone can read the Android client and see what it actually sends, whether the kill switch works as described, whether there is telemetry, and whether the encryption is implemented properly. Bugs get found by people outside the company. Claims about the app become checkable rather than promised.

What it does not give you: any visibility into the servers. Whether logs are kept at the far end is not a client-side question, and no amount of open source answers it. That is what independent no-logs audits are for, and both companies commission those.

NordVPN keeps its clients closed and has its no-logs claims audited by outside firms. That is the industry-standard arrangement, and it means you are trusting the company plus whatever the auditor was given access to.

The open-source difference is real. It is a difference in how much you have to take on faith, not a guarantee of anything.

The free tier is the biggest practical gap

Proton VPN's free tier has no data cap. That is unusual enough to be the headline feature — most free VPN tiers meter you at a few gigabytes a month and exist to make you upgrade.

What Proton limits instead is choice. A handful of countries, one device, no picking which server you land on, and slower speeds at peak hours because the whole free population shares a small pool. Those are the right things to limit: your traffic is still encrypted and Proton's business model does not depend on monetising it.

NordVPN has no free tier at all. There is a trial and a refund window, and after that you pay. The app being a free download is not the same thing, and the headline monthly price in NordVPN's advertising is almost always the multi-year rate.

If you are deciding whether to use a VPN at all, this settles it: install Proton, use the free tier, and decide later whether to pay for anything.

Where NordVPN pulls ahead

Coverage. 111 countries, and a very large fleet inside them. If you need to appear in a specific country, or you want a nearby uncongested server wherever you happen to be, more servers is straightforwardly better and Proton has fewer.

Speed, on average. Partly the fleet size, partly NordLynx. That is NordVPN's WireGuard implementation with a custom layer on top which avoids the server storing user IP addresses — plain WireGuard needs to keep them, which is a genuine privacy weakness in the protocol that every provider has to solve somehow. Nord solved it with NordLynx; Proton solves it differently on standard WireGuard.

Threat Protection blocks malicious domains, trackers and some ads, and works at the DNS level. Proton's NetShield does the same job. Both are useful and neither is a substitute for a content blocker in your browser.

Android 7.0 versus Proton's 8.0. A small thing, and decisive on an old phone.

Where they are genuinely equal

Both have a kill switch that cuts traffic if the tunnel drops. Both do split tunnelling so chosen apps bypass the VPN. Both use WireGuard-derived protocols and are fast enough that the protocol is not the bottleneck. Both are around 50 MB. Both commission independent no-logs audits.

Do not pick on these. They are table stakes and both clear them.

One thing neither of them does

Neither company declines to know who you are. Both require an account tied to an email address and a payment method for the paid tiers, which means both necessarily hold a record connecting a subscriber to a person.

That is normal, and it is a real ceiling on what either can offer. If not being identifiable to the VPN provider itself is the goal, the service to look at is Mullvad, which issues an account number instead of an account and accepts cash by post. The free VPN roundup covers that comparison and where these two sit within the wider field.

Which one to install

Not sure you want to pay for a VPN. Proton VPN, free tier. No cap, no countdown, and you can evaluate it properly before deciding.

Privacy is the actual goal. Proton VPN. Open source clients mean the claims about the app can be checked by anyone, which is a materially stronger position than a closed client with an audit summary.

You need a specific country, or many of them. NordVPN. 111 countries is the argument, and no amount of code-reading substitutes for a server in the right place.

Speed matters most and you are paying anyway. NordVPN, generally, though the gap on Proton's paid tier is smaller than the marketing on either side suggests.

An old phone. NordVPN runs on Android 7.0; Proton needs 8.0.

Streaming. Neither, reliably. Both are detected and blocked by major platforms at times, both work at other times, and neither can promise anything about next month. Do not choose a VPN on this.

Before you install

Both are on the Play Store and both circulate as APKs. Sideloading brings two predictable stops: a refused install is usually a signing-key conflict, and Play Protect will warn about an unknown developer, which describes who signed the file rather than what is in it. Verify the SHA-256 either way.

Both will also ask for a battery optimisation exemption. That is not a red flag — a VPN whose service Android suspends stops protecting you, silently, which is worse than not running one.

The short version

Proton VPN: open source, free tier with no cap, fewer countries, Android 8.0+.

NordVPN: closed source, no free tier, 111 countries, faster on average, Android 7.0+.

Start with Proton's free tier. It costs nothing and it is the only way to find out whether you need what NordVPN charges for.

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