Mullvad.

All you are to them is an account number. that's it. no name, no email, nothing. you can even pay in cash. while mullvad's GUI is still meh their CLI is top notch and very quick.

I like mullvad because I can pay for it with vouchers and have nothing to tie my payment to my account#

I don't think any other VPN can do that.

Theres also the fact that mullvad was raided by the (Swedish)police and even though they fully complied, the police ended up walking away with nothing because mullvad had nothing to give them.

Proton on the other hand, will at the very least be storing your email, payment info, and possibly other info in your account that mullvad won't. I also don't like how they have aligned themselves with conservative politics.

Proton's CEO sucks. I canceled my extremely low-priced, grandfathered subscription and moved elsewhere. I had been a user since basically day one, a subscriber since available, and converted family members and friends to it. Not anymore.

Mullvad has been stellar. Fast, anonymous, easy to use. Zero complaints.

I chose Mullvad because they don't ask for any personal details and you can pay anonymously, which means that their service is privacy protecting by design. You don't have to rely so much on trust.

Proton seems to be a large and rapidly expanding company which looks like it's trying to be a more privacy respecting competitor to Google's many services. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, I prefer companies that value stability over rapid expansion. I also don't like relying on a potential single point of failure for everything. I have a Proton e-mail account but I don't use any of their other services because I don't want everything in the same place.

I use Proton VPN only because I use Proton everything else. If not, I'd probably consider Mullvad. But I'm in the US and regional pricing doesn't apply.

The main difference I see between the two is that Mullvad no longer offers port forwarding services and ProtonVPn does offer port forwarding services.

This can make a big difference based on your use-case scenarios. If you are gaming and need port forwarding or are torrenting and need port forwarding Protonvpn is the better choice.

I use both (not suggesting that). I mostly use Proton because it's already included in my plan, and they seem to have more connections to choose from, but I frequently have to switch because the one I'm on starts to get really slow. I like Mullvad's flat pricing and lack of commitment (they even accept cash), and it was an easier setup on Linux (at least Arch).

I've never tried Mulvad, but Proton, while it has LOTS of exit nodes, which is good for avoiding blocks, is quite bad at any individual node remaining up and recovering automatically on an outage. If your use case is actively connecting for watching youtube or netflix or whatever in another country on a laptop that's mostly off or not VPNed and you don't care, that's great, but if you want to VPN for bittorrent or another always connected purpose from a server or VPS...

Both of them are decent VPN choices at the end of the day. If one is 60% cheaper then the choice should be very easy unless you have too much money on your hand. Try 1 month of each and make a choice.

For sailing the seas, I like CryptoStorm.is Good speed with port forwarding.

It's kind of sad, that people still believe that VPN is a safe option. Sure, it ads a layer, but anyone who wants to know who you are, can find out by your fingerprints, your accounts, anything you put out there. So if you do anything but light surfing, then you are not anonymous with VPN.

Mullvad VPN is more private but I find I'm being asked to prove I'm human more often. Proton VPN I don't trust with anything like piracy because they're a large company with too much to lose by being overly private.

EDIT: Oh, and reminder that you should use the Mullvad browser too if you want to keep anything private.

Vote for the unlisted AirVPN because extremely easy to use, very moderate pricing, and specifically why I needed it, port forwarding.

Why don't you use a decentralized VPN like NymVPN? It's impossible for the company or anyone to take logs because your traffic is routed over several nodes. It's like Tor but a decentralized one.

Moved from Proton to Mullvad to Windscribe

Proton kept getting worse and is moving towards a walled garden.

Mullvad seemed great on the private payment front. Their apps are pretty solid. The device limit was too low for me. For 6-10 devices the price doubles.

Windscribe won me over with their build a plan option. Their apps aren't the most visually appealing but get the job done.

If you care about things beyond the operations, the Proton boss came out in support of 47's adminstration with regards to regulating big tech IIRC. I'm not aware the Mullvad chief did something similar.

Proton works well. But it's designed to be the basket for all your eggs (VPN, office suite, email, etc.). They want you to use all their services and push for upgrades to the highest tier. I found their customer support you be ... very ... slow.

If you need port forwarding, AirVPN is another option. I think they're cheaper than Mullvad but it's held together by dedication and duct tape. It works okay but read their website first to see if you're okay with how it's set up.

Any reason Private Internet Access (PIA) isn’t in the running? I’ve been using it for years now with no complaints or issues.

Why do you want a VPN? Is it just for some light piracy? Staying safe on public wifi? Or do you actually NEED to maintain your privacy, with real consequences if you can't?

If you need true privacy, the answer is Mullvad. But there's also more required than just switching on a VPN if you want privacy. If you want a convenient and easy VPN that's part of a bigger privacy-focused suite of tools, then I'd recommend Proton. They make some pretty good products.