Proton VPN vs. Mullvad is the comparison you reach once “which VPN is most private” stops being a marketing question and starts being a real one. Both providers are genuinely privacy-first. Both publish fully open-source apps. Neither has been caught doing anything embarrassing with user data. But they don’t agree on what privacy actually is.
Proton VPN’s answer is verification. It operates under Swiss law, publishes all of its client code, and has submitted its no-logs claim to an independent audit every year since 2022. You’re meant to trust Proton because outsiders keep checking and keep finding nothing. See our full Proton VPN review and Mullvad review for the individual breakdowns.
Mullvad’s answer is ignorance. There is no email address on your account. There is no name. You get a random 16-digit number, and if you want, you can pay by mailing cash to Sweden. You’re not really meant to trust Mullvad at all — you’re meant to notice that Mullvad couldn’t identify you even if it wanted to.
Both approaches work. They suit very different people, and the gap shows up in almost every other part of the product — price, network size, streaming, and what happens when you lose your password.
Table of Contents
- Head-to-Head Specification Sheet
- Round 1: What “No Logs” Actually Means Here
- Round 2: Jurisdiction — and Why Mullvad’s Looks Worse On Paper
- Round 3: Price, and Two Opposite Philosophies About It
- Round 4: Network, Speed, and Everyday Use
- The Final Verdict
- Sources
Head-to-Head Specification Sheet
| Feature Category | Proton VPN | Mullvad VPN |
|---|---|---|
| Legal Jurisdiction | Switzerland | Sweden |
| Account Signup | Email address required | Random 16-digit account number — no email, no name |
| Pricing Structure | ~$2.99/month on a 2-year Plus plan; tiered | Flat €5/month, no tiers, no long-term discount |
| Payment Options | Card, PayPal, Bitcoin, cash | Card, PayPal, crypto, bank transfer, cash by post |
| Free Tier | Yes — unlimited data, 10 countries, 1 device | None |
| Server Fleet | 20,000+ servers across 140+ countries | Roughly 600 servers across about 50 countries |
| Open Source | 100% open-source apps | 100% open-source apps |
| No-Logs Verification | Independently audited annually since 2022 | Verified in practice by a 2023 police search |
| Simultaneous Connections | 10 devices | 5 devices |
| Streaming | Works with major platforms on paid plans | Not optimised for streaming; results vary |
| Standout Feature | Secure Core multi-hop, NetShield, VPN Accelerator | DAITA traffic obfuscation, quantum-resistant encryption |
Round 1: What “No Logs” Actually Means Here
Every VPN says it keeps no logs. The interesting question is what happens when someone turns up and asks for them.
Proton VPN: audited, repeatedly, by the same firm
Proton VPN has had its no-logs policy independently audited every year since 2022 by Securitum. The most recent report concluded that the reviewed infrastructure showed no evidence of logging browsing activity, DNS queries, destination services, traffic contents, or user-identifiable connection metadata. Five consecutive annual audits is, as of 2026, among the longest continuous evidence trails in the industry.
That matters because a single audit is a snapshot. A repeated audit is closer to a habit.
Mullvad: tested by the Swedish police, not by an auditor
In April 2023, officers from Sweden’s National Operations Department arrived at Mullvad’s Gothenburg office with a search warrant, intending to seize computers holding customer data. Mullvad’s staff demonstrated that no such data existed. The officers consulted the prosecutor and left without taking anything.
That’s a different category of evidence from an audit. An audit tells you a company’s systems looked clean to a reviewer. A failed search warrant tells you the data genuinely wasn’t there when someone with legal authority came looking for it.
Mullvad also runs regular third-party security assessments — three were published in 2026 alone, covering its account and payment services, its tunnel implementation, and an Android mobile application security assessment.
Round 1 Winner: Draw, for different reasons. Proton has the stronger documented, repeatable evidence trail. Mullvad has the one real-world stress test that no audit can replicate.
Round 2: Jurisdiction — and Why Mullvad’s Looks Worse On Paper
This round contains the single most important asterisk in the comparison.
Switzerland
Proton VPN is headquartered in Geneva. Switzerland sits outside the EU and outside the Five, Nine, and Fourteen Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangements, and Swiss law imposes no data-retention obligation on VPN providers. On jurisdiction alone, it’s close to the best available address.
Sweden — a Fourteen Eyes country
Mullvad is based in Sweden, which is a Fourteen Eyes member. Taken at face value that’s a mark against it, and plenty of comparison sites stop there.
Mullvad’s position is that jurisdiction is a second-order problem. A legal demand can only compel you to hand over data you hold. If the company never collected an email address, never recorded an IP, and never linked a payment to an account, then the strength of the surveillance framework around it matters far less — there’s nothing at the other end of the request. The 2023 search is the evidence for that argument rather than just the theory of it.
Round 2 Winner: Proton VPN on paper, Mullvad in practice. If you weight legal geography, Proton wins clearly. If you weight what’s actually retrievable, the gap narrows to almost nothing.
Round 3: Price, and Two Opposite Philosophies About It
Proton VPN’s tiers
- Proton Free — genuinely free, with no data cap and no ads. Limited to 10 countries, one device, and without P2P or streaming optimisation. There is very little else like it.
- VPN Plus — the full product, around $2.99/month on a two-year term. All servers, Secure Core multi-hop, the NetShield blocker, dedicated P2P servers.
- Proton Unlimited — bundles the VPN with Proton Mail, Pass, Calendar and Drive. This is an ecosystem purchase rather than a VPN purchase.
Mullvad’s flat €5
Mullvad charges €5 per month. That’s it. No annual discount funnel, no promotional first term, no renewal price jump — and it has held that price since 2009.
Month to month, Mullvad is cheaper than almost everyone. Against a two-year commitment, it’s more expensive than Proton Plus. The trade you’re making is predictability for discount: Mullvad never asks you to pay two years up front to get a good rate, and the price you sign up at is the price you keep paying.
Round 3 Winner: Proton VPN on headline cost, Mullvad on honesty. If you’ll commit to two years, Proton is cheaper and gives you more. If you dislike lock-in pricing — or you want a free tier that isn’t a bandwidth trap — the answer flips.
Round 4: Network, Speed, and Everyday Use
Here the two stop being comparable at all.
Proton runs a very large fleet — over 20,000 servers across more than 140 countries, including nodes in heavily censored regions. It uses WireGuard as its backbone with a rebuilt client-side implementation, plus VPN Accelerator, which Proton says improves throughput substantially on long-distance routes. Paid plans work with the major streaming platforms, and the apps are built for people who want a VPN running all day without thinking about it.
Mullvad runs roughly 600 servers in about 50 countries, concentrated in Europe and North America. It deliberately doesn’t chase the server-count arms race, and it doesn’t optimise for streaming platforms — so results there are inconsistent and shouldn’t be the reason you pick it.
What Mullvad has instead is engineering most providers don’t attempt: DAITA, which pads and shapes traffic to resist AI-driven traffic-analysis attacks, and quantum-resistant tunnel encryption. DAITA is still rolling out and isn’t yet available across the whole network.
Round 4 Winner: Proton VPN, comfortably, for anyone who wants a VPN they can leave on. Mullvad wins only if the threat you’re defending against is traffic analysis rather than inconvenience.
Proton VPN vs. Mullvad: The Final Verdict
Choose Proton VPN if:
- You want a VPN that works for everything — streaming, travel, daily browsing — without compromise
- The five-year audit record is the kind of proof you find persuasive
- You want a free tier you can actually use, or a paid plan that’s cheaper over two years
- You’d like the VPN to come with encrypted mail, storage and a password manager
- Losing your credentials shouldn’t mean losing your account
Choose Mullvad if:
- You want a provider that never learns your identity in the first place
- Flat, unchanging pricing matters more to you than the lowest two-year rate
- You want defences against traffic analysis, not just IP masking
- You’re comfortable with a smaller network and inconsistent streaming
- You understand that losing your account number means losing the account — there is no recovery flow
The honest summary: most people should pick Proton VPN. It’s the better everyday product, it’s cheaper on a long commitment, the free tier is real, and the audit history is the strongest in the industry.
Mullvad is for the narrower case where the goal isn’t a private browsing session but structural anonymity — where the point is that no record exists to subpoena. If that’s genuinely your threat model, Mullvad’s design is the more serious answer, and no amount of auditing gets Proton to the same place.
They’re not really competing for the same person.
Want to see how these two stack up against the rest of the field? Compare all 17 providers in our NordVPN vs. Proton VPN and Mullvad vs. NordVPN breakdowns, or read how we test.
Sources
- Proton VPN — no-logs audit
- Proton VPN — free plan server countries
- Proton VPN — pricing
- Mullvad VPN — search warrant statement
- Mullvad VPN — Swedish authorities protocol response
- TechRadar — Mullvad’s no-log policy proven after police raid
- Gizmodo — Cops serve VPN maker search warrant for data it doesn’t collect