I'm really happy with Mullvad and their pricing. I can pay for only one month if I need it so I don't have another subscription to pay each month.

I pay for proton mail and proton drive and still use Mullvad for my daily driver VPN.

Only time proton VPN is worth using is if you need the port forwarding like for gaming or something.

General consensus seems to be mullvad if you just want a VPN, and proton if you're gonna use all the other stuff. I use their email for some things, and I'm planning to switch to proton drive once they roll out the linux app, so I use proton.

I switched to Proton because I use all the products of their unlimited plan so it makes financial sense to go for that.

However, I feel like Mullvad VPN is vastly superior. Their no bullshit payment options are fanstastic. 5 euros a month, no matter if you buy 1 month or 10 years. I feel like speed and connection stability was noticeably better as well.

I miss Mullvad VPN, really.

Mullvad because, much like going raw, VPN's are used for special occasions.

I daily drive Proton mostly because of speed for gaming, but I keep a mullvad account handy for special occasions. I have zero interest in the full Proton stack, I don’t want to centralize my data like that. Especially once they joined the AI train, I’m glad I kept my VPN and email separate.

I host my own private git server and use Unix Pass for my password vault, FastMail for email, Syncthing and SMB for file sharing, don’t really use crypto so I couldn’t care less that they added a wallet. The VPN interface on mobile and Windows/Mac is fine. I’d love to see the Linux options improve, but I just use OpenVPN profiles and it works well enough.

How does Orbot/Rethink compare?

Only reason to use proton is because you're already paying for their email/drive/whatever.

Mullvad/IVPN for their pay with cash policies

Mullvad only!!!

IMHO Mullvad

Experience wise i’ve had a better time with mullvad at every corner when it comes to vpns than proton.

Protons still a respectable company i’d say but there focus is gonna become spread more thin while mullvads gonna continue providing a stable and simple experience.

Plus mullvads never gonna confuse you when it comes to pricing unlike proton, no extra time spent finding the difference between a monthly and annual subscription.

I switched from ProtonVPN Free to Mullvad last month when I needed to torrent something. ProtonVPN Free doesn't allow P2P traffic, and Mullvad is cheaper than ProtonVPN Pro (or whatever it's called these days).

The AI doesn't seem too bad, but I'd prefer it not be there at all. I have no opinions about the crypto, as there is a legitimate use for it, but I have no use for the wallet as I have had a lot of trouble getting ahold of any cryptocurrency.

I'm also happier with the company and the experience. I paid with a card, but I liked that they accept cash and Monero.

On top of that, nobody seems to have anything bad to say about Mullvad. Privacy? They keep no logs and are pretty damn transparent. Limitations? No port forwarding, but I can just use Windscribe if I need that. Clients? They don't exclude Linux or arm64, and BSD users can just use wireguard-go or something.

There's also a story when one time the Polisen came to Mullvad HQ with a search warrant, but had to leave after discovering that there were no logs kept, and therefore nothing they could do.

Furthermore, they've made my favourite web browser (which is essentially Tor Browser without Tor) by collaborating with the Tor Project. It's one of only three browsers which give good results in Cover Your Tracks (although I have not yet tested anything with CreepJS; and I tend to change the settings in everything, so your mileage may vary).

TL;DR: I recommend Mullvad over ProtonVPN, but not because of the AI or crypto.

I also recommend Posteo over ProtonMail, Filen over Proton Drive, Bitwarden over Proton Pass, and I stopped using Proton before we got Proton Wallet.

Isn't mullvad better and cheaper?

Huge fan of Mullvad for the work around respecting users privacy. They are implementing ways of skewing AI-guided traffic analysis. VPN encrypts your data but companies are starting to use AI to look at traffic patterns and help determine what that data is. I won't pretend to understand it completely so I'd recommend reading their blog about it.

I've been eyeing PIA for it's price and the inclusion of port forwarding but not sure if anyone has experience with PIA.

I personally use mullvad for all outgoing traffic and then airvpn for any let forwarding I require. Basically airvpn is exclusive to incoming traffic, like my self hosted services or game servers, and then anything I do on the internet routes through mullvad. All setup through opnsense since they both support wireguard.

I always had issues with proton's port forwarding being reliable in the past. That being said, if you need things like video streaming services, mullvad seems to be having a hard time with these recently where as proton worked well for me back when I used it (unsure if that's still true).

I used ProtonVPN for years. I use MullvadVPN. Both are totally fine, in my experience. I left ProtonVPN because I couldn't get port forwarding on Linux, and then less than two months after I did that Mullvad removed that feature, so that's how it goes.