Windscribe vs Proton VPN (2026): Free Tiers, Prices, Audits

Windscribe and Proton VPN are the two free-tier providers we track that also sell serious paid plans. On data we verified on 31 October 2026, their free tiers point in opposite directions. Windscribe gives you 10 GB a month on unlimited devices. Proton VPN gives you unmetered use on one device, at medium speed and with no streaming.

The paid plans differ just as sharply on audits, refunds, support and what happens at renewal. The table above comes from our data records for both providers. The sections below explain the rows and compare the free tiers line by line.

Pricing today

Proton VPN’s pricing page shows the 2-year term by default. On 31 October 2026, VPN Plus cost:

• $3.49 a month for two years, or $83.76, labeled 65% off
• $4.49 a month for one year, or $53.88, labeled 55% off
• $9.99 for a single month

Proton Unlimited is the bundle with Proton’s other services. It cost $7.99 a month for two years, or $191.76. The one-year plan cost $9.99 a month, or $119.88, and the monthly plan $12.99.

The 1-year and 2-year VPN Plus prices are introductory. The page states that the 2-year plan renews at $83.88 every 12 months. That is also the regular 1-year price. Unlimited’s 2-year plan renews at $119.88 a year.

Windscribe has no introductory pricing at all. Pro costs $9.00 billed monthly, or $69 billed every 12 months, which is $5.75 a month. Both renew at the same price. Its Build a Plan option sells single locations at $1.00 each per month. The minimum is $3, and you can add up to 7 locations. Each location adds 10 GB to the monthly allowance. Static IPs are a yearly extra: $24 for a datacenter IP or $96 for a residential one. A static IP stays the same each time you connect.

Over three years, VPN Plus bought on the 2-year plan and renewed once costs $167.64. That is about $4.66 a month. Windscribe Pro costs $207 over the same three years, or $5.75 a month. Proton is cheaper in every year. But Windscribe’s price is the one you can predict without reading the fine print, and it is the only one with a pay-as-you-go option. Monthly, the two are nearly level at $9.99 and $9.00.

Neither has an edge on payment. Proton takes Visa, Mastercard, American Express, PayPal and in-app purchases. It also takes Proton credits bought with cash, bank transfer or Bitcoin. Windscribe takes cards, PayPal, cryptocurrency, local payment methods and cash.

The refund rules differ more than anything else on this page. Proton refunds within 30 days, with two exceptions. Bank-transfer and cash payments cannot be refunded, and App Store purchases go through Apple. Windscribe refunds within 7 days of the first purchase, and its terms say 7 business days. It refunds only if you have used less than 10 GB, and it never refunds a renewal. The plan tables and price histories are on our Proton VPN pricing page and Windscribe pricing page.

Free tiers, side by side

Proton VPN Free, as we recorded it on 31 October 2026, gives you:

• One device
• Servers in 10 countries, picked at random rather than chosen by you
• Medium speed
• No streaming, no NetShield, no Secure Core and no split tunneling

No monthly data allowance appears among its limits. The same no-logs policy covers free users. Free users get ticket support instead of live chat.

Windscribe Free gives you:

• 10 GB a month with a confirmed email address, or 2 GB without one
• Servers in 10 countries from a shared free pool
• No throttling, so your speed is not slowed down
• Unlimited devices
• 5 GB more a month for posting about Windscribe on X, and 1 GB per referral

On the free plan, Windscribe’s R.O.B.E.R.T. blocker filters only the malware and ads lists.

In practice, Windscribe’s free plan is a metered sample of the paid product. It has the same apps, the same unlimited device policy and a real choice of ten locations. It stops when the meter runs out. Proton’s free plan is a background privacy tool for one device, meant to stay on all month. The location is chosen for you, and its rules exclude streaming. Neither is a streaming plan. Proton rules it out. Windscribe’s 10-country pool limits your choice, and video would use up its 10 GB cap quickly.

Privacy and audits

Proton AG is a Swiss company in Geneva. It is mainly owned by the non-profit Proton Foundation, with no parent company and no venture-capital investors. Switzerland is outside the 5, 9 and 14 Eyes alliances, which are groups of countries that share intelligence. Windscribe Limited is registered in Ontario, Canada, a Five Eyes member. It describes itself as independent, self-funded and founder-led, with no outside investors. Proton’s apps are all open source. Windscribe publishes the code of its desktop and mobile apps on GitHub, but not everything.

Proton has far more no-logs audits. Securitum has audited Proton’s server infrastructure for logs five years in a row. The first was in 2022, and the latest was announced on 16 June 2026. The auditor found no evidence that the examined servers log browsing activity, DNS queries, destination services or connection metadata that could identify a user.

Windscribe has no published no-logs audit. Its three audits are:

• Leviathan Security Group’s review of the desktop apps, in September 2021
• Leviathan’s review of the Android and iOS apps, in March 2022
• A Packetlabs audit of its FreshScribe server stack, in June 2024

Windscribe makes up for this with a precise policy and a warrant canary. A warrant canary is a public statement that a company has not received a secret government order. Windscribe’s privacy policy, updated 30 July 2024, says it stores the total bytes transferred in the last 30 days. It also stores the date, but not the time, of your last activity. It stores nothing about sessions, source IPs, assigned IPs, timestamps, DNS queries or sites visited. Proton keeps no VPN session data and publishes a transparency report. Windscribe publishes both a transparency report and a canary.

The two companies chose different server designs. Windscribe’s servers are RAM-only, so they keep data in memory instead of on a disk. Windscribe made this change after two of its OpenVPN servers in Ukraine were seized in June 2021. The disks of those servers were not encrypted and held a server certificate and private key. Windscribe disclosed this on 7 July 2021, along with the replacement of its certificate authority. A certificate authority issues the certificates that prove a server is genuine.

Proton has chosen not to run RAM-only servers. It relies on LUKS full-disk encryption on every machine and defends this decision in a blog post. Full-disk encryption scrambles everything stored on a server’s disk. Proton owns and operates its Secure Core servers in Switzerland, Iceland and Sweden.

In January 2019, Proton could not comply with a Swiss court request for VPN data, because it held no IP information. In September 2021, a binding Swiss order forced Proton to log and disclose the IP address of a climate activist’s Proton Mail account. In May 2024, court documents showed that Proton had given Spanish police a Proton Mail account’s recovery email address, via Swiss authorities. Both mail cases show what Swiss law can force the company to do. Proton says the VPN, unlike email, cannot be forced to keep logs.

Windscribe’s other two entries ended in its favor. A Greek court dismissed criminal charges against founder Yegor Sak in April 2025, over activity traced to a Finnish server. Dutch authorities seized a Netherlands server in February 2026. Windscribe says it held a stock Ubuntu install and no user data.

Security and protocols

A protocol is the set of rules a VPN uses to build its encrypted connection. Proton VPN runs WireGuard, OpenVPN and IKEv2, plus Stealth. Stealth is its WireGuard-over-TLS protocol for obfuscation, which disguises VPN traffic. Proton uses AES-256 or ChaCha20 encryption with perfect forward secrecy. Perfect forward secrecy means a stolen key cannot unlock past sessions. Proton VPN also has these features:

• A kill switch, which blocks your internet if the VPN connection drops, on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android
• Split tunneling, which lets some apps skip the VPN, on Windows, Linux, Android, Android TV and the browser extension. On macOS it is experimental and only excludes apps.
• Secure Core multi-hop, which routes your traffic through servers Proton owns
• The NetShield DNS blocker
• Port forwarding, which lets other devices reach yours through the VPN
• Its own DNS resolvers with leak protection
• IPv6, the newer type of internet address, routed through the VPN on Windows, Linux, Android and the extension, and disabled on macOS and iOS

It has no dedicated IP on consumer plans. Its 2026 roadmap lists post-quantum encryption as future work.

Windscribe runs WireGuard, OpenVPN and IKEv2. It adds two obfuscation transports:

• Stealth, which wraps OpenVPN in TLS
• WStunnel, which wraps OpenVPN in WebSocket frames on port 443

Its kill switch is the always-on Firewall in the Windows, macOS and Linux apps. It fails closed, which means it blocks traffic rather than let it leak. On Android and iOS, Windscribe points you to the operating system’s Always-On VPN setting instead of an in-app switch. Split tunneling covers Windows, macOS, Linux and Android. Double Hop needs the desktop app plus the browser extension.

Post-quantum protection is live today, with hybrid X25519MLKEM768 handshakes on WireGuard. Post-quantum encryption is designed to resist attacks from future quantum computers. Port forwarding allows up to 10 ports per device but requires a static IP. Windscribe sells static IPs instead of dedicated IPs, because it says dedicated IPs are bad for privacy. It also lists ephemeral port forwarding, which is temporary. R.O.B.E.R.T. filters ads, trackers, malware and other categories on Windscribe’s servers. IPv6 is routed through the tunnel.

Proton is stronger on mobile kill switches and multi-hop design. Windscribe is stronger on post-quantum readiness and choice of obfuscation. Both have port forwarding, which neither NordVPN nor Surfshark offers.

Streaming claims

Both document Netflix, and we have tested neither. Proton’s streaming guide lists twelve services for paid plans, with regions attached. Netflix is listed in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea and 15 more countries. The guide also lists Prime Video, Disney+, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Max, Peacock, Paramount+, Crunchyroll, YouTube TV, DAZN and ESPN+.

Windscribe’s pages claim ten services, several of them hedged:

• Netflix US, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Disney+ US, HBO Max and ESPN+
• Prime Video, with the note “can work with a VPN, but not every VPN is consistent”
• DAZN, with the note “consistent access can’t be guaranteed”
• Peacock and Paramount+, named only in lists

Neither offers a smart DNS, so a TV needs an app. Both have Apple TV, Fire TV and Android TV apps. Proton’s free plan excludes streaming outright. Our record of Windscribe’s free plan does not exclude streaming, but its limits make it impractical. Our best VPN for Netflix page explains why these claims change weekly.

Apps and devices

Proton’s download page lists apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Chromebook, Android, iPhone and iPad. It has Chrome and Firefox extensions, and the Chrome build also runs on Edge, Brave and Opera. It covers Android TV, Apple TV and Fire TV. It also gives router configurations for OpenWrt, AsusWRT, pfSense, OPNsense and MikroTik. Paid plans allow 10 simultaneous connections and the free plan 1.

Windscribe lists apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iPhone, plus Chrome, Firefox and Edge extensions. It also covers Fire TV, Apple TV, Huawei devices and Android TV, and offers an F-Droid build. Router setup is in its knowledge base. Windscribe allows unlimited connections on every plan, including the free one.

The published network sizes are not comparable. Proton’s live counters showed 21,722 servers in 149 countries and 197 locations. Windscribe publishes no server count and describes “hundreds of servers”. Its features page lists 69 countries and 135 cities. Its server-list page lists over 85 countries and 190-plus locations. Windscribe does not explain the difference. Both use virtual locations, which are servers that appear to be in one country but sit in another. Windscribe labels its three as fake: Antarctica, India and Russia.

Support and refunds

Proton offers 24/7 live chat to paying customers. It starts with an AI assistant before a human takes over. Free users get ticket support. Windscribe has no human live chat. Its 24/7 chatbot escalates to support tickets, with a stated 24-hour reply target and priority for paid users. We have not measured response times for either.

Proton gives refunds for 30 days. That excludes bank-transfer and cash payments, and App Store purchases go through Apple. Windscribe gives 7 days with less than 10 GB used, and it does not refund renewals. Because its refund window is so short, test Windscribe on its free plan before you pay.

Which should you buy?

Buy Proton VPN if you want any of these:

• The audit trail
• The open code
• A kill switch on your phone
• Secure Core
• A free plan that runs all month on one device

Accept that the $3.49 price is introductory and becomes $83.88 a year.

Buy Windscribe if you want any of these:

• A free plan you can use for a few gigabytes a month on every device you own
• A paid price that never changes
• Post-quantum WireGuard now
• Port forwarding with a static IP

With Windscribe, accept that nobody has audited its no-logs claim. There is no live chat, and you have 7 days and 10 GB to change your mind.

Skip both if you need a dedicated IP on a consumer plan, because neither sells one. Also skip both if a published, consistent server count matters to you, which Windscribe does not provide.

Alternatives

• For Proton VPN’s usual rivals, see NordVPN vs Proton VPN and Proton VPN vs Surfshark.
• For the privacy-first alternative with a flat price, see Mullvad vs Proton VPN.
• For Windscribe against a bigger network with audits, see NordVPN vs Windscribe.

Every published pair is on the comparison hub.

How we compared them

Every row in the table comes from our data records for the two providers. We verified them against the official pricing, feature, server, policy and audit pages on 31 October 2026, including each free tier’s stated limits. Scores come from our published methodology. Speed is left out until our lab measures it. We recompute the scores whenever the data changes, so this page describes the differences instead of quoting the numbers. The full detail is in our Proton VPN review and Windscribe review.