Proton, the company behind a suite of privacy-focused services, has made the Proton VPN Chrome and Firefox extensions available to those with a Proton Free plan.
Prior to now, only users who subscribed to a paid Proton VPN tier were able to use its official web extensions for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome (plus other Chromium-based browsers).
The change is big news.
We’re excited to announce that Proton VPN’s browser extensions […] will now be available to everyone with a Proton Free plan. Now that they’re available for free, they make it easier for people worldwide to protect their privacy and bypass censorship online
Antonio Cesarano, Proton AG
Using a VPN browser extension instead of the Proton VPN app (or a system-wide configuration) has benefits. Users can be more specific about what content is accessed over a VPN, and the global IP address is unaffected.
Is the free version of Proton VPN any good?
Proton VPN Free is not hamstrung in the ways most free VPNs are. There are no speed, time, or data limits, no data collection or logging, browsing history is not sold, and data is encrypted. Proton is serious about privacy. Not lip service or marketing; privacy is their business.
However, a number of useful Proton VPN features are not available to free users.
No custom DNS, no split tunnelling, no double-hop, no access to 10Gbit servers, no profile saving, no secure core, and so on – only the basics.
Proton VPN Free also does not support picking a country/server to connect via, arguably the feature many folks want a VPN for1.
Finally, to answer the sensible question of “…but how is it free?”, the Swiss-based company says it’s “provide[s] Proton VPN Free thanks to people who subscribe to a Proton VPN paid plan”.
If you have already have a free Proton account, download the Proton VPN extension for your browser, sign-in with your account, and you’re good to go. If you don’t yet have a free Proton account, sign up for one – the only ‘cost’ is an e-mail address.
The Proton VPN Chrome extension works with all Chromium-based browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Brave, Microsoft Edge, et al; and the Firefox add-on works with most modern Firefox-based web browsers, including LibreWolf, Waterfox, etc.
- Selecting a country enables access to geo-blocked content – though streaming sites like Netflix seem to be clamping down on that these days, of course. ↩︎