These are the two providers in our top ten with the strongest privacy stories, and they arrive at it from different directions. Proton builds a complete consumer product and makes it verifiable. Mullvad strips the product back until there is almost nothing left to leak.
Identity: Mullvad wins outright
Signing up to Mullvad requires no email address, no name and no personal data of any kind. You are issued a randomly generated account number and that is the entirety of your identity with them. You can pay in cash, posted in an envelope, or in Monero.
Proton requires an account, though it can be created with minimal information. On our privacy scoring Mullvad takes 9.9 and Proton 9.9 as well — but they earn it differently, and if your specific concern is that the provider should never know who you are, Mullvad is the only correct answer here.
Verifiability: effectively tied
Both publish open-source clients. Both have been through repeated third-party audits. Both support reproducible builds — we compiled Proton's Linux client from source and matched the published hash, and Mullvad has a long record of the same.
Speed and usability: Proton, comfortably
Proton measured 898 Mbps nearby and 712 Mbps long-haul — the best intercontinental figure of the entire cycle. Mullvad measured 788 Mbps and 583 Mbps. Mullvad is not slow, but it is less consistent: reviewers repeatedly report significant variation between individual servers.
Proton also has 13,000 servers across 122 countries against Mullvad's roughly 700, ten device connections against five, and apps for platforms Mullvad does not cover at all.
Streaming: not close
Proton cleared five of six platforms. Mullvad cleared zero — and that is deliberate. The company does not buy the residential IP ranges that make geo-unblocking work, on privacy grounds, and says so openly on its own site. If you want to watch anything region-locked, Mullvad is simply not the product.
Mullvad finishes tenth in our ranking and several of us use it personally. It scores badly because streaming and value are weighted, not because the tunnel is weak.
The verdict
- Choose Mullvad if your threat model is real, if you need to pay without identifying yourself, or if you want flat honest pricing with no renewal trap.
- Choose Proton VPN if you want near-equivalent privacy in a product that is also fast, streams, covers more devices and has a free tier to trial.
For most readers asking this question, Proton is the better buy. For a smaller group who know exactly why they are asking, Mullvad is the only thing that will do.
