Best VPN to use in 2022 that does not break your wallet

Product review: Comparison between ProtonVPN and Mullvad VPN to see which one takes the cake

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After a long hunt for the best VPN that serves the purpose of streaming, browsing, shopping, and most importantly that keeps me safe from prying eyes, I have reached a conclusion and would love to share my observations and findings with you.

Today we will be reviewing 2 big players in the VPN industry, ProtonVPN, and Mullvad. There are many other players in the market like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, IVPN, SurfShark, Windscribe, etc. However, they all fall short somewhere or the other. I like to test VPNs in different environments and use cases. Hopefully, this review will help you to gain a better insight and will help you make the correct decision without any hesitation.

Monthly Cost : money! money!

The cheapest plan in Mullvad is $5.50. Mullvad never offers a discount to its users and has offered the same price for many years. With the constant addition of new servers and reliable service, the $5.50 price is well justified.

The cheapest plan for ProtonVPN is $0.00 but there is a catch. The free plan of Proton comes with limited servers and limited speed. ProtonVPN has 3 priced tiers: Basic, Plus, and Visionary. Multihop connections, high-speed VPN, Tor over VPN, Secure Core, and Streaming Service Support are available in the last 2 tiers only. All these tiers' prices are $4, $8, and $24 respectively

So for the first round, Mullvad takes the win.

Security History : any criminal offence?

Security history of both ProtonVPN and Mullvad has been 'Good'. Both companies take their security seriously and hence no leaked user data or breaches were found.

Both companies claim for no logs policy but individuals like me cannot verify it independently so ultimately it falls over the end-user and if YOU as an end-user trust the company then it should be ok to go forward and use the product.

OpenVPN/Wireguard: choice is always better.

Both services offers OpenVPN and Wireguard. However, ProtonVPN was a little late to join the band. As Wireguard is new and fast protocol so my primary focus was on testing Wireguard.

Speed difference can be easily observed when switching from OpenVPN to Wireguard in ProtonVPN but in Mullvad difference observed is not much as both protocols have good speed.

Support for Wireguard is extensive in Mullvad while in ProtonVPN it feels kind of missing. So for this round, Mullvad is a clear winner.

Killswitch: I love my security...

Having Killswitch is a must for any VPN. Let's imagine a scenario where you are living in a heavily censored country and you are journalist by profession. You got your hands on Top Secret documents and wants to expose the evil powers that are acting behind the curtain. You almost shared everything online and after sharing everything you realized that your VPN was disconnected and along with sharing Top Secret documents you also shared your location, Ip address and much more.

I can imagine a sweat bead forming on your forehead. Don't worry, to avoid exactly this, companies like ProtonVPN and Mullvad offers kill switch. So by chance if your internet connection drops and reconnects then in that downtime your device will not connect to internet and will not expose your identity to anyone over the internet.

While using ProtonVPN sometimes my connection will drop. That type of drop was never observed with Mullvad. Also, Mullvad has an inbuilt app killswitch and is ON by default so the non-tech-savvy end user can also enjoy privacy without making any compromise. So for this round, Mullvad is a clear winner.

2FA: Double up the security!

2-factor authentication is kind of very common security practice nowadays. Almost all major financial institutions, e-commerce websites, entertainment, and streaming services provide it. 2-factor authentication also provides end-user with peace of mind that his/her account is not just sitting behind some password.

ProtonVPN provides 2FA for added security. Users can go into settings and enable it and then use authenticator app to generate a code. However, Mullvad VPN does not provide 2FA to its users. So ProtonVPN takes the score for this round.

Anonymous Sign Up: No texty-texty (:

MullvadVPN offers users to sign up anonymously. Users can visit the website and generate an account number. This account number is randomly generated and is the only identifier of the account. Users can log in with this account number as no password is required to log in. Needless to say, protecting this account number becomes your number one priority.

ProtonVPN requires an email to sign up and so it is not truly anonymous. In some scenarios, it has also asked for a phone number to verify so that makes it less anonymous as phone numbers and other Personal Identifiers can be used to track users. Users can pay through crypto/cash for both services if they want full anonymity.

So finally, Mullvad takes the lead in the race.

Final Verdict: may the best one win!

Both VPNs are good and do their job pretty well over other VPNs in the market. It is like a trade that the end-user has to make between 2FA and Anonymity. If 2FA is not your priority then Mullvad VPN is a good choice over ProtonVPN. Personally, I like using Mullvad for its attractive price structure, features, speed, and anonymity.

What are your thoughts? Feel free to share them with me and you can always contact me on my website. Thank you very much for visiting dhyeyit.tech