VPNs are primarily tools that are designed to protect your privacy. But as more and more people embrace VPNs, the number of features offered by VPN providers keeps growing and growing. 

It gets to the point where distinguishing one VPN provider from another becomes very difficult.

So in this post, we decided to compare two high-quality VPN providers, ProtonVPN and ExpressVPN to see which one we could recommend over the other, and perhaps help some people make a more informed decision when choosing a VPN provider.

Name	ExpressVPN	ProtonVPN
Rating	9.0/10	9.0/10
User Friendliness Score	9	9
General features
Price per month (cheapest)	$8.32	$6.63
Simultaneous Connections	5	1/2/5/10 - based on subscription
Servers	3000	865
Countries	94	50
Allows torrenting / P2P	Yes	Yes
Streaming
Netflix	Yes	Yes
Hulu	Yes	Yes
Amazon Prime	Yes	Yes
Disney+	Yes	Yes
Security
Supports TOR	No	Yes
Split Tunneling	Yes	No
Router Support	Yes	Yes
Unlimited bandwidth	Yes	Yes
Refund Period	30 Days	30 Days
Free trial	No	Yes
Desktop Operating Software	Windows, MacOS, Linux	Windows, MacOS, Linux
Mobile Apps	iOS, Android	iOS, Android
Browser Extensions	Yes	No
VPN Protocols	IKEv2, OpenVPN, L2TP/IPSec, PPTP	IKEv2, OpenVPN
Encryption	AES-256	AES-256
DNS Leak Protection	Yes	Yes
VPN Kill-switch	Yes	Yes
Rent/Own Infrastructure	Rent	Both
Hacked	No	No
Malware/Ad Blocker	No	No
Privacy
Logging Policy	No-logging Policy	No-logging Policy
Privacy Policy	Good	Good
Jurisdiction	British Virgin Islands	Switzerland
Out of 14 eyes	Yes	Yes
Warrant Canary	No	No
Accepts Cryptocurrency	Yes	Yes
Sign-up Information Required	Only Valid Email	Only Valid Email
Speed (average)
Avg. Ping NY	23 ms	40 ms
Avg. Download NY	Over a 60 Mbps Network (Download): 60.76 Mbps	Over a 100 Mbps Network (Download): 95.19 Mbps
Avg. Upload NY	Over a 30 Mbps Network (Upload): 26.91 Mbps	Over a 30 Mbps Network (Upload): 8.56 Mbps

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1. Speed

We’re going to start by comparing ProtonVPN and ExpressVPN on speed.

VPNs inevitably create overhead, which in turn, can create slowdowns. 

A small slowdown is inevitable, but significant slowdowns shouldn’t happen. And by choosing a good VPN provider you should be able to avoid them.

ProtonVPN

Tested on a 100Mbps (Download) and 30Mbps (Upload) network

Server: U.S.A., New York

Average Download Speed: 90.42Mbps

Average Upload Speed: 35.60Mbps

ExpressVPN

Tested on a 60Mbps (Download) and 30Mbps (Upload) network

Server: U.S.A., New York

Average Download Speed: 60.76Mbps

Average Upload Speed: 26.91Mbps

The slowdown is measure by comparing the speed test results to the official bandwidth allocated by my ISP. And using that metric, we can see that both providers do quite well.

ProtonVPN does better on upload while ExpressVPN does better on download. In fact, the download speed over ExpressVPN is on par with my ISP’s allocated bandwidth.

However, were I to continue testing, the numbers would very likely go down. This is due to network volatility and you shouldn’t expect such stellar performance to be the norm.

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2. User-Friendliness

As I mentioned in the introduction, more and more people are using VPNs today than ever before. This means that VPNs are no longer a niche product for the geeky and the paranoid – they’ve gone mainstream. 

And that means that VPN providers will be competing on user-friendliness. 

And a big part of that will be providing native client applications that are designed to be usable by techies and non-techies alike. Ease of use is more important than ever.

ProtonVPN and ExpressVPN both provide official client apps to their users. While ExpressVPN also provides Chrome and Firefox browser extensions.

As far as customer support goes, I had no need to contact them for either provider while writing this ProtonVPN vs. ExpressVPN post. Everything just worked as expected.

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3. Streaming

Streaming services are overtaking traditional cableTV. Because of that, people started turning to VPNs in order to bypass geo-restrictions. 

Then certain service providers decided to close that loophole (cough, cough, Netflix…) by outright banning VPNs from their network. 

Since then, unblocking Netflix has become increasingly important for many VPN providers.

ExpressVPN and ProtonVPN both make the claim that they are streaming-friendly. They both claim to unblock Netflix. And both ProtonVPN and ExpressVPN provide support documents explaining how to do this. 

And they both deliver on that claim with no lag or buffering.

However, ProtonVPN can only unblock Netflix U.S., so it’s not as complete an “unlock” as with ExpressVPN.

Check out our Netflix reviews of ProtonVPN and ExpressVPN for more information.

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4. Security & Encryption

Let’s look at the VPN protocols supported by each provider.

ExpressVPN supports: 

• IKEv2/IPSec
• OpenVPN
• L2TP/IPSec
• PPTP

ProtonVPN supports:

• IKEv2/IPSec
• OpenVPN

Both providers support the AES-256 industry-standard cipher. This cipher has been tried & tested and has no known vulnerabilities.

On the protocol side, ProtonVPN supports only IKEv2 and OpenVPN, which are both deemed very secure. ExpressVPN, on the other hand, also supports weak and obsolete protocols, like L2TP/IPSec and PPTP. 

This is likely for advanced users with legacy requirements. But I still feel VPN providers should phase these out and stop supporting them.

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5. Logs & Privacy

Both providers put forth strong no-logging policies. Let’s see how they communicate this in their privacy policies?

Here’s an excerpt of ExpressVPN’s privacy policy:

"ExpressVPN is committed to protecting your privacy. We want you to understand what information we collect, what we don’t collect, and how we collect, use, and store information. We do not collect logs of your activity, including no logging of browsing history, traffic destination, data content, or DNS queries. We also never store connection logs, meaning no logs of your IP address, your outgoing VPN IP address, connection timestamp, or session duration". 

It is clear, contains no Legalese, and can be understood by non-techies.

Here’s a screenshot of ProtonVPN’s privacy policy:

The rest of the privacy policy goes into the information that they collect. And they collect more than ExpressVPN. 

If we turn to TorrentFreak’s Which VPN Providers Really Take Anonymity Seriously in 2020? guide, we find the following:

"Each time a user connects to the service, we only obtain a timestamp of the last successful login attempt. This gets overwritten each time a user successfully logs in. This does not contain any identifying information, such as IP addresses or locations. We retain this limited information to protect user accounts from password brute force attacks. However, we do not share any of this data with third parties". 

It’s possible to ensure a secure experience without logging connection timestamps. 

How do we know this? ExpressVPN offers a secure experience without logging this data point…

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6. Pricing

Let’s turn to pricing now. Below, I’ve listed the different packages, prices, and accepted payment methods for ProtonVPN and ExpressVPN:

ExpressVPN

Visit ExpressVPN (save 35%)

ExpressVPN offer three subscription terms:

• 12.95 USD for one month of service
• 59.95 USD for six months of service (works out to 9.99 USD per month)
• 99.95 USD for one year of service (works out to 8.32 USD per month)

Payment Methods

• Credit card
• PayPal
• Bitcoin
• UnionPay
• AliPay
• Interac

ProtonVPN

Visit ProtonVPN

ProtonVPN offers three subscription terms and a free plan:

• Free – 1 device, throttled speed, no other features included.
• Basic – 2 devices, full speed, access to P2P, no other features included.
• Plus – 5 devices, full speed, all services except ProtonMail included.
• Visionary – 10 devices, full speed, all services including ProtonMail.
• Each subscription is available on a monthly, yearly, or bi-yearly basis. The longer the term, the lower the price.

Basic: 

• 5$/month – monthly
• 4$/month – yearly
• 3.29$/month – bi-yearly

Plus:

• 10$/month – monthly
• 8$/month – yearly
• 6.63$/month – bi-yearly

Visionary:

• 30$/month – monthly
• 24$/month – yearly
• 19.96$/month – bi-yearly

Payment Methods

• Credit card
• Debit card
• PayPal
• Cash
• Bitcoin

Both providers have a 30-day money-back guarantee.

So this one is a mixed bag.

ProtonVPN is cheaper across the board, except for its Visionary plan, but their pricing structure is convoluted. I also feel that the basic plan should support more than two simultaneous connections.

The payment options accepted by ProtonVPN also include cash – which is great for anonymous payments, as it’s a lot simpler than using cryptocurrency.

ExpressVPN, on the other hand, is more expensive but has a much simpler pricing structure and the number of simultaneous connections remains the same across all subscriptions.

And while ExpressVPN does accept Bitcoin payments, they do not accept cash, which is too bad.

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7. Torrenting

Both providers are P2P-friendly. ExpressVPN doesn’t really mention torrenting on their website, but it is allowed on all of their servers.

ProtonVPN provides dedicated P2P servers, which are clearly marked in ProtonVPN’s server list. Make sure you’re connected to one of ProtonVPN’s dedicated P2P servers or you will be disconnected, as they explain in a support document.

I tested both providers and I was downloading torrents within seconds, over both providers’ networks. I got fast and lag-free downloads over both.

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8. Other Features

• ExpressVPN operates diskless servers

• ProtonVPN supports Secure Core multi-hop servers
• ProtonVPN supports Tor over VPN

Standout Features

ExpressVPN

• Diskless Servers: All of ExpressVPN’s servers run from volatile memory (RAM), not from disk. That’s what they mean by “diskless servers”. If a server runs from RAM and a vulnerability is found on that server, all the provider needs to do is reboot the server and it boots up in its original state (pre-vulnerability). This is a very good security feature which may be one of the reasons ExpressVPN has never been hacked (so far).

ProtonVPN

• Secure Core: ProtonVPN supports multiple server hops through a feature they call Secure Core. Secure Core is a feature that routes your traffic through a Secure Core of hardened, ProtonVPN-owned servers, before connecting you to the VPN server you chose when initiating your connection. This is great for privacy because the additional “hops” make you much harder to identify.
• Tor over VPN: Similar to Secure Core, ProtonVPN also supports a feature called Tor Over VPN servers. Tor over VPN servers will bounce your traffic from the VPN server over the Tor network. Your traffic will appear to come only from Tor, even though you’re over a VPN “underneath” Tor. The servers which support Tor Over VPN are clearly marked in ProtonVPN’s server lists, on their website, and in their apps.

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Conclusion: ProtonVPN vs ExpressVPN

And the winner Is…

We had 8 categories. The winner in each category gets one point. And both providers get 1 point in the event of a tie.

So the results are:

• Speed – (Tie)
• User-Friendliness – (ExpressVPN)
• Streaming – (ExpressVPN)
• Security & Encryption – (ProtonVPN)
• Logs and Privacy –  (ExpressVPN)
• Pricing – (ProtonVPN)
• Torrenting – (Tie)
• Other Features – (ProtonVPN)

So that’s 5 points for ExpressVPN and 4 points for ProtonVPN. 

As I imagined, it’s very close. And I have to reiterate that both of these VPN providers represent excellent choices. They are both trustworthy VPN providers who differ only slightly on features. 

So, as I said in the intro, it will come down to personal preference. Do you prefer diskless infrastructure or Tor over VPN? Either way, choosing between one of these two providers guarantees you won’t make a mistake.

ProtonVPN

ProtonGo With ProtonVPN if:

• You want to use Secure Core when connecting to a VPN server.
• You want Tor over VPN servers.
• You don’t mind having your connection timestamps logged.

Visit ProtonVPN

ExpressVPN

Go With ExpressVPN if:

• You want to connect to diskless VPN servers.
• You want to save a few bucks.
• You want a VPN provider who doesn’t keep any connection logs.

Visit ExpressVPN (save 35%)

For more information on these two VPN providers, check out our ExpressVPN and our ProtonVPN reviews.

Thanks for reading!