Proton Mail – European email provider
Encrypted email from the team behind ProtonVPN. No ads, no tracking, servers in Switzerland.
Quick facts
Calendar, VPN, Pass and Drive share the same login, so switching from Gmail also means picking up a full privacy suite in one go, with apps as polished as Google's own.
The free plan gives just 1 GB of storage and a single address, so anyone with years of email history will need to upgrade to keep it all.
Why does it score 80?
Proton is incorporated in Geneva, Switzerland – an EFTA country rather than a full EU member state, so it scores just below EU-based rivals here.
Backed by venture investors, but no single non-EU parent company holds a controlling stake in Proton.
Proton runs its own data centres in Switzerland rather than renting space from a third-party cloud provider, so mail stays on infrastructure it fully owns.
Some Proton apps are open source, but the core mail client isn't fully open sourced or independently audited yet, so accountability is only partial.
See how they compare
Proton MailWhat does it replace?
Gmail 
Outlook 
Yahoo Mail 
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