Use Mullvad, unless you absolutely require port forwarding.

Mullvad is currently highly trusted by the community. If you lost your trust in proton I recommend switching back to it.

Mullvad is cheaper, and probably a bit more trusted, but Proton has port forwarding. Currently I use Mullvad. I don’t like the Mullvad’s 5 device limit on Wireguard clients though. You can only have 5 devices added to the account, no matter if just 1 or all 5 are currently connected. And after using Wireguard once, I don’t want to use OpenVPN again where wg can fully replace it.
Both support cash payments, though Proton makes me feel like they expect it for larger sums of cash:

We cannot be responsible for lost shipments, so we strongly recommend sending your payment using a service that provides a tracking number so you can track the shipment. It’s also helpful to notify us that you’re sending us cash in the mail, so we know to expect it.

While Mullvad asks you not to use registered mail nor send larger amounts of cash. I feel like the latter is implied by asking to notify them. I suppose “Hey, I am sending you 10 bucks via mail.” is not what’s expected here.

What I absolutely like is the fair pricing. It’s same price no matter how much time you buy, whether it’s 1 month, a year or two. Even their direct competitor IVPN does this crap (and so does Proton). I value that quite a bit.

So currently Mullvad is winning for me.

Isn’t mullvad better and cheaper?

Mullvad is very trusted by community generally they haven’t given any reason to mistrust for now that I know of. They don’t allow port forwarding anymore though so that’s something to keep in mind if you need that.

Mullvad is better imo, unless you need port forwarding. I’m currently using Proton since I pay for Unlimited for that encrypted drive space, and using their VPN saves me money since I just think of the payment as just for Proton Drive. This is a change I made just a few days ago though, for about a year I’ve paid for both Proton Unlimited and Mullvad, and I legitimately prefer Mullvad over Proton, it just made sense for me to switch money wise. Can’t really go wrong between the two imo.

they’re both good but I use mullvad only because I use proton for email and I don’t want one company to have both my emails and web traffic

Huge fan of Mullvad for the work around respecting users privacy. They are implementing ways of skewing AI-guided traffic analysis. VPN encrypts your data but companies are starting to use AI to look at traffic patterns and help determine what that data is. I won’t pretend to understand it completely so I’d recommend reading their blog about it.

I’ve been eyeing PIA for it’s price and the inclusion of port forwarding but not sure if anyone has experience with PIA.

IMHO Mullvad

Mullvad only!!!

Experience wise i’ve had a better time with mullvad at every corner when it comes to vpns than proton.

Protons still a respectable company i’d say but there focus is gonna become spread more thin while mullvads gonna continue providing a stable and simple experience.

Plus mullvads never gonna confuse you when it comes to pricing unlike proton, no extra time spent finding the difference between a monthly and annual subscription.

I switched from ProtonVPN Free to Mullvad last month when I needed to torrent something. ProtonVPN Free doesn’t allow P2P traffic, and Mullvad is cheaper than ProtonVPN Pro (or whatever it’s called these days).

The AI doesn’t seem too bad, but I’d prefer it not be there at all. I have no opinions about the crypto, as there is a legitimate use for it, but I have no use for the wallet as I have had a lot of trouble getting ahold of any cryptocurrency.

I’m also happier with the company and the experience. I paid with a card, but I liked that they accept cash and Monero.

On top of that, nobody seems to have anything bad to say about Mullvad. Privacy? They keep no logs and are pretty damn transparent. Limitations? No port forwarding, but I can just use Windscribe if I need that. Clients? They don’t exclude Linux or arm64, and BSD users can just use wireguard-go or something.

There’s also a story when one time the Polisen came to Mullvad HQ with a search warrant, but had to leave after discovering that there were no logs kept, and therefore nothing they could do.

Furthermore, they’ve made my favourite web browser (which is essentially Tor Browser without Tor) by collaborating with the Tor Project. It’s one of only three browsers which give good results in Cover Your Tracks (although I have not yet tested anything with CreepJS; and I tend to change the settings in everything, so your mileage may vary).

TL;DR: I recommend Mullvad over ProtonVPN, but not because of the AI or crypto.

I also recommend Posteo over ProtonMail, Filen over Proton Drive, Bitwarden over Proton Pass, and I stopped using Proton before we got Proton Wallet.

I used ProtonVPN for years. I use MullvadVPN. Both are totally fine, in my experience. I left ProtonVPN because I couldn’t get port forwarding on Linux, and then less than two months after I did that Mullvad removed that feature, so that’s how it goes.

Mullvad

Mullvad/IVPN for their pay with cash policies