A side-by-side on jurisdiction, audit history, kill switch and what each service is genuinely good at.
Short answers, based on our own captures and the data on this site.
On the nearest-European route hide.me delivered 222 Mbps against Proton VPN's 262 Mbps (74% vs 89% of each baseline); on the US route 200 vs 126 Mbps. One run each, so treat small gaps as noise.
We captured hide.me playing Netflix. For Proton VPN we captured Netflix. Missing results mean not captured, not failed.
Same line and machine with a fresh baseline for each, but the server country and protocol can differ; the table lists them.
The screenshots and recordings for hide.me are on its tests pages. We publish captures only for the VPN each site is about.
| hide.me | Proton VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | €11.99/mo billed monthly, or as low as €2.69/mo on the 24+2-month plan (€69.99 billed every 26 months) – every plan carries a “renews at the same price” guarantee | Premium pricing, offset by one of the most usable unlimited-data free tiers in the category |
| Jurisdiction | Malaysia – outside the 5-Eyes, 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes intelligence-sharing alliances | Switzerland |
| Free plan | A genuine lifetime free plan – no ads, no data-selling, no throttling, capped monthly data | Unlimited-data free plan (limited server locations) |
| Simultaneous devices | Up to 10 simultaneous connections | 10 simultaneous connections on paid plans |
| Server footprint | 2,600+ servers in 92+ countries, rated up to 10 Gbps each | 20,000+ servers in 140+ countries |
| No-logs audit | Independently audited no-logs policy (Securitum, first audited 2015, re-audited yearly), a public transparency report published every year since 2013, and VPN Trust Initiative accreditation | Open-source apps with an openly published, publicly downloadable no-logs audit |
| Kill switch | Stealth Guard – a per-app kill switch that automatically cuts internet if the VPN drops, plus Multihop double-VPN routing and Dynamic Port Forwarding | System-wide and per-app kill switch (Advanced Kill Switch) |
Backed by the team behind Proton Mail, with open-source apps across the board and a no-logs audit that's publicly downloadable – no NDA required, unlike some rivals. On jurisdiction, Proton VPN is based in Switzerland. On audit history: open-source apps with an openly published, publicly downloadable no-logs audit
hide.me's no-logs policy has been independently audited every year since 2015 by Securitum, it publishes a transparency report every year going back to 2013, and it holds VPN Trust Initiative accreditation – a longer, more repeated verification history than most VPN reviews can point to. Its Malaysia jurisdiction sits outside the 5-Eyes, 9-Eyes and 14-Eyes alliances, and Stealth Guard's per-app kill switch automatically cuts your connection the instant the VPN tunnel drops.
If Proton VPN's specific strengths – backed by the team behind Proton Mail, with open-source apps across the board and a no-logs audit that's publicly downloadable – no NDA required, unlike some rivals – matter most to you, it's a reasonable pick. If a repeated, named third-party no-logs audit and a jurisdiction outside every major surveillance alliance are non-negotiable for your threat model, hide.me's track record is hard to match.
Both are genuinely privacy-first with independently audited no-logs claims. Proton VPN's Switzerland jurisdiction and open-source code are excellent, but hide.me's Malaysia jurisdiction sits outside the 14-Eyes alliance entirely, and its transparency reports date back further (2013 vs. Proton's more recent program). If open-source code matters most to you, pick Proton; if jurisdiction outside every major surveillance alliance matters most, hide.me has the edge.