I just updated Protonvpn app and saw that now it supports 5 free countries but it does not let you choose which country you want to connect to in free version. It only says FASTEST.
Hi! We made some changes on the Free plan to improve connection speed:
- We’ve added new free servers in Romania and Poland (on top of the US, Netherlands and Japan).
- Now, you are auto-connected to the fastest server available by default (which is preferred by 99% of users).
- Load balancing formula has been improved.
The default connection will give you the best experience available. You can, however, choose to change to another randomly allocated server.
If you want to access country-specific content, we recommend checking out our paid plans, where you can choose between 70+ countries: . Our free VPN has no ads, no logs, and is as secure & private as our paid plans. It’s made possible thanks to the support from our paid users, NOT your data. With that in mind, certain features are necessarily available only on our paid plans.
The discussions related to this are taking place here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/1axw6xz/why_did_the_devs_remove_the_ability_to_choose_a/
They did not run ads, they did not sell your data, they mainly get their revenue from subscriptions, and they respect your privacy unlike some other big companies like MS or Google.
I think it’s kinda understandable why they do this.
This has been around for some time now. They even commented on the issue to explain why this was a thing. Honestly, it’s very generous of them that they care about all of their customers, whether it be paying or otherwise.
It still meets the requirements of a vpn in that your network/ip is private.
They aren’t charity. How many other free vpn services are out there? If you want all the features, pay for it like the rest of us.
You could I dunno try paying like a lot of us do. Or you could use a cheap free companies that sell your data and doesn’t actually protect you.
Why would you stop using protonvpn because of this?
Beggars can’t be choosers. Pay for protonvpn or use some other vpn service with a free tier.
They did it to reduce pressure on servers.
Since Proton isn’t profiting(no ads, no usage cap,no selling info) from free profiles, they have no other choice but to randomize the server based on speeds.
So far so good for me…consodering it’s free, lol
You are not entitled to whine since you are not a customer.
Pay for it.
I am not willing to accept that also free users are able to connect everywhere.
You can use VPN, you can browse secure.
Don’t complain that you don’t have all possibilities as a free user.
Honestly overall I don’t mind the fact that you can’t choose your specific country as most people don’t care (and if you do then you can just keep cycling until you get the country you want). The only thing that I didn’t like was the fact that split tunneling on pc was made into a prem feature. These drawbacks are annoying but hey at least it’s a vpn that’s ad free, doesn’t steal your data, and works pretty well without paying.
For free users like myself, yeah it’s of course a big downside. But I appreciate for years protons free plan has been amazing and I’m sure it’s good for those who choose to pay for it
You can still change the country with the free version. It just doesn’t let you pick which one to start from
Bro am I reading someone complaining about a FREE vpn?
There not alot free vpn app that doesnt sell ur data secretly or is infested with ads and sells ur data
It’s fine and IMO more beneficial to free users. It does a lot better at managing server bloat instead of everyone getting auto placed in the same servers. While you can’t manually select specific locations anymore your able to randomly jump around every like 90 secs.
My only complaint is split tunneling is now subscription only which sucks for phones since some apps refuse to work with a VPN.
It still gives you an option to change the current server to a new one if it helps.
Using the “Fastest” server assures you get the best performance from the free service. Unless you’re trying to stream out-of-region content, which isn’t a supported use case on the free tier, this is the best way to use ProtonVPN.
If you’re trying to decide if ProtonVPN is worth subscribing to circumvent regional streaming content, you should pay for one month to a VPN Plus subscription then decide if it’s worth paying for a longer term. If you’re legitimately financially unable to pay for VPN service but need VPN to avoid oppression, censorship or retaliation, the it should make no difference what country you connect through, as long as you get the fastest connection available.