Proton Drive Review (2026)

Pricing (2026)

✓ Pricing re-verified 16 Oct 2026

Proton Free gives 5 GB. Drive Plus is $3.99 a month for 200 GB, marked 20% off $4.99 and billed at $47.88 every twelve months. Proton Unlimited is $9.99 for 500 GB and folds in the VPN, Mail and Calendar, billed at $119.88 a year. Proton Duo is $14.99 for 2 TB across two users at $179.88 a year, and Proton Family $23.99 for 3 TB and up to six.

Teams get Drive Professional at $7.99 per user a month for 1 TB each. The page carries its own currency selector with CHF, EUR and USD, so these are the US default rather than a conversion. The thing worth seeing in that ladder: Drive Plus is the only tier that is storage on its own — every step above it bundles the rest of Proton, so you are buying a suite the moment you need more than 200 GB. Plans change — always verify the live price on their site.

Category context: IT & Productivity. Across the 36 tools in this category that we researched with a public US-dollar price, the median entry price is about $15 a month (lowest paid plan as listed, per seat where the vendor prices per seat). Proton Drive’s entry price of $3.99 a month sits below that median. Compare pricing conditions in the Software Cost Atlas →

What the pricing page doesn’t say

The catch

Because Proton can't read your files, there's no server-side search inside documents. Previews and third-party integrations are more limited than Google Drive or Dropbox, and losing your credentials without recovery set up means losing data — by design. You trade convenience for the mathematical guarantee that nobody, including Proton, can look inside.

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What Proton Drive does

End-to-end encrypted cloud storage from a Swiss provider. Because Proton cannot read your files there is no server-side search inside documents, integrations are thinner, and losing your credentials without recovery loses the data.

What buyers report about Proton Drive

Hands-on: tested 2026-10-09Reported by buyers: Cloudwards, Reddit and storage-review sites, read August 2026

Themes from the buyer-review sites listed at the foot of this page, read in August 2026. We tested Proton Drive ourselves on 2026-10-09, but one test is a narrow sample, so here is what other buyers report. We summarise it here because the complaints are usually the part a vendor page leaves out.

Two people should never buy two accounts

Proton publishes six plans and the per-gigabyte rate is not the story in any of them — the seat count is. Read on their own site in euros from a Dutch address, with annual billing on. Drive Plus is 200 GB at €3.99 a month, and Proton Unlimited 500 GB at €9.99. Duo is 2 TB for up to two users at €14.99, and Family 3 TB for up to six at €23.99.

Drive Professional is €7.99 per user for 1 TB each. Free is 5 GB. The sharpest finding sits between Unlimited and Duo. Two people buying an Unlimited account each pay €19.98 a month and get 500 GB apiece — one terabyte between them. Duo is €14.99 for the pair and gives them two terabytes. That is 25% less money for twice the storage, and there is no scenario in which two Unlimited accounts is the right purchase.

If you are a couple, a co-founder pair or two people sharing a household bill, this is the entire decision. The same shape repeats one step up. Three separate Unlimited accounts cost €29.97; Family covers up to six people for €23.99. So from three users onward Family is cheaper than buying individually, and it stays cheaper all the way to six. At that point it works out at €4.00 per person, close to what Drive Plus alone costs, except that everyone also gets VPN, Mail, Calendar and Pass.

That makes Drive Professional the plan to look at hardest. At €7.99 per user it is exactly double Family's per-head cost at six people, and what the doubling buys is the business wrapper — team administration — rather than storage or features. For a six-person company that is €47.94 a month against €23.99. Worth it if you need central control of accounts and offboarding; a straightforward overpayment if you are six people who trust each other.

One last thing the pricing page will not point out. The monthly penalty is not uniform. Drive Plus, Family and Professional all cost almost exactly 25% more billed monthly. Unlimited costs 30% more, and Duo 33% more — and those are the two plans most people end up on. If you are going to pay monthly, know that you are paying the steepest surcharge precisely where the surcharge is worst.

Every plan carries a 30-day money-back guarantee, so the annual commitment is less binding than it looks.

What we found running Proton Drive ourselves

How to actually use Proton Drive

Set up account recovery before you upload anything. Proton cannot read your files, which is the product, and the direct consequence is that losing your credentials without a recovery method means losing the data — by design, with no support ticket that fixes it. This is the one step that is genuinely irreversible if skipped. Then test the trade before you commit. Because encryption is end-to-end there is no server-side search inside your documents, previews are more limited than Google Drive or Dropbox, and third-party integrations are thinner.

Put a realistic working folder in the free 5 GB and try to find something in it the way you normally would. If that works for you, everything else here is arithmetic; if it does not, no tier fixes it. Count the people before you pick the plan, because that is what the ladder is built on: one person on Plus or Unlimited, two on Duo (never two Unlimited accounts), three to six on Family, and Professional only if you need central administration.

Check the currency switch too — the page serves CHF, EUR and USD, and the figures above are the euro ones. Every plan has 30 days' money back, so the annual rate is the sensible default once the plan is right.

Proton Drive vs Tresorit, side by side

Where a vendor publishes a price, its column shows the entry price we read and when; where it does not, the column says so rather than filling in a figure from elsewhere. We do not average them into a score.

Proton Drive →

What it costs

Free (5GB); Drive Plus $3.99/mo for 200GB (20% off $4.99), billed $47.88 a year

Price read on

16 Oct 2026

The catch

Because Proton can't read your files, there's no server-side search inside documents, previews and integrations are more limited, and lost credentials without recovery mean lost data.

Best for

privacy-conscious individuals and businesses that want genuinely end-to-end-encrypted storage from a Swiss provider, ideally as part of the wider Proton suite

Tresorit →

What it costs

No single entry price; the full review breaks the pricing down.

Price read on

16 Oct 2026

The catch

You pay the Swiss-E2EE premium — noticeably above mainstream clouds and above Proton Drive per GB — and the encryption trade-offs are inherent.

Best for

businesses and professionals with confidentiality obligations (legal, health, finance) that need end-to-end-encrypted storage, granular sharing controls and compliance features

Both names above are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you. Neither changes what this table says.

The natural comparison is Tresorit or Google Drive — Tresorit is the enterprise E2EE peer; Google Drive is the convenience default — Proton wins on suite value per euro for individuals. Weigh it against Dropbox on the job you actually need done.

Visit Proton Drive →

Frequently asked questions

What does Proton Drive cost?

Read on 17 August 2026 from a Dutch address, so in euros: Free gives 5 GB; Drive Plus is €3.99 a month on annual billing (€47.88 a year) for 200 GB; Proton Unlimited is €9.99 (€119.88) for 500 GB plus VPN, Mail, Calendar and Pass. The page switches between CHF, EUR and USD, so your figure depends on where you buy.

Which plan makes sense if two of us need the storage?

Proton Duo, which our previous write-up missed entirely: 2 TB shared across up to 2 users at €14.99 a month on annual billing (€179.88 a year), against €9.99 for Unlimited's 500 GB for one. For a household of more, Family gives 3 TB across up to 6 users at €23.99. For a business it is Drive Professional at €7.99 per user for 1 TB each.

Is the free tier usable?

It is 5 GB, which is enough to try the encryption and the document editor and not much else — a phone's photo roll will fill it. What you do get free is the full end-to-end encryption and the online document and spreadsheet editor, so it works as a genuine trial of the privacy model rather than a crippled demo.

Is this a hands-on review of Proton Drive?

Yes. We tested Proton Drive ourselves on 2026-10-09; the section above says what we tested, what we found and what we did not test, and where a figure comes from the vendor's own documentation instead. Most of our reviews are researched rather than run; we say which is which. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we earn a commission only if you sign up, at no cost to you.

Others in this category

Reviewed it & productivity tools that share ground with Proton Drive — comparable in what they do, not drop-in swaps:

TresoritFreshserviceQuickSignerCloudwaysFastmailall 58 reviews →