Proton AG is a

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

technology company A technology company (or tech company) is a company that focuses primarily on the manufacturing, support, research and development of—most commonly computing, telecommunication and consumer electronics–based—technology-intensive products and ...

offering

privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...

-focused online services and

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

. It is majority owned by the non-profit Proton Foundation.

Products

In May 2022, Proton updated the visuals, user interface, and logos of all its products to ensure a consistent design and launched a new subscription plan known as Proton Unlimited that includes all Proton services for US$9.99 per month, while still keeping individual single product plans.

Proton Mail

Proton Mail was released as a public beta on 16 May 2014 as an end-to-end encrypted

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

service after a year of

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...

, by a group of scientists who met at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

. Proton Mail 2.0 was released 14 August 2015, with

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

front-end clients and a rewritten

codebase In software development, a codebase (or code base) is a collection of source code used to build a particular software system, application, or software component. Typically, a codebase includes only human-written source code system files; thu ...

. On 18 July 2024, Proton launched a private AI writing assistant for Proton Mail. Scribe can help write, proofread, shorten, or formalize emails. Users can run the AI assistant locally on their devices or through Proton's servers. As of 2024, Proton Scribe is only available for Proton Visionary, Family, Duo and Lifetime subscription plans. Proton business users can add Proton Scribe as a paid add-on to their existing business subscriptions.

Proton VPN

After over a year of crowdfunding, Proton Mail released Proton VPN on 22 May 2017, a secure

VPN Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network (i.e. any computer network which is not the public Internet) across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted (as they are not c ...

service provider A service provider (SP) is an organization that provides services, such as consulting, legal, real estate, communications, storage, and processing services, to other organizations. Although a service provider can be a sub-unit of the organization t ...

. It has a no-logging policy, is located in Switzerland, and has

DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed name service that provides a naming system for computers, services, and other resources on the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various informatio ...

and

WebRTC WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a free and open-source project providing web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via application programming interfaces (APIs). It allows audio and video communication and ...

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...

leakage prevention. It is accessible online through

Tor Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to: Places * Toronto, Canada ** Toronto Raptors * Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain * Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city * Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano * Tor Bay, Devon, England * Tor ...

, the clearnet, and its mobile applications. On 21 January 2020, Proton announced that Proton VPN would now be

, to allow independent

security experts Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercion). Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems, or any other entity or phen ...

to analyze it, becoming the first

service to do so, simultaneously announcing that an independent security audit had been conducted. On 1 May 2020, Proton VPN reported that they had a total of 809 servers, located in 50 different countries, all owned and operated by itself. By 19 February 2025, the company had a total of 11,496 servers, located in 117 countries, with all new and preexisting servers operated and owned by Proton.

Proton Calendar

Proton Calendar is a fully encrypted calendar app.

Proton Drive

Proton Drive is a

cloud storage Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which data, said to be on "the cloud", is stored remotely in logical pools and is accessible to users over a network, typically the Internet. The physical storage spans multiple servers (so ...

solution with end-to-end encryption, launched in September 2022 after being in beta testing since 2020.

SimpleLogin

SimpleLogin is an

email alias An email alias is a email address used for forwarding. Term The term ''alias expansion'' is sometimes used to indicate a specific mode of email forwarding, thereby implying a more generic meaning of the term ''email alias'' as an address that ...

service that allows users to use email aliases to protect their privacy online and protect their main inbox from

spam Spam most often refers to: * Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ...

and

phishing Phishing is a form of social engineering and a scam where attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information or installing malware such as viruses, worms, adware, or ransomware. Phishing attacks have become increasingly sophisticate ...

attacks. SimpleLogin also provides additional security features such as PGP encryption and

two-factor authentication Multi-factor authentication (MFA; two-factor authentication, or 2FA) is an electronic authentication method in which a user is granted access to a website or Application software, application only after successfully presenting two or more distin ...

on a variety of platforms including the web, mobile apps and browser extensions. After being acquired by Proton in early 2022, SimpleLogin functionality is integrated into Proton Mail, Proton Pass, and subtly in the whole ecosystem, allowing the Proton community to hide their email addresses with SimpleLogin.

Proton Pass

Released for public beta on 20 April 2023, Proton Pass is a cloud based

password manager A password manager is a software program to prevent password fatigue by Random password generator, automatically generating, Autofill, autofilling and storing Password, passwords. It can do this for Application software, local applications or web ...

solution with end-to-end encryption. As of June 28, 2023, it is available to all Proton users. It also allows users to generate email aliases via SimpleLogin, however uses its own domains instead of the SimpleLogin ones.

Standard Notes/Proton Docs

Standard Notes
is an end-to-end encrypted note-taking application, which was announced to be acquired by Proton on April 10, 2024. The team that created Standard Notes worked with Proton and released a document taking service named Proton Docs.

Proton Wallet

Proton Wallet is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

cryptocurrency wallet A cryptocurrency wallet is a device, physical medium, program or an online service which stores the Public-key cryptography, public and/or private keys for cryptocurrency transactions. In addition to this basic function of storing the keys, a cr ...

with

end-to-end encryption End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a method of implementing a secure communication system where only communicating users can participate. No one else, including the system provider, telecom providers, Internet providers or malicious actors, can ...

to ensure that no one else has access to the wallet encryption keys.

Location and security

Both Proton Mail and Proton VPN are located in Switzerland and Swiss privacy laws apply. Proton AG complies with law enforcement requests to help identify Proton users if the request is valid under Swiss law, as in the case of a climate activist sought by French authorities in 2021. Proton AG stated in 2023 to have complied to 5971 requests and contested 407 orders out of 6378 orders for user information. While product-related data is usually end-to-end encrypted or not stored, certain account information can be passed to authorities with a valid court order, like client IP addresses (if logging is enabled) or recovery email.

Data centers

Proton Mail maintains and owns its own server hardware and network in order to avoid utilizing a third party. It maintains two data centers, one in

Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...

and another in

Attinghausen Attinghausen is a village and a municipality in the canton of Uri in Switzerland. History Attinghausen is first mentioned in 1240 as ''Attingenhusen'' by the HDS. Geography Attinghausen has an area, , of . Of this area, 35.3% is used for agricu ...

(in the former K7 military bunker under of granite rock) as a backup. Each data center uses load balancing across web, mail, and

SQL Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced ''S-Q-L''; or alternatively as "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling s ...

servers, redundant power supply,

hard drives A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

with

full disk encryption Disk encryption is a technology which protects information by converting it into code that cannot be deciphered easily by unauthorized people or processes. Disk encryption uses disk encryption software or hardware to encrypt every bit of data tha ...

, and exclusive use of

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and other open-source software. In December 2014, Proton Mail joined the

RIPE NCC RIPE NCC (''Réseaux IP Européens'' Network Coordination Centre) is the regional Internet registry (RIR) for Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia. Its headquarters are in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with a branch office in Dubai, U ...

in an effort to have more direct control over the surrounding Internet infrastructure. As of December 2024, Proton operates data centers in Switzerland, Germany, and Norway.

Structure

Proton is headquartered in

Plan-les-Ouates Plan-les-Ouates () is a municipality of the canton of Geneva in Switzerland. History Plan-les-Ouates is first mentioned in 1537 as ''Plan-des-Vuattes''. In 1851 it became an independent municipality when the municipality of Compesières dissolve ...

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

Ownership

Since June 2024, the controlling shareholder of Proton AG is the non-profit Proton Foundation. The members of the Proton Foundation board of trustees in June 2024 were Andy Yen, Antonio Gambardella,

Carissa Véliz Carissa Véliz is a Mexican, Spanish, and British philosopher. She is an associate professor of philosophy and ethics at the University of Oxford (Institute for Ethics in AI, Faculty of Philosophy). Life and career Carissa Véliz studied ...

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow a ...

and Dingchao Lu.

Funding

Proton AG was initially funded through crowdfunding and now is through its paid subscription. The company has been partially funded by FONGIT (the Fondation Genevoise pour l'Innovation Technologique) and the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

. In March 2021, Proton confirmed that the shares held by Charles Rivers Ventures had been transferred to FONGIT.

Acquisitions

On April 8, 2022, Proton acquired French

ing startup SimpleLogin. Proton has stated SimpleLogin will continue to function as a standalone service and the SimpleLogin team will continue to add new features and functionality. On April 12, 2024, Proton acquired note taking app Standard Notes.

Public policy positions

Proton in 2022 was considered a supporter of the

Digital Markets Act The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is an EU regulation that aims to make the digital economy fairer and more contestable. The regulation entered into force on 1 November 2022 and became applicable, for the most part, on 2 May 2023. The DMA aims t ...

. In September 2020, Proton helped found the

Coalition for App Fairness The Coalition for App Fairness (CAF) is a coalition comprised by companies, who aim to reach a fairer deal for the inclusion of their apps into the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. The organization's executive director is Meghan DiMuzio ...

, which aims to gain better conditions for the inclusion of their apps in app stores. In 2022, Proton supported the

American Innovation and Choice Online Act The American Innovation and Choice Online (AICO) is a proposed antitrust bill in the United States Congress. The legislation was introduced by David Cicilline ( D- RI) in the House of Representatives as the American Choice and Innovation Onlin ...

. In December 2023, Proton's founder publicly vowed to challenge the Australian eSafety Commission in court rather than comply with demands to weaken Proton Mail's privacy features. In February 2025, in response to Apple's removal of Advanced Data Protection encryption from iCloud in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

in response to government demands for a backdoor, Proton published a statement saying that the company would never build an encryption backdoor, and that it wouldn't open a "front door" either by removing end-to-end encryption. In March 2025, the company wrote to the European Commission calling for a "buy European" requirement for public sector procurement in Europe.

References

{{File hosting service Companies based in Geneva Software companies established in 2014 Software companies of Switzerland Swiss companies established in 2014