Proton Drive

End-to-end encrypted cloud storage from the Swiss makers of Proton Mail: you store, sync and share files with zero-knowledge privacy, meaning not even Proton can read them. It is the natural choice if you already use Proton Mail or Proton VPN, since it slots into the same privacy ecosystem and account. More broadly, it is for anyone who wants a mainstream-feeling drive whose default is that the provider cannot see your files.

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Drive Plus, with 200 GB, is US$3.99/mo. Above it, Proton Unlimited bundles 500 GB together with premium Mail, VPN and Pass — the better-value option if you want the whole Proton ecosystem rather than storage alone. There is also a genuine free tier of up to 5 GB. So the decision is really whether you need only Drive, in which case Plus is enough, or the full privacy suite, where Unlimited earns its higher price.

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Yes. Proton Drive uses end-to-end, zero-knowledge encryption by default, with open-source apps that have been independently audited, Swiss privacy law behind it and a non-profit foundation structure owning the company. Privacy here is architectural rather than just a policy promise — the design itself prevents Proton from reading your files.

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Yes — there is a genuine free tier with up to 5 GB of end-to-end encrypted storage, with no ads and no data mining. It is enough for documents and modest photo backups; once you outgrow it, the Plus or Unlimited plans add far more space and, with Unlimited, the rest of the Proton suite.

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For privacy, decisively — Google can read your files, Proton cannot. For features, Google still wins: real-time document co-editing, 15 GB free and deep Android integration that Proton does not match. The practical answer for many people is to split the two: keep collaborative documents in Google Drive, and put anything genuinely private in Proton Drive. Which is ‘better’ depends on whether your priority that moment is collaboration or confidentiality.

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It is young — launched in 2022 — and it shows: the sync clients and sharing features are still maturing, there is no document co-editing, and the free tier is smaller than Google's. Its servers are in Europe, so large transfers from Australia take longer than from a provider with closer infrastructure. In short, you are paying for the strongest privacy pedigree in the category and accepting that the convenience features have not fully caught up with the mainstream clouds yet.

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