Head to head
The gap
The security score is not a total of good things. It starts at 100 and eight channels each take a share of what is left, so one channel can settle a record on its own. Both records are drawn here on the same scale — the model’s own cap of 0.9 — rather than on a scale fitted to this pair, which would make every comparison look equally dramatic.
Line by line
Every field the contract publishes about a provider, in the contract’s own groups, including the rows where the two agree — a table that printed only differences would invent a disagreement, and one that printed only the interesting rows would be us choosing what is interesting. Open a group to read its rows; each one says how many it holds and how many of them the two records answer differently.
A green cell means the methodology itself prices that value below the other one, not that we prefer it. Rows the model does not price carry no mark at all: price is never marked, because nothing in the model says cheaper is safer, and neither is coverage, platform count or devices. Where a value was never established the cell says so instead of showing a zero.
What actually happened
Other pairs
Pairs within the top ten get a page — 80 comparisons in all. Records below that are not paired here: a comparison earns a page where the choice between the two is a real one, and that choice is made near the top of the register.
2 documented demands, none of which produced data
Security
Usability
Rank 10 of 68 in the register
Not published · Commercial VPN
Exits in 25 countries
No demand on the public record
Security
Usability
Rank 1 of 68 in the register
Switzerland · Commercial VPN
Exits in 147 countries
Notes
On the record as a whole.
The Securitum engagement (20 Apr–7 May 2026, nine person-days, whitebox) inspected four production servers across four of CactusVPN's ~25 listed server countries and the VPN client's connection behaviour (including a Linux app used for testing, which is not among the platforms the downloads page currently lists — apparently manual/legacy client access rather than a listed product).
The report is a bespoke Securitum security assessment, not an ISAE 3000 or SOC 2 engagement, so V07/V15 record that rather than guessing an assurance tier.
Pricing carries a renewal-rate guarantee: the annual ($70/yr) and 2-year ($95/2yr) plans are both stated to renew at the same locked price "for life," which is unusual among providers in this catalogue and is not a lifetime one-time-fee scheme (X07=no).
On the record as a whole.
The 2021 Swiss order that compelled prospective logging targeted Proton Mail, not the VPN, and is deliberately absent from P12: charging the VPN for a sibling product's order would be a fact about Proton AG, not about this service.
U08 is all_platforms because the support document gives enabling steps for Windows, macOS, Linux (GUI and CLI), Android and iOS/iPadOS — every platform with an app. The same document states two limitations that the value cannot carry and this note can: on macOS the real IP may be exposed briefly while switching servers, and on iOS some Apple service DNS requests can bypass the tunnel with the kill switch on.
U04b_price_yearly records the first-term charge on the 1-year VPN Plus plan: $53.88 for the first 12 months ($4.49/month), stated on the pricing page beside its own renewal line — "then renews at $83.88 every 12 months" ($6.99/month) — which is not the field's value.
Recent changes
No change logged on this record
Open questions
Still open on this record.
Jurisdiction. The about-us page says CactusVPN "started as a small company in Moldova" but that is company narrative, not a registration statement, and the Terms of Service state no governing law or incorporation country at all; the Securitum report names the client only as "Cactus VPN LLC" with no jurisdiction attached. M06 and the fields derived from it stay unknown until a registry record or an explicit jurisdiction clause is found.
Mandate hosting. All 25 countries in the published server list carry a data-retention mandate in this catalogue's own table, so C09b is not a narrow question here, but the server-locations page does not distinguish physical exit points from virtual ones for any location, and no per-country hosting fact was established this session.
App-level identifiers and store declarations. C07a, C12 and X12 stay unknown: no Play Store data-safety form or Apple privacy label was read this session, and the Securitum audit's whitebox scope covered server-side configuration and DNS/traffic handling, not what the mobile or extension clients transmit to app stores or analytics SDKs on their own.
Transparency and canary. No /transparency, /transparency-report, /warrant-canary or /canary path resolves on the site, and no such page turned up in the sitemap; that is an absence found by looking, not a sourced "none", so both fields stay unknown rather than being marked none.
Still open on this record.
What the audit actually checked. The no-logs finding is strong and narrow at once. Securitum inspected production servers in person in August 2025 and has done so annually since 2022.
The limits the report states itself. It is a point-in-time check, a guided review of systems demonstrated by Proton's engineers rather than an unsupervised forensic examination, and a representative sample rather than the whole fleet. CI/CD, source code and the account-management systems were explicitly out of scope, so nothing here speaks to what the billing side holds.
The appeal, and what it does not settle. The 22 October 2021 appeal is cited here with a caveat worth stating plainly: the Federal Administrative Court ruled that email services are not telecommunications providers, and neither the judgment coverage nor Proton's own account of it mentions the VPN.
What actually settles the two fields. What settles C10 and C11 is that Switzerland carries no mandate basis in the catalogue's own country list; the appeal corroborates how Swiss authorities treat Proton and is not by itself a finding about Proton VPN. A ruling on a sibling service is thinner ground than the citation makes it look.
The single largest open item. Proton offers exit locations in eight countries that impose a logging mandate. Whether hardware actually sits in any of them is not established: Proton withdrew physical servers from India in 2022 and documents Smart Routing for locations it serves from elsewhere, which points to virtual, but that was verified for India alone. Establishing C09b_mandate_hosting is the single largest open item on this record.
12 Sep 20265 changes
Security scoresecurity.score
75 changed to 70
Security verdictsecurity.verdict
strong changed to acceptable
Platforms with a clientU01_platforms
android, android-tv, apple-tv, fire-tv, ios, linux, macos, windows changed to android, android-tv, apple-tv, browser-extension, fire-tv, ios, linux, macos, windows
Friction to start using itU11_signup_friction
no_account changed to email_only
Usability scoreusability.score
80 changed to 78
| ChannelPressure taken from what was left | CactusVPNDominant channel: Ignorance0 to 0.9, longer is worse | Proton VPNDominant channel: Hygiene0 to 0.9, longer is worse |
|---|---|---|
| IgnoranceHow much of this did nobody establish? | 0.333 | 0.071 |
| RetentionDoes a record exist that links traffic to a person, and who checked? | 0.299 | 0.079 |
| HygieneWhat identifying material is collected in passing, and can the client be checked at all? | 0.280 | 0.088 |
| SilenceTen years, millions of users and nothing on record? | 0.225 | 0.000 |
| IntegrityHas it been caught saying one thing and doing another? | 0.155 | 0.000 |
| JurisdictionCan someone compel what exists, without the provider getting a say? | 0.079 | 0.050 |
| ArchitectureWho operates the exit, and what does it do to the traffic? | 0.000 | 0.050 |
| DisclosureHas it already handed something over? | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| What is left of 100The channels multiply: each one takes a share of what the one before it left standing | 20 | 70 |
CactusVPN and Proton VPN were assessed by the HushFleet team: CactusVPN scores 20/100 for security, in the Insufficient band, and Proton VPN 70/100, in the Acceptable band. They share an independent audit and independent ownership. The 50-point gap opens widest on Ignorance — “How much of this did nobody establish?” — taking 33% from CactusVPN and 7% from Proton VPN.
By circumstance
| CactusVPN | Proton VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Torrenting | Allowed yes | — not established |
| Streaming | Reachable yes | — not established |
| Devices at once | unlimited | 10 |
| Under censorship | Claimed to work claimed | Claimed to work claimed |
| Exits in mandate countries | 2 India, Russia | 8 United Arab Emirates, Belarus, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam |
| Hosting in those countries | — not established | — not established |
| Company under a mandate | — not established | No such mandate no |
| Secret orders | No secret-order regime on record none_known | Orders go through a judge judicial_only |
| CactusVPN | Proton VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Security | 20 insufficient · rank 10 of 68 | 70 acceptable · rank 1 of 68 |
| Usability | 66 out of 100 | 78 out of 100 |
| Record completeness | 63% usability 100% | 89% usability 83% |
| CactusVPN | Proton VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Who operates the exit | Run by the provider itself provider_operated | Run by the provider itself provider_operated |
| Retention as declared | Nothing that links traffic to a person none_linkable | Nothing that links traffic to a person none_linkable |
| RAM-only diskless servers | — not establishedno source published | No, servers write to disk noCprotonvpn.com · |
| IP allocation model | Exit address shared between users shared | Exit address shared between users shared |
| Signup without email | No, an email address is required noBcactusvpn.com · | Yes, on the provider's word yes_declaredCprotonvpn.com · |
| Anonymous payment options | Cryptocurrency through a processorBcactusvpn.com · | Cash · Cryptocurrency through a processorCprotonvpn.com · |
| Own DNS inside the tunnel | Yes, checked by someone independent yes_verifiedAsecuritum.com · | Yes, on the provider's word yes_declaredCprotonvpn.com · |
| Worst third-party SDK category in the app | — not establishedno source published | No third-party SDK noneCprotonvpn.com · |
| Worst third-party tracker category on the site | Analytics analyticsBcactusvpn.com · | — not establishedno source published |
| Who owns the hardware | — not establishedno source published | Owned and rented both mixedCprotonvpn.com · |
| Offered countries that sit under a logging mandate | 2 India, RussiaBcactusvpn.com · | 8 United Arab Emirates, Belarus, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkey, VietnamDprotonvpn.com · |
| Hosting in the mandate countries it offers | — not established | — not established |
| Incorporation country mandates retention | — not establishedno source published | No such mandate noBprotonvpn.com · 2 sources · |
| Beneficial owner sits under a retention regime | — not establishedno source published | No such regime noBprotonvpn.com · 2 sources · |
| Persistent device identifier | — not establishedno source published | None held noneBplay.google.com · |
| Weakest protocol still offered | PPTP pptpBcactusvpn.com · | — the question does not ariseBprotonvpn.com · |
| What the exit does to passing traffic | Traffic passes through unaltered noneBcactusvpn.com · | — not establishedno source published |
| CactusVPN | Proton VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| At least one independent audit | Yes, and the report was read yes_verified | Yes, and the report was read yes_verified |
| How the report is published | The full report is published full_pdf | The full report is published full_pdf |
| Subject of the audit | The no-logs claim itself · The infrastructureAsecuritum.com · | The no-logs claim itselfAsecuritum.com · |
| Server fleet coverage | A sample of servers sample | A sample of servers sample |
| Auditor name | SecuritumAsecuritum.com · | Securitum (Martin Matyja, Maciej Szymczak) |
| CactusVPN | Proton VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Server seizure by law enforcement | No seizure on record none_known | No seizure on record none_known |
| Actual disclosure history | No disclosure on record none_known | No disclosure on record none_known |
| Court record of compelled production | No court record none_knownno source published · | Told a court it had nothing to produce unable_to_produceBprotonvpn.com · |
| Response to a national logging mandate | — not establishedno source published | Pulled its servers out rather than comply withdrew_physicalBprotonvpn.com · |
| Transparency report | — not establishedno source published | Current, with request numbers |
| CactusVPN | Proton VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Documented gap between claim and behaviour | — not establishedno source published | No documented lie noneCswissinfo.ch · 2 sources · |
| Marketing against audit findings | No gap on record none | No gap on record none |
| Ownership structure transparency | Ownership is stated and checkable clear | Ownership is stated and checkable clear |
| Adverse events on the owner group record | — not establishedno source published | Nothing adverse on record cleanCen.wikipedia.org · 2 sources · |
| How the service is paid for | Paid subscriptions only paid_onlyB |
| CactusVPN | Proton VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Legal entity | Cactus VPN LLCAsecuritum.com · | Proton AG, Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva, SwitzerlandCen.wikipedia.org · 2 sources · |
| Where the company sits | — not establishedno source published | Switzerland CHCen.wikipedia.org · 2 sources · |
| Year the service launched | 2011Bcactusvpn.com · | 2017Cen.wikipedia.org · 2 sources · |
| User base scale (mass >=10M, mid >=1M, niche <1M) |
| CactusVPN | Proton VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms with a client | 7 Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Android TV, Fire TV, Browser extensionBcactusvpn.com · | 9 Android, Android TV, Apple TV, Browser extension, Fire TV, iOS, Linux, macOS, WindowsBprotonvpn.com · |
| Countries with an exit | 25 countriesBcactusvpn.com · | 147 countriesDprotonvpn.com · |
| Paying monthly | $15.00 per monthBcactusvpn.com · | $9.99 per monthB |
| Auditor category | A security specialist security_specialist | A security specialist security_specialist |
|---|
| Assurance standard | Another standard other | Another standard other |
|---|
| Date of latest report | 2026-05-08Asecuritum.com · | 2026-05-27Cprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Audit cadence | One-off one_offAsecuritum.com · | An annual series annual_seriesCprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Total published audits | 1Asecuritum.com · | 5Cprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Retention as the report states it | Nothing that links traffic to a person none_linkable | Nothing that links traffic to a person none_linkable |
|---|
| Client source code published | None noneAsecuritum.com · | Every client allCprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Reproducible builds | — not established | — not established |
|---|
| Separate pentest | — not establishedno source published | Yes, on the provider's word yes_declaredCprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Strength of the assurance opinion | — not establishedno source published | — the question does not ariseno source published |
|---|
fresh_with_numbers| Reported numbers plausible for this scale | — not establishedno source published | The numbers are plausible at this scale plausibleBprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Warrant canary discipline | — not establishedno source published | Never had one noneBprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Requests received | — not establishedno source published | 458Bprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Requests that produced data | — not establishedno source published | 0Bprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Secret-order regime | No secret-order regime on record none_knownno source published · | Orders go through a judge judicial_onlyCswissinfo.ch · 2 sources · |
|---|
| Chronology of documented enforcement events | — not establishedno source published | 2 documented demandsCswissinfo.ch · 2 sources · |
|---|
A free tier funded by the paid one freemium_fundedCprotonvpn.com · |
| Claims of 100% anonymity or military-grade crypto | Claims total anonymity or military-grade encryption yesBcactusvpn.com · | — not establishedno source published |
|---|
| Aggressive lifetime subscriptions | Does not no | Does not no |
|---|
| Coverage exists only on affiliate sites | Covered only on sites paid to cover it yesCcactusvpn.com · | Covered outside affiliate sites too noCen.wikipedia.org · 2 sources · |
|---|
| Security incident and how it was disclosed | No incident on record none_known | No incident on record none_known |
|---|
| Affiliate programme and payout tier | A standard payout standardBcactusvpn.com · | — not establishedno source published |
|---|
| Owner-run review media discloses the tie | — not establishedno source published | — the question does not ariseno source published |
|---|
| App store declaration | — not establishedno source published | The store form matches the published policy matches_policyBapps.apple.com · 3 sources · |
|---|
Mass: 10 million users or more massCen.wikipedia.org · 2 sources · |
| Ultimate beneficial owner as written | Independent; founded and run by co-founders (Sergiu Candja, Pavel Bodeanu, and colleagues), who state they have refused outside buyout offersBcactusvpn.com · | Proton Foundation (Swiss non-profit, controlling shareholder since 06/2024); employees; FONGITCen.wikipedia.org · 2 sources · |
|---|
| Other businesses of the owner group | None disclosedBcactusvpn.com · | A portfolio of other appsCen.wikipedia.org · 2 sources · |
|---|
| Country of the ultimate beneficial owner | — not establishedno source published | CHCen.wikipedia.org · 2 sources · |
|---|
| Owner group | independent | independent |
|---|
| Date the current owner took control | — the question does not ariseno source published | 2024-06Cen.wikipedia.org · 2 sources · |
|---|
| Role of this brand inside the group | The group's principal brand principal | The group's principal brand principal |
|---|
| Infrastructure shared with cluster siblings | Separate infrastructure separate | Separate infrastructure separate |
|---|
| Paying yearly | $70.00 a year at renewal, billed onceBcactusvpn.com · | $53.88 a year at renewal, billed onceBprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Usable free tier | No free tier noneBcactusvpn.com · | A free tier with limits limited_freeBprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Works under active censorship | Claimed to work claimed | Claimed to work claimed |
|---|
| Protocols offered | 8 OpenVPN, WireGuard, IKEv2, L2TP, PPTP, SSTP, A vendor protocol with published source, An obfuscated protocolBcactusvpn.com · | 4 WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2, An obfuscated protocolBprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Kill switch coverage | On every platform all_platforms | On every platform all_platforms |
|---|
| Split tunneling available | Available yes | Available yes |
|---|
| Simultaneous connections | unlimitedBcactusvpn.com · | 10Bprotonvpn.com · |
|---|
| Friction to start using it | An email address only email_only | An email address only email_only |
|---|
| P2P allowed | Allowed yesBcactusvpn.com · | — not establishedno source published |
|---|
| Major streaming services reachable | Reachable yesBcactusvpn.com · | — not establishedno source published |
|---|
