Proton Plus says that maximum number of devices for the VPN is 10 devices. Proton means that there can only be 10 simultaneous connections and not 10 devices where the account is logged in.
Is it the same for IVPN and Mullvad?
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in my testing some months back, which was done using virtual machine templates, they both have a limit on devices/keys like you mention, but only actually enforce a total connection limit
eg. I had multiple vm’s running with the same key without issue
actual clarification on this would be nice.
I’d encourage users to reach out to them and hopefully get such clearly documented on their websites.
(unrelated, but it may help someone: if you’re using wireguard or these in a vm, changing from user mode networking/slirp to a bridge or tap nic will give you dramatically better performance. I’m still unclear why the perf impact is so high in this case)
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IVPN’s policy is that it is the number of devices. I don’t know whether this is enforced:
Whether our app is connected or not and powered on or not, simply logging in is enough to occupy one of the device slots.
I think Mullvad has changed recently where they used to only count simultaneous connections, but now they count logged-in devices which you can manage (remove) at Log in | Mullvad VPN.
This I heard from someone else though, so YMMV. I need to re-test both of these sometime soon, I’ve only been using Proton lately 
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“Max concurrent connections” is the norm for VPN’s in my limited experience. Mullvad is an exception to that iirc, not sure about IVPN.
I believe that Mullvad only allows you 5 keys, which you can assign to any devices you want, change, etc, But it’s not dynamic in the way that “max concurrent connections” is, where you can have any number of devices so long as they aren’t all connecting simultaneously.
I much prefer the “simultaneous connections” approach from a usability standpoint, but my recollection is Mullvad’s approach is an unfortunate side effect of having strong data-minimization & privacy strategies. I don’t recall the details anymore.
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Unrelated to the topic but, how has your experience been using ProtonVPN on MacOS? I used the free plan for a couple of months and honestly it was abysmal.
Every time I would shut the lid and reopen, the VPN would be connected but not send any data to the internet. The readings on the main screen would just show “0.00”. As well as this, pressing on “change server” would always, without fail, not allow me to reconnect to the VPN. it would just keep loading and timeout.
These were very frequent occurrences that ultimately made me give up on using the VPN on MacOS at least. Wondering if you ran into any of these issues.
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I consistently encounter the same recurring problems with Proton VPN (paid plan) on macOS, which I have not observed on other operating systems or mobile devices. This issue appears to be specific to macOS. To address the connection errors, I frequently find myself compelled to close and reopen the Proton VPN application. Consequently, I have also reverted to using an other VPN service on macOS.
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Mullvad allows you to set 5 devices with their application or wireguard keys. Maybe you could use OpenVPN config files to add more, but I don’t use it anymore, so I’m not sure.
If you want to add new, you need to delete one first. I don’t like this approach, but I have exactly 5 devices, so it’s ok for me.
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Are you using the stealth protocol by any chance?
No, I’m using Wireguard only.