Since Friday, August 7th, 2026, multipleRedditors have reported that they are seeing different prices for Proton VPN Plus, suggesting that Proton is running price sensitivity testing on their customers, which is also called A/B testing.
As far as I can tell, no news outlet has reported on it, except The Cyber Sec Guru, which is an outlet I have never heard of. My understanding is that they picked up on Windscribe’s tweet, and decided to investigate.
If this is true, which it appears to be, I am extremely disappointed in Proton. To me, this compounds my frustration with them, with the various issues I have previously raised here, specifically when it comes to Proton’s practices that I qualify as enshittification and dark patterns.
This is the kind of rage baiting drama nonsense we can do without.
Is Proton doing price testing? Don’t care either way. If you don’t like Proton then don’t buy their products. Don’t waste your and everyone else’s time making multiple topics complaining about inter company drama.
The A B testing itself isn’t necessarily the scandal. Though I suppose, it potentially could be depending upon your purity level. The real question is whether Proton is using profiling or other personal data to determine which price someone sees. That hasn’t been established yet, and so far I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s happening. But if that is what’s happening, then a privacy company engaging in surveillance pricing would be extremely difficult to defend. Really, there would be no defending it.
Update - After looking into this a little more, Windscribe might be milking this a little bit, but Protons initial explanation about that sale and how it had universally refreshed and those AB test markers makes it pretty hard to explain. Now I’m not saying they deliberately lied, it’s entirely plausible that someone responding didn’t know the marketing and pricing experiment was running.
So far, it looks like more of a yellow flag to me than a red one. But we’ll see how this plays out I guess.
It’s unlikely, if this is anything at all, that it is surveillance pricing. More likely it’s just an experiment to see if the take rate is significantly different between the two prices.
Weird their PR team wasn’t read in, but if they are doing a b testing it’s hardly a bad thing. They sell a product, conducting price discovery is hardly nefarious.
The scandal here is that Proton’s public-facing representative(s) gave an incorrect answer to questions about their pricing experiment. Either they didn’t know, in which case they should have asked someone before answering authoritatively, or they knew and lied. Neither option is great. Instead of providing people with incorrect information, they should have provided a truthful, correct answer that would allow for follow-up conversations such as whether the AB test was targeted in any way or simply random.
Anyway, I don’t see where Proton’s representative who gave incorrect information has yet to acknowledge or correct it in the past two days ( Reddit ). That is honestly terrible and Proton need to apologize. I also see people complaining about getting different prices (higher) when logged into their accounts, which indicates that Proton is actually price discriminating against their own existing customers. This doesn’t sit well with me.
I wouldn’t be so quick to assume anything about this story is accurate. The only sources are an unknown blog and the social media posts of a direct competitor.
I call that a business tactic designed to attract people so they’ll buy the product.
It’s a basic but dangerous tactic, since the company itself is publicly telling us something: What’s going on here?
Actually I was just able to reproduce it myself. The price was lower in the browser window I was logged in with and higher in a private window. This could be random if it’s really price testing and may not be significant.
They need to inform their PR team. This is a silly thing to intentionally lie about so it is probably poor internal comms at Proton.
Looking at the reports here, some see a cheaper price logged in, while others see a cheaper one when not logged in.
Seems either random or there are other factors. If I had to guess, they just test the waters for both prices and this “General Manager” person jumped the gun with their explanation without double checking.
I mean, having social media communication is fine and all, but they need a direct line to the appropriate department or miscommunications like this only make them look bad… (Still, not particularly easy to imagine the “General Manager” had no idea or did not think of the apparent A/B testing.)
I’d have wished for them focusing on their existing products instead of maximizing earnings they would invest (or burn) in yet another new product, so people would be fine with spending more for the perfect core experience.
Yes, it is telling us they are evaluating how different discount prices affect adoption, disconnected from seasons or the usual sales, e.g. not having to wait for the next Black Friday or change in political landscapes for a different discount.
But it is pretty shitty if you just found out, you could have randomly gotten a lower price instead of the one you paid.
How is it rage baiting when I am simply reporting facts, which are that:
Proton VPN is being accused of price sensitivity testing.
They are denying it.
There is credible evidence contradicting their denial.
If people are seeing different prices, it is worth discussing in our community.
I care, and others do too, which makes it worthy of discussion. I will never understand why there are people in the privacy community who are comfortable when other companies get criticized, including other privacy companies, but not when it’s Proton, even when Proton engages in practices that they publicly call out others for doing.
I like Proton. I just don’t like some of their practices. And as paying users, I think we have the right to raise concerns. There is no malice here.
If Proton is determining what price you’ll see based on your browser, cookies, and whether you are logged into a Proton account, I would qualify that as profiling.
I don’t know if I would qualify the price testing as a scandal, but I do think that on its own it is worth raising concerns. That said, I definitely agree that Proton officially denying what appears to be true exacerbates things and tarnishes their reputation.
The price differences are factual. Multiple users have reported it on Reddit, and in this very post. I agree that we should always have some skepticism when claims are made by a competitor. That being said, I am subscribed to the blogs of various privacy companies, including Proton and Tuta’s. I find them generally very informative, and they make claims about politics and competitors all the time. That doesn’t mean I don’t read them critically. I’m just saying that like Proton and Tuta, Windscribe is a pretty reputable company in the privacy community, and hence, I lend them some credence and give them the benefit of the doubt.
The scandal is that either their customer support is so uninformed that they don’t know about the A/B testing, or they are intentionally lying in an attempt to cover this up.
I make no claim about the ethical validity of A/B testing prices (I subjectively find it to be in poor taste), but whether A/B testing has been around a long time or not has pretty much no bearing on whether it is ethical or not. LOTS of awful shit “has been around since sliced bread”.
