Gmail vs Proton Mail Comparison

Feature	Gmail Visit →	Proton Mail Visit →
Overview
Rating	5.4	8.5
Pricing	$0.00/moFree (15 GB shared) $7.00/moGoogle Workspace Business Starter (annual, after the first-year discount) Show billing detailsHide billing details Free (15 GB shared): Free Google Workspace Business Starter (annual, after the first-year discount): US$4.90 per user per month for the first 12 months on annual billing, then US$7.00	$4.99/moMail Plus (individual, annual) $12.99/moProton Unlimited (individual, annual) Show billing detailsHide billing details Mail Plus (individual, annual): $59.88/year at renewal ($47.88 first year with the introductory rate) Proton Unlimited (individual, annual): $155.88/year at renewal ($119.88 first year with the introductory rate)
Free tier	Limited free tier Show detailsHide details 15 GB of storage shared across Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos; the paid Google One and Workspace plans raise that ceiling.	Limited free tier Show detailsHide details 1 GB storage, 1 email address, 150 messages/day, 10 hide-my-email aliases, no custom domain
Established	2004	2014
Platforms	AndroidiOS	WindowsmacOSLinuxAndroidiOS
Privacy
Jurisdiction	United States Show detailsHide details Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, California 94043, is the controller named in Google's privacy policy. Google reports US national-security (FISA) requests separately from its global requests report, in ranges rather than exact counts.	Switzerland Show detailsHide details Proton AG, Route de la Galaise 32, 1228 Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva. Since June 2024 the primary shareholder is the non-profit Proton Foundation, also based in Geneva. Proton Europe sàrl (Luxembourg) is the designated EU GDPR representative.
Independent security audit	None on record	Securitum 2021 Show audit detailsHide audit details Source-code security audit of the redesigned Proton Mail web client and Proton Calendar, prior to release
Source code	Closed source	Fully open source
Zero-access encryption	No	Yes
Intra-provider E2EE	No	Yes
External PGP	Not supported	Manual import
Past data breach	No	No
Telemetry	Always on	On unless you opt out
Features
Hosting	Cloud	Cloud
Custom domain support	No	Yes
Aliases	Limited	Unlimited
Anti-spam approach	AI-powered filtering Google says stops more than 99.9% of spam, phishing and malware, plus sender-authentication requirements for bulk senders that Google says cut unauthenticated messages 75%. Google's privacy policy lists 'email you write and receive' among the content it collects, and with smart features on Google uses Gmail data to provide those features; Google states Gmail content is not used for ads personalization.	PhishGuard flags spoofing and phishing using sender authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) and metadata such as headers, link URLs and attachment hashes, not message content, since encryption prevents Proton from reading it; a machine-learning model retrains on user feedback (marking spam/phishing or rescuing a message from spam).
Bundled services	Google DriveGoogle Photos	CalendarDriveVPNPass