Proton Drive Review 2026 | Google Drive Alternative or Overhyped?

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]You've probably uploaded something to the cloud and wondered, like, who else can actually see this? And I spent weeks testing Proton Drive to answer that exact question. And here's what surprised me the most. It's actually faster than Google Drive. Yeah, you heard that right. But speed isn't everything. Let me show you exactly WHAT I FOUND.

[00:00:26]SO, WHAT IS PROTON DRIVE? Think of it as the privacy-obsessed cousin of Google Drive. It comes from Proton, the Swiss company behind ProtonMail and ProtonVPN.

[00:00:35]The big difference, your files get encrypted before they even leave your device. Proton can't see what you're storing. Government subpoenas? Well, they can hand over encrypted gibberish because that's literally all they have.

[00:00:50]And here's [music] exactly how it works.

[00:00:52]Let's say I'm uploading a file from my computer, and before it even hits Proton servers, it gets scrambled with end-to-end encryption. Even the file names are encrypted.

[00:01:05]>> [music] >> The metadata, everything. It's like putting your documents in a safe that even the locksmith can't really crack.

[00:01:13]Can you actually trust Proton? Look, I mean, they're based in Switzerland. You got Swiss privacy laws, which are some of the strictest out there. Their code is open source. Independent security researchers have audited it. You can literally check the encryption yourself if you really know what you're looking for. And [music] I actually verified this myself. When I ran Wireshark during my uploads, the data was actually encrypted inside the TLS tunnel. That's exactly what you want to see with zero-knowledge encryption.

[00:01:44]And for account security, Proton supports an authenticator apps with two-factor authentication and even physical security keys if you want like hardware-level protection, which is obviously the top-notch security that you can get these days. Now, here's a critical warning.

[00:01:59]>> [music] >> Seriously, write this down. If you lose your password and your recovery key, your files are gone. Forever. Proton can't help you because they can't decrypt anything. Now, [music] if you're still logged in and just want to change your password, well, obviously, that works fine. You'll just need to enter your old password to unlock your files. But, if you're fully locked out with no recovery key, it's game over.

[00:02:25]>> [laughter] >> This is the price of true privacy. Keep that recovery somewhere safe, ideally in a password manager, and we have some videos on password manager on cloudwards.net if you want to review those. Okay, let's talk speed because this is where Proton Drive really surprised me. Here's my testing setup.

[00:02:42]It's a standard testing setup that I use for all the cloud storage services, but still I repeat it in every video because I know you're probably not going to watch all my videos, unfortunately, but here it goes.

[00:02:51]>> [music] >> I'm using a Windows VM in Dublin with a gigabit connection. The test folder was 5 GB of mixed files, videos, documents, images, [music] the works, right? I ran every test twice on a throttled 100 megabit connection.

[00:03:06]We got the uploads, which took about 7 minutes and 15 seconds, and downloads finished in around 7 minutes and 11 seconds. It's pretty comparable to Google Drive at that particular bandwidth. But, here's where things get really interesting. On the full-speed connection, Proton Drive averaged 25 megabytes per second, peaking at even 33 megabytes per second. And my uploads finished in just 3 minutes [music] and 20 seconds. The downloads, well, around 3 minutes and 48 seconds. Google Drive on the same connection was slower. Up at about 5 minutes for uploads and nearly 6 minutes for downloads. I was flabbergasted. My testing notes here, they they pretty much say it all. I mean, it is super stable.

[00:03:51]Uh it is very fast. It has low CPU usage. And I wasn't babysitting my computer waiting for uploads just to complete. So, I essentially worked just normally while everything was synced in the background.

[00:04:03]And [music] if you've heard complaints about Proton Drive being slow, that was kind of the old version, right?

[00:04:10]That's why I'm doing a 2026 review here, and they've clearly done some serious infrastructure work, which I hugely appreciate. And that's the thing with cloud storage. These services, they change super fast. I mean, what was true 6 months ago might not be true today.

[00:04:24]And if you want to stay on top of updates like this, I send out a weekly newsletter covering the latest changes in cloud storage and online privacy. No spam, just useful stuff. The link is in the description. [music] Let me give you a quick tour of the interface, right? Starting with the [music] web app. So, if you use Google Drive, I mean, this will feel very familiar to you. And here's my here's my dashboard. I can drag and drop files directly, right? I can click the plus buttons for new uploads or like to create a new folder or doc. So, this is super intuitive that if you can navigate an operating system or navigate any folder structure, you will feel right at home. And one thing I really like to customize is um the look, right? You can customize the look. See these [music] seams options here? So, there are multiple color palettes to choose from.

[00:05:20]It's a small thing, but it really shows the polish.

[00:05:23]And it shows [music] that people at Proton really care about design and usability. Let me show you something that's really useful, and those are file previews. It's It's pretty much every file type preview right here in the browser. You have documents, you have spreadsheets, right? Uh images, music, [music] videos, PDFs, you name it. I can even annotate PDFs directly. There's one quite a significant gap, though. You cannot do PowerPoint previews. If you work with presentations a lot, you'll need to download them, right? And here's something also very important that I think >> [music] >> every cloud storage service need, and I use it constantly, which gives me another security layer, and it's called version history. [music] Check this out.

[00:06:06]I right-click a file like so, and I go to versions, and I can see and restore previous versions. Now, on the fluid on the free plan, you get 10 versions or 7 days, whichever comes first. And that's [music] Yeah, that's pretty short. But on the paid plans, up to 10 years of version history. That's a huge difference.

[00:06:31]>> [music] >> Now, let me show you the desktop app, right? The main sync folder location is obviously customizable, right? Which is super nice, and you you're not relying on one single synchronization folder that sync.com gives to you, so you can really customize it to your need. And if I want to sync another folder from my computer, I set that up right here inside the application. You can't just right-click a folder in, say, the file explorer and add it to Proton. You have to do it from within the app. Now, all syncs are [music] two-way. So, changes go in both directions, and some people have trouble understanding this because >> [music] >> if you delete one file in one folder, obviously, it syncs to the other folder, and it will be deleted there as well.

[00:07:16]And that is something you have to wrap your head around to understand it properly and not accidentally delete files. One quirk, selective sync works on additional folders you set up, but not on the default sync folder.

[00:07:29][music] And there is one more nice touch in the desktop app I want to show you real quick. There's this help button right here that lets you contact customer support directly. On its own, it's like pretty standard. Obviously, you should be able to contact support if you need to. But here's what's cool. You can include your app logs with the request.

[00:07:51][music] That is incredibly handy if you need support and don't want to go back and forth in emails about what actually went wrong or even dig through the terminals really find the logs that you're that you need. You can just send it over there. One thing to note, though, the desktop [music] app only shows files from the device you're on. If I upload something, say, from my laptop, and then check on my desktop, those files [music] sync over, but they only show up in the activity tab. To actually manage files from other devices, you have to rename them, move them around, delete them. So, I need to use the web interface for that. It's a little bit annoying, but I think if you know it, it's it's something workable.

[00:08:30]And let me show you something real important, which is file sharing. I can right-click a document, and I [music] hit share. Now, now watch this.

[00:08:40]I can add password protection >> [music] >> to the link right so, right? Or set an expiration date, so it self-destructs after 7 days if I want.

[00:08:53][music] Try getting that with Google Drive's free tier. Impossible.

[00:08:57]Now, if I share directly with someone via email instead of a link, it's even simpler. I just pick uh whether they can edit [music] or just view the file like this. There's no password option here, though.

[00:09:10]>> [music] >> And this type of sharing also only works with other Proton accounts.

[00:09:15]But whoever you're sharing with can just sign up for a free account to access the file. Proton Docs is Proton's new document editor, and this is where you can really see Proton is positioning itself as a stronger Google Workspace alternative and a competitor. A lot of the cloud storage services, they don't offer document editing natively. So, you kind of need Google Docs to survive. But we can really see Proton venturing in this collaboration field, which is super interesting for me, and we're going to cover that in the future as well. Let me give you a quick tour because I think this will interest you. From Proton Drive, I can click new, and then document. And here's my Here's my canvas. I can I can type like I can add headers. I can do basic formatting with the document.

[00:10:05]I I got to be honest here, right? The editing is still pretty basic, especially if you compare it to Google Docs, right?

[00:10:12]No fancy paragraph formatting options.

[00:10:14]You can add comments and you can suggest edits, which is great for collaboration.

[00:10:19]But if you're used to the full power of Google Docs or Word, you'll feel the limitations and there might be some ongoing pains if you decide to really move the Proton right away with all your productivity and all your work stuff.

[00:10:31]And let me also tell you, if you're planning that, there's also Proton Sheets for spreadsheets. And let me show you this feature because they basically just launched it a couple months ago or even couple weeks ago. And I can simply create a new spreadsheet like I created the Google Doc earlier, right? As you can see, >> [music] >> this is pretty similar to Google Sheets.

[00:10:50]It has built-in formulas and functions for calculations. And you can create charts and graphs to even visualize your data, right? So, [music] it supports real-time collaboration and you can even import your existing Excel or Google Sheets files, which is super nice for migration, especially if you have a lot of documents and you don't like copy and pasting from one document to the other. Now, let me talk about the the mobile app because this genuinely impressed me. First, obviously, we have the the photo backup. It works great, right? It instantly [music] uploads your new photos. Obviously, you have to give it rights to upload your photo library and access the photo library.

[00:11:31]>> [music] >> And you have to give it the entirety of your library access. So, [music] as of now, you cannot like pick and choose which one. You have to give the the total the total permissions here, right? On Android, I can even [music] choose exactly which folders to back up from, not just the entire camera roll.

[00:11:48]And there is a Wi-Fi only option if you want to save some data. [music] But talking still about the photos, right? Here is what blew me away, which I haven't seen so much in other cloud storage services. It's the photo organization.

[00:12:01]>> [music] >> So, as I said, I've tested a lot of these cloud storage apps and this is probably the best photo organization I've seen on mobile. I mean, look at these tabs, right? You got I mean, screenshots. You can categorize them by screenshots. You can you have your live photos. You have selfies.

[00:12:18]>> [music] >> Favorites that you can that you can choose, right? Panoramas. I mean, even raw files, they get their their own selections. You have everything neatly organized if you need access to it. And I can even go to albums and then I can create my own album. So, here for example, I created a little workout album, which is quite nice when you want to like categorize [music] things from from your life and want easy access. And then you can also pick if you want to have offline access to your photos as well.

[00:12:47]>> [music] >> If you take a lot of photos on your phone, I mean, this is genuinely excellent. And for security, the app has obviously passcode lock and biometric support. There is one limitation though.

[00:12:57]It's sharing from mobile is email invites only. So, you can't generate a shareable link from your phone like you can on desktop. By the way, if you're finding this review helpful, hit that like button. It really helps the channel. And if you want more honest cloud storage reviews like this one, subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss the next one.

[00:13:17]Let's talk money. The free plan gives you 2 GB, right? Complete a few tasks like adding a file, creating a shared link, setting up a recovery method and you can push that to 5 GB. It's not massive, but it's pretty decent for testing. Just make sure you complete the task within 30 days of signing up or the potential 3 GB of extra free storage is basically lost forever. Now, [music] there's Drive Plus, which costs around $2.49 per month [music] when you catch a discount. And that gets you 200 gigs.

[00:13:47]You need more? Well, the unlimited plan at $9.99 per month includes 500 gigs of storage plus Proton VPN, plus Proton Mail, and Proton Calendar. And there's also Proton Drive, which includes all of those extra apps, [music] but ups the storage to 2 TB. If you need a mail client and a VPN, the bundle makes a ton of sense, really. You're getting a secure ecosystem, not just cloud storage. And the best thing is, I've got the best deal for Proton Drive linked in the description box below. I keep these links [music] updated with the latest promotions and also custom discounts we negotiate specifically for our viewers. And after years in this space, we've built relationships that let us secure better deals than you'll find anywhere else on the web.

[00:14:30]So, who is Proton Drive actually for?

[00:14:32]Now, if privacy is your priority, this is one of the best options available. I mean, lawyers storing documents, journalists protecting sources, anyone dealing with sensitive information, Proton handles that use case essentially better than any mainstream cloud storage service.

[00:14:49]And if you take a lot of photos on your phone and want to back up securely with great organization, the mobile app is surprisingly excellent for that. And if you don't care about privacy and need heavy real-time collaboration with your team, you should probably stick with Google Drive for now because the collaboration features aren't there yet in my opinion. And the same goes if you work with the Microsoft PowerPoint files really constantly, there are just no previews for those, right? And you need the quick access sometimes to just skim over a presentation. And honestly, [music] if I'm seriously I mean, you can use both.

[00:15:20]I mean, I keep my sensitive documents on Proton Drive. Everything is encrypted. I can feel secure. But I mean, the collaborative work projects, I can still keep [music] on Google Drive. And that's how I get the best of both worlds. And once Proton Drive has developed it more with Sheets and and and Docs, then maybe I'll move to Proton Drive entirely. So, if this helped you out basically figure out if Google Drive is the right for you, then well, subscribe for more honest cloud storage reviews and drop a comment telling me what service you want me to [music] test next. See my next video. Bye-bye.