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Independently verified · Quarterly re-audit
EU VETTED

Proton Drive

VERIFIED
File sharing · Switzerland
Founded 2014 · proton.me/drive ↗

Swiss zero-knowledge encrypted cloud (Proton AG, non-profit-foundation-controlled), 11,496 owned servers, ISO 27001 + SOC 2, 5 GB free.

In short

Proton Drive, in the File sharing category, is an EU-owned service with Switzerland as its hosting location and no identified CLOUD Act exposure.

Assessment notes

Proton AG (Geneva, Route de la Galaise 32, Plan-les-Ouates; founded 2014 by Andy Yen and a team from CERN) is controlled by the non-profit Proton Foundation (since June 2024) with no venture-capital investors anywhere on the cap table, runs 11,496 owned-and-operated servers across 117 countries with Swiss-jurisdiction primary processing, ISO/IEC 27001:2022 + SOC 2 Type II certifications covering all Proton product lines, and zero-knowledge end-to-end encryption that makes the customer the sole keyholder; Swiss-headquartered and non-profit-foundation-controlled, with a public DPA, disclosed sub-processors, and none CLOUD Act exposure under a customer-data-at-rest definition because the US sub-processors (Zendesk for support, Stripe / PayPal / Chargebee for billing) are ancillary and never touch the end-to-end-encrypted file data on Proton's own infrastructure.

CLOUD ACT
OWNERSHIP
SUB-PROCS
7 · 4 US
Verified signals
Jurisdiction
  • EU / adequacy hosting
  • EU / adequacy operator
  • No US CLOUD Act exposure
  • Card-free payment available
    Accepts Bitcoin and cash by mail alongside cards.
Transparency
  • Public DPA
  • Sub-processors disclosed
  • Open-source clients
  • Third-party certification
JUMP TO
OVERVIEW

About Proton Drive

Proton Drive is the encrypted cloud-storage product within the Proton AG ecosystem (Mail, Drive, VPN, Pass, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, SimpleLogin), headquartered at Route de la Galaise 32, 1228 Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva, Switzerland. Founded in 2014 by Andy Yen and a team that originally met at CERN, Proton serves more than 100 million users worldwide and runs the most singular ownership structure in the directory: as of June 2024 the non-profit Proton Foundation (Swiss, Geneva; trustees include Andy Yen, Antonio Gambardella, Carissa Véliz, Tim Berners-Lee, and Dingchao Lu) is the controlling shareholder of Proton AG. The company explicitly takes no venture capital, its non-profit structure is designed to permanently prevent takeover attempts, and there is no path for a US-PE / US-VC investor to influence governance.

Compliance posture is exceptional. Proton holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022 with the ISMS scope covering all product lines (Mail, Drive, Pass, VPN, Calendar, SimpleLogin) and SOC 2 Type II. The infrastructure footprint is also unusual: by February 2025 Proton had 11,496 servers across 117 countries, all owned and operated by Proton itself, not rented from hyperscalers. Primary processing is in Switzerland; named US sub-processors are limited to ancillary functions (Zendesk for customer support, Chargebee for billing automation, Stripe and PayPal for card payments, Atlassian for support-data storage) and do not touch zero-knowledge-encrypted customer files. Standard Contractual Clauses, Binding Corporate Rules, and certifications govern any third-country transfers. Switzerland is not in the EU but holds an EU adequacy decision under Art. 45 GDPR, so transfers EU↔CH require no SCCs.

Drive pricing in EUR: Free includes 5 GB encrypted storage plus Docs and Sheets; Drive Plus is from approximately €4/month for 200 GB and file-version recovery; Proton Unlimited at ~€10/month adds 500 GB, Mail with 15 custom addresses, VPN, Pass, and Proton Sentinel advanced account protection; Duo (2 TB, 2 users), Family (3 TB, 6 users), and Drive Professional (1 TB/user for business). Best fit: every EU and Swiss procurement-grade buyer requiring zero-knowledge encrypted file sharing with the strongest sovereignty story in the directory; particularly compelling for journalists, NGOs, regulated industries, and any organisation needing genuine "no one outside the customer can access this data" guarantees.

SUB-PROCESSORS

Sub-processor map · 7

Source ↗
  • Chargebee, Inc. US
    United States

    Payment data processing (billing automation); ancillary

  • PayPal US
    United States

    Payment data processing; ancillary

  • Stripe, Inc. US
    United States

    Payment data processing; ancillary

  • Zendesk, Inc. US
    United States

    Customer support data processing; ancillary

  • Atlassian Pty Ltd non-US
    Australia

    Customer support data storage (EU/US/UK processing locations)

  • ProtonLabs DOOEL Skopje non-US
    North Macedonia

    Customer support and direct communications (Proton group company)

  • ProtonLabs Taiwan Co., Ltd non-US
    Taiwan

    Customer support and direct communications (Proton group company)

4 of 7 sub-processors are US-incorporated. These are ancillary processors that do not hold protected customer data, so they do not change the assessment. CLOUD Act exposure is rated none.
CERTIFICATIONS

Frameworks & certifications

ISO/IEC 27001
ACTIVE
SOC 2
ACTIVE
Informational · US framework
FEATURES

Capability matrix

Free storage 5 GB
Paid storage (from) 200 GB
Max file size Unlimited
Photo sync Yes
File versioning Yes
Link sharing Yes
Platforms iOS macOS Windows Android Web
INTEGRATION & ACCESS
REST API Yes
SSO (SAML / OIDC) Yes
COMPLIANCE & GOVERNANCE
Audit log Yes
Self-host / on-prem option No
PRICING

Pricing & tiers

FREEMIUM
from €4/mo
View pricing page ↗
PUBLIC DOCUMENTS

Public documents

  • Data Processing Addendum (DPA)
    proton.me/legal…
    Open ↗
  • Sub-processors list
    proton.me/legal…
    Open ↗
  • Terms of Service
    proton.me/legal…
    Open ↗
ALTERNATIVES

Alternatives in this category

Tresorit
Switzerland · Founded 2011
EU-HOSTED

Swiss-Post-owned (state-anchored) E2E encrypted enterprise cloud storage (Tresorit AG, Zurich), Swiss + EU DC options, ISO 27001.

Public DPA Sub-processors Open source
FROM
€10/mo
CLOUD ACT
MATERIAL
kDrive (Infomaniak)
Switzerland · Founded 1994
EU-SOVEREIGN

Swiss kDrive cloud (Infomaniak, Geneva, since 1994), own Swiss DCs, ISO 27001 + B Corp 2025, district-heating heat recycling.

Public DPA Sub-processors Open source
FROM
€4/mo
CLOUD ACT
NONE
Internxt
Spain · Founded 2020
EU-BASED

Valencia-based open-source zero-knowledge encrypted cloud (Internxt, 2020), post-quantum crypto, lifetime plans, 1 GB free, 1M+ users.

Public DPA Sub-processors Open source
FROM
€10/mo
billed annually
CLOUD ACT
MINOR