Proton Mail vs Gmail: Price, Privacy and Features Compared

Proton Mail is the end-to-end encrypted option built around privacy by default, while Gmail is the free, AI-infused inbox most people already have — and the two now compete on nearly identical ground: paid storage tiers, custom-domain email, and search. If you want a mailbox that even its own operator cannot read, Proton Mail Plus or Unlimited is the pick; if you want the biggest free storage pool, the deepest third-party app support, and Gemini built into search and replies, Gmail backed by a Google One or Google Workspace plan wins. The rest comes down to price, storage, and how much you trust Google's ad-funded model versus Proton's subscription-funded one.

Proton Mail vs Gmail: pricing and plans

Proton Mail's free tier gives a single address and 1 GB of storage (500 MB base plus a 500 MB bonus for completing Proton's onboarding checklist), according to Proton's pricing page. Stepping up to Mail Plus costs €4.99 a month, or €47.88 billed annually (€3.99/month), and includes 15 GB of storage shared with Proton Drive, up to 10 email addresses, support for one custom domain, and unlimited folders, labels, and filters, per Proton's own plan comparison page. Proton Unlimited is €12.99 a month, or €119.88 billed annually (€9.99/month), and bundles 500 GB of storage, up to 15 extra addresses, three custom domains, and premium access to Proton's entire suite — Calendar, Drive, Pass, VPN, and Wallet — plus VPN on up to 10 devices at once. Proton's pricing page shows these figures in euros; US shoppers should confirm the dollar price at checkout, since Proton adjusts by region and offers a currency switcher.

Gmail itself has no paid "Gmail-only" tier. Every Google Account gets 15 GB free, pooled across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. To get more room without changing your email address, you buy Google One: Basic (100 GB) is $1.99/month, AI Plus (2 TB) is $9.99/month, and AI Pro (5 TB) is $19.99/month, each with up to 16% off on annual billing and the option to share the pool with up to five other people, per Google One's plans page. None of these add a custom domain — your address stays @gmail.com no matter which Google One tier you buy.

Encryption and the privacy model

This is where the two services genuinely diverge in architecture, not just marketing copy. Proton Mail uses end-to-end and zero-access encryption: Proton's security page states that messages are "encrypted at all times, so we can never access your messages," with content encrypted on your device before it's sent. Mail arriving from non-Proton senders is automatically encrypted with the recipient's public key the moment it reaches Proton's servers, and Proton Mail ships built-in PGP support with Web Key Directory (WKD) compatibility, so it can also interoperate with other PGP-capable mail clients. Proton Contacts applies the same zero-access encryption to your address book. Proton AG is headquartered in Switzerland (legally domiciled in Plan-les-Ouates, per Proton Mail's Wikipedia entry), which keeps it outside EU and US data-sharing frameworks, and the company publishes its apps as open source with third-party security audits.

Gmail's model is different by design. Google's Safety Center states plainly that Google "never uses content you create and store in apps like Drive, Gmail, and Photos for advertising purposes" and does not sell personal information — a real shift from Gmail's early-2010s practice of scanning inbox content to target ads, which Google ended in 2017. Messages are encrypted in transit (Workspace's Gmail product page advertises "industry-leading encryption for all messages"), and Google's spam and phishing defenses are aggressive: Google says it blocks 99.9% of spam, malware, and dangerous links before they reach your inbox. But Gmail is not end-to-end encrypted by default — Google's own servers can technically process message content to power search, Smart Reply, and the Gemini-based "AI Overview" thread summaries baked into the newer Gmail interface. For users who want ciphertext Google itself cannot read, that is the deciding factor regardless of Google's ad-targeting promises.

Storage: how far each dollar goes

Gmail's free 15 GB beats Proton's free 1 GB by a wide margin, and it's the main reason most people never leave Gmail. But once you're paying, the comparison flips depending on what you value. Proton Mail Plus's 15 GB for roughly €4-5/month is modest next to Google One's 100 GB for $1.99/month — Google's raw storage-per-dollar is simply cheaper, because that pool also covers Drive and Photos, not just mail. Where Proton pulls ahead is at the top end relative to privacy: Proton Unlimited's 500 GB comes with the full encrypted suite (Mail, Drive, Calendar, Pass, VPN, Wallet) under one zero-access architecture, while Google One's larger tiers (2 TB, 5 TB) are mostly sold as storage-plus-Gemini bundles rather than a privacy upgrade — the encryption model doesn't change as you pay more.

Custom domain email: @you.com vs @yourcompany.com

If you want your own domain in your email address, both companies support it, but through different products. Proton Mail Plus includes one custom domain and Proton Unlimited includes three, both inside the same consumer pricing tiers described above — no separate business product required. Google works the opposite way: Gmail and Google One never let you attach a custom domain to a personal @gmail.com account. You need Google Workspace, whose Business Starter plan lists at $7.00 per user per month (frequently discounted for a promotional period on new sign-ups) and includes 30 GB of pooled storage per user plus a custom business address. Standard ($14.00/user/month list) steps up to 2 TB and adds features like mail merge, and Plus ($22.00/user/month list) adds 5 TB and eDiscovery tools, according to Google Workspace's pricing page. All three tiers cap out at 300 users per purchase and include a 14-day free trial. For a solo user who just wants a vanity domain, Proton is meaningfully cheaper than Workspace; for a team that also needs shared calendars, admin controls, and Google Docs/Sheets, Workspace's bundle makes more sense.

It's worth noting that Proton's custom-domain support is a consumer feature baked into Mail Plus and Unlimited, with no separate "business" SKU required for a single user — you verify a domain's DNS records and you're done. Google draws a harder line: a custom domain always means a Workspace subscription billed per user, even if that "team" is a household of one. If your only goal is dropping the @gmail.com or @proton.me suffix, that structural difference, not the headline feature list, is usually what decides the cheaper path.

Search, AI features, and everyday usability

Gmail's search is the product of two decades of Google indexing technology, now layered with Gemini: Workspace's Gmail page highlights natural-language inbox search, AI-drafted replies "in your own voice," and AI-generated thread summaries, on top of longstanding features like powerful filters, labels, and tight integration with Google Meet, Chat, and Docs. Offline access and compatibility with third-party clients like Outlook, Apple Mail, and Thunderbird round out the feature set. The tradeoff for all of this convenience is that Gmail's AI features work by processing your message content on Google's servers.

Proton Mail's feature set is built around the opposite tradeoff: because content is encrypted, Proton can't run the same kind of server-side AI search or auto-summarization without breaking its own privacy guarantee. Instead, Proton Mail ships unlimited folders, labels, and custom filters, an Easy Switch import tool for migrating from Gmail or Outlook, hide-my-email aliases (unlimited on paid plans) for signing up to services without exposing your real address, desktop and mobile apps, and paid-tier extras like Proton Sentinel advanced account protection and dark web monitoring. If you're the kind of user comparing how AI assistants are priced and positioned more broadly — Proton has no equivalent to Gemini baked into search — it's worth reading our ChatGPT vs Gemini price and feature comparison to see how Google's AI strategy extends well beyond Gmail into its wider subscription stack.

One more practical difference worth flagging for developers and power users: Proton Mail doesn't expose a public email API the way some providers do, and reading an encrypted mailbox programmatically generally means going through Proton Mail Bridge for IMAP/SMTP access on paid plans. If you're building AI agents or automations that need to read or act on email — for example through a standard like the one we cover in our explainer on the Model Context Protocol — that's a constraint worth weighing against Gmail's broader API and third-party integration ecosystem before you commit a workflow to either inbox.

What you get for free

Proton Free gives one address, 1 GB of storage, and the same end-to-end/zero-access encryption as the paid tiers — the free tier's limitation is capacity and address count, not security. Gmail's free tier gives 15 GB shared across Gmail, Drive, and Photos, unlimited (ad-supported, non-custom-domain) addresses if you create multiple Google Accounts, and the full consumer feature set including Gemini-powered search once Google rolls it out to free accounts. For most casual users, Gmail's free tier is simply more generous in raw capacity; Proton's free tier is aimed at people who want guaranteed privacy even if they never pay.

Who should choose which

Pick Proton Mail if: you want a provider that cannot read your mail by design, you're in a profession where confidentiality is a legal or ethical requirement (law, journalism, healthcare, activism), you want a custom domain without buying a separate business suite, or you already use Proton VPN, Drive, or Pass and want one encrypted account for everything.

Pick Gmail (plus Google One or Workspace) if: you want the largest free storage pool and don't want to pay for basic email, you rely on Gemini-powered search, Smart Reply, or AI thread summaries, you need deep integration with Google Docs, Sheets, Meet, and Calendar, or your organization already standardizes on Google Workspace for collaboration and a shared custom domain matters more than zero-access encryption.

Bottom line

Neither service is objectively "better" — they're optimized for different priorities. Gmail, especially paired with Google One or Workspace, is the more feature-dense, AI-forward, and storage-cheap option for people who are comfortable with Google's ad-funded (but not ad-scanning-your-mail) business model. Proton Mail is the more privacy-guaranteed option: encryption that Proton itself cannot bypass, Swiss jurisdiction, and custom domains included at consumer prices, at the cost of less AI-assisted search and a smaller free storage allowance. If you're unsure, Proton's free tier and Gmail's free tier cost nothing to try side by side before committing to either company's paid plans — check both providers' current pricing pages before buying, since both adjust tiers and regional pricing periodically.

Written byFelix Moreau

Felix Moreau writes Pandromeda's software coverage and how-to guides. He covers Windows, macOS and Linux updates, the apps people rely on, emulators and developer tools, and turns official documentation into clear, numbered steps that work on the current version.

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