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Proton VPN Free vs Plus Plan: Why I Picked the Plus Plan While Sitting in Mildur
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Proton VPN Free vs Plus Plan: Why I Picked the Plus Plan While Sitting in Mildur
My Accidental Deep Dive into VPNs in the Middle of Nowhere
Let me set the scene for you. It’s 42 degrees Celsius, I’m in Mildura—a charming Australian city that Google Maps describes as “northwestern Victoria” and locals describe as “the place where Melbourne ends and the desert begins”—and I’m trying to stream a cricket match that the Australian broadcasters have decided I don’t deserve to watch. Because apparently, living 550 kilometers from Melbourne means I’ve committed some kind of geographical crime against entertainment.
This is how I found myself, at 2 AM, mainlining coffee from a servo (service station, for you non-Aussies), staring at Proton VPN’s pricing page like it held the meaning of life. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. But it did hold the difference between watching the Ashes in glorious HD and staring at a buffering wheel that mocked my very existence.
Choosing the right plan in Mildura comes down to features versus cost. The Proton VPN free vs Plus plan Australia pick is clear for heavy users needing many devices. To see which option the community recommends, please visit: https://www.keepandshare.com/discuss2/46351/proton-vpn-free-vs-plus-plan-australia-pick-in-mildura
The Free Plan: A Beautiful Lie (That I Fell For)
Look, I’m not proud of this. I started with the free plan because, like any self-respecting millennial who still remembers LimeWire, my first instinct is always “is there a way to not pay for this?” Proton VPN’s free tier is genuinely impressive compared to the competition—I’ll give them that. You get servers in three countries: the US, Netherlands, and Japan. That’s it. Three. It’s like being offered a buffet but only being allowed to eat from the bread basket.
Here’s where my Mildura adventure gets interesting. I’m sitting in this lovely city—population roughly 56,000, famous for its citrus fruits and, apparently, my terrible life choices—and I connect to the free US server. My speed test shows 15 Mbps. To put that in perspective, my NBN connection in Mildura (which the government insists is “high-speed”) gives me 50 Mbps on a good day. So I’m losing 70% of my speed just to pretend I’m in Los Angeles.
I try streaming Netflix. It loads. It actually loads! I’m feeling pretty smug at this point. Then I try to watch something. Anything. The show starts, I see three seconds of a person’s face, and then… buffering. More buffering. So much buffering that I start to wonder if the video is actually a still image with a really long transition effect. I spend 47 minutes trying to watch a 22-minute sitcom episode. That’s not entertainment; that’s an endurance test.
The free plan also limits you to one device connection. ONE. In 2026. I have more devices than that in my bathroom. My smart toothbrush probably wants a VPN connection at this point.
The Plus Plan: Where I Sold My Soul (For About $8 a Month)
After three nights of this digital torture, I cracked. I upgraded to Proton VPN Plus. And folks, the difference was like going from a bicycle to a Tesla—if that Tesla could also teleport and make espresso.
First, the server selection. Plus gives you access to 6,500+ servers across 112 countries. That’s not a network; that’s a digital empire. I suddenly had options. I could be in Sydney, London, Tokyo, or some server in Iceland that I’m pretty sure is just a very cold laptop in someone’s garage. The choice was intoxicating.
But here’s the kicker for us Australians, especially those of us brave enough to live outside the Sydney-Melbourne bubble: Plus has Australian servers. Actual servers in actual Australia. When I connected to the Sydney server from Mildura, my speed barely dipped. We’re talking 45 Mbps out of my 50. That’s a 10% loss. Compare that to the 70% loss on the free US server, and suddenly that $8 a month starts looking like the bargain of the century.
The Streaming Wars: How I Won (Sort Of)
Let’s talk about the real reason anyone gets a VPN in Australia: content. We pay more for less here. It’s like the streaming services looked at our isolated continent and thought, “Let’s see how much they’ll pay for a fraction of what Americans get.”
With Proton VPN Plus, I unlocked Netflix libraries from 15 different countries. The US library has roughly 6,000 titles. Japan has amazing anime selections. The UK has BBC iPlayer, which is basically a national treasure. I spent an entire weekend just browsing content I suddenly had access to, like a kid in a candy store who’d been living on bread and water.
But here’s where my Mildura experience gets weirdly specific. I discovered that some Australian streaming services—yes, Australian ones—work better when I’m connected to an Australian VPN server than when I’m using my raw connection. I don’t understand the internet infrastructure in this country, and I’m not sure I want to. All I know is that Stan loaded faster through Proton’s Sydney server than it did through my local Mildura ISP routing. Make that make sense.
The Technical Stuff I Pretend to Understand
Plus plan gives you Secure Core servers. These are basically VPN inception—your traffic goes through two servers instead of one, which is apparently very secure and not at all overkill for watching cooking shows. The first server is in a privacy-friendly country like Switzerland or Iceland, and then it bounces to your exit server. It’s like wearing two condoms, except digitally and less likely to cause awkward conversations.
You also get Tor over VPN, which I have never used because I don’t need to buy anything that requires that level of paranoia, but I appreciate having it. It’s like owning a fire extinguisher. You probably won’t need it, but you’ll feel very smug telling people you have one.
The Plus plan supports up to 10 simultaneous connections. I currently have it on my laptop, phone, tablet, my partner’s phone, our smart TV, and I’m pretty sure I connected my Kindle once just because I could. That’s the kind of freedom the free plan can’t give you. The free plan is digital monogamy; Plus is a device polyamory that would make relationship counselors nervous.
The Speed Tests: Numbers Don’t Lie (But I Might)
Let me hit you with some hard data from my Mildura testing, because nothing says “credible research” like speed tests conducted at 3 AM while eating leftover pizza:
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Free plan, US server: 15 Mbps download, 8 Mbps upload, 180ms ping
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Free plan, Netherlands server: 12 Mbps download, 6 Mbps upload, 220ms ping
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Plus plan, Sydney server: 45 Mbps download, 18 Mbps upload, 25ms ping
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Plus plan, US server (Plus optimized): 38 Mbps download, 15 Mbps upload, 160ms ping
Those upload speeds matter, by the way. I once tried to upload a video to YouTube on the free plan. It took 4 hours. Four. Hours. With Plus, the same video took 45 minutes. That’s the difference between “I’ll upload this before bed” and “I’ll upload this before I qualify for a pension.”
The Real Cost of Free
Here’s something they don’t tell you in the marketing materials: the free plan costs you time, and time is money. I calculated that I spent roughly 2 hours per week dealing with slow connections, reconnecting dropped servers, and finding workarounds for streaming blocks. That’s 104 hours per year. At Australian minimum wage ($23.23 per hour), that’s $2,415 worth of my time. The Plus plan costs about $96 per year if you catch a sale. I don’t need to be a mathematician to tell you which one makes more sense.
Plus, the free servers get crowded. It’s like trying to use the bathroom at a music festival—technically there’s a facility, but you’re sharing it with 10,000 other desperate people. During peak hours (which in Australia means when America wakes up and Europe gets home), the free servers slow to a crawl. I once got 3 Mbps on a free US server at 8 PM Melbourne time. I could have sent the data via carrier pigeon faster.
The Mildura Factor: Why Location Matters More Than You Think
Living in Mildura has taught me that Australian internet is not created equal. We’re not all surfing on Sydney’s fiber-optic beaches out here. My connection is stable but not spectacular, and every millisecond of latency matters when you’re already dealing with distance.
The Plus plan’s Australian servers are a game-changer for regional users. When I connect to Sydney, my traffic doesn’t need to bounce to America and back just to access Australian content. The physics of it alone make me wonder why I ever thought the free plan was sufficient. Light can only travel so fast, and it turns out “so fast” is not fast enough to stream 4K video from a server 12,000 kilometers away.
I also discovered that Plus has a feature called “VPN Accelerator” that claims to improve speeds by up to 400%. I didn’t see 400%, but I did see consistent improvements of 20-30% on long-distance connections. It’s like they found a shortcut through the internet tubes. I don’t understand how it works, and I’ve decided to just accept it as digital magic.
The Privacy Angle: Because Apparently That’s Important
Proton VPN is based in Switzerland, which has better privacy laws than my apartment building has rules about noise. The Plus plan gives you access to their entire network, including those fancy Secure Core servers I mentioned earlier. They also have a strict no-logs policy that has been independently audited.
Now, I’m not doing anything that requires Swiss-level privacy. My search history is mostly recipes, cricket scores, and “why is my plant dying.” But there’s something comforting about knowing that if I ever did need to hide my digital footprint, I have tools that journalists and activists actually use. It’s like owning a really good safe. You probably just keep spare keys in it, but you could keep gold bars if your life took an unexpected turn.
My Wallet Hates Me, But My Sanity Thanks Me
After three months of using Proton VPN Plus from my Mildura base camp, I can say with absolute certainty that the upgrade was worth it. Is it perfect? No. Sometimes the Australian servers get busy. Sometimes I have to switch from Sydney to Melbourne to get the best speed. Sometimes I forget it’s on and wonder why Google thinks I’m in Perth.
But compared to the free plan? It’s night and day. It’s like the difference between dial-up and broadband, between black-and-white and color, between instant coffee and literally anything else.
If you’re in a major Australian city with fiber internet and you just need occasional VPN access, the free plan might suffice. It’s genuinely one of the better free VPNs out there, and I respect Proton for offering it. But if you’re in regional Australia—if you’re in Mildura or Alice Springs or any place where the internet already feels like a privilege rather than a right—the Plus plan isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity dressed up as an upgrade.
The Final Math
Let’s break this down one more time, because I know some of you are still clutching your wallets:
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Proton VPN Free: $0, 3 servers, 1 device, slower than a hungover sloth
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Proton VPN Plus: ~$8/month, 6,500+ servers, 10 devices, fast enough to make you forget you’re in Mildura
I chose Plus. I’m not saying you have to. I’m just saying that I’ve seen things—buffering things, connection-timeout things, “this content is not available in your region” things—that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. And for the price of two coffees a month, I don’t have to see them anymore.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch the BBC from my couch in Mildura, routed through a server in Switzerland, while eating an orange from a local orchard. Because that’s the kind of globally connected, slightly absurd existence that Proton VPN Plus enables. And honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Proton VPN free vs Plus plan Australia pick in Mildura?
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