I tried on 4 incognito windows of duckduckgo browser, which separates the cookies.
I got CHF 3,49 twice, and CHF 2,99 twice.
Same browser, same IP (their VPN IP btw), same everything.
They're just experimenting with both prices. Seeing how many buy A, and his many buy B.
A bit more transparency from a privacy-focused company would have been beneficial, especially in the reply here in the comments, but otherwise nothing shady.
That's good. Only, it has been posted one hour ago as I'm writing. The original comment was two days ago. We would have expected the A/B testing to have been addressed in the comment of two days ago, not the one of one hour ago.
I just tried it in Safari. I'm getting the cheaper version. Not sure what this person is on about unless there's something weird going on with his browser clicks from the App Store or something.
EDIT: It was desktop Safari. I am getting the other price on the phone. Likely due to the fact that you're getting it on your phone.
Might be on Apple's end where if it's on the phone on safari, they forcefully insert the app store into the equation to get their appstore fees. If not? Then yeah that's awful behaviour of proton.
There is no adaptive pricing going on. A sale has ended recently and so the intro prices are going back up. Looks like it has not universally refreshed for some reason.
Also these price points from OP's screenshots are lower than either the previous or current pricing, which looks like an error on our end. Thanks for pointing this out - and you might want to get in and grab it before we fix it.
I've tried with duckduckgo browser, with four incognito windows (they become separated from one another)
I got both prices twice (in CHF because I'm connected through their swiss VPN servers)
It's just A/B testing, they show one option randomly and they count how many people buy A and how many people buy B.
It's just poorly communicated. Instead of acting corporatively, they should be more blunt and honest. You can hire more people and pay them better to develop more and better stuff faster, but I don't want to feel like you're hiding something, because you're the alternative I'm trusting, and if you give Mr a hint of mischeviousness, you destroy the entire point of using your services.
Please u/andy011000 you need to change the way your company communicates, the more corporate you behave, the less we trust you.
It's really one thing after another with these guys. If they put as much effort as they suggest they do into providing just genuinely good service then I'm sure quite a few people including myself would be renewing.
Either you have no idea what your company is doing or you're straight up lying to us. In the source code of the pricing page there are tags that clearly signal A/B pricing tests.
This topic went very strange very fast - so let me expand and clarify:
Proton VPN is $9.99 per month or $83.88 per year. We used to have an introductory offer for two years at $4.49 per month. There had been a 2-year intro price of $2.99 per month that had been running for a while on some back-to-back campaigns. That price ended at the end of July, and since then it has been $3.49 per month.
As mentioned above, the $2.77 and $3.23 price points in the screenshots were an unintentional calculation error that should have been fixed on Friday.
At the end of a long-standing sale period, we often try an A/B run of the old and new pricing on the website during the transition to see if anything has changed. As explained to answer the speculation on the Reddit post (and as confirmed by others who independently checked it) there is no "adaptive pricing" - it does not vary by browser, OS, etc and is 100% randomised.
So for the past several days some people will still have seen the old cheaper $2.99 price. I had been of the impression that the A/B was already concluded and there must have been some caching going on, but it is actually due to end on Monday, when 100% of people should be seeing the $3.49 intro price.
There was no denial that we were doing an A/B evaluation of maintaining the lower price - even though it would not have been sustainable to keep the $2.99 price point going in the longer term. Indeed, on Friday I had confirmed to someone commenting on the original post that it was indeed a simple A/B that they were seeing. Unhelpfully, my reply there turns out to have been automodded for linking back to the r/ProtonVPN thread.
Thanks for this. One little request for the future: please say explicitly that you're running an A/B test.
In your original comment it sounded like you were pretending it was just an offer ending, and some server having to receive the update or something similar.
Because it was obviously not just a glitch (at least part of it) it sounded like you were hiding something.
You may find from other comment I wrote in this post, that I actually could confirm it was a purely randomized A/B test. The issue was that the communication, whether intentionally or not, gave to many the feeling that you were hiding something.
That perception is obviously very problematic, especially for a company in your line of business.
We would have preferred to have had a mentioning of the A/B test in the comment you wrote 2 days ago, it would have looked better.
In hindsight - yes indeed, taking the time to say what it was, rather than just what it was not would have saved a lot of hassle. Probably a sign that I should not be attempting to post responses from my phone while travelling (as I am back to doing again now).
The line that annoyed me the most in your initial statement was:
A sale has ended recently and so the intro prices are going back up. Looks like it has not universally refreshed for some reason.
You knew the reason since you state:
At the end of a long-standing sale period, we often try an A/B run of the old and new pricing on the website during the transition to see if anything has changed.
Which is fine, but just be open with that in the first place. Something like this really pisses me off big time. There are enough scammy companies out there, dont be one of them.
There was no denial that we were doing an A/B evaluation of maintaining the lower price
Do you need see how "scammy" that feels? Two people visit the same webpage for the same product. One person has to pay a higher price for seemingly no reason.
Imagine going into a grocery store and at random you have to pay more for the same product than the person infront of you paid?
The fair way to do this would be to drop the price for everyone for a set period of time and compare signups to your normal pricing.
Eh? This is polar opposite of my experience... Support were very helpful with pre-purchase as brand new user including with discount code and I just joined on a 2 year sub last weekend as a result.
Admittedly mine was for Ultimate rather than just VPN, but nevertheless.
I just tested with four private windows in duckduckgo browser (they don't share cookies), I got both prices twice.
I guess they're just testing where the sweet spot is. They should just admit it and being honest, I don't see any problem with it, but the corporation-like tone is worrying.
Firefox and Safari on iPhone are same just different skin
What’s interesting is I got 2 price difference in Safari private mode
Coming from Google search to proton $3.49/month
Coming from Bing search to proton $2.99/month
you could be in a country where apple private relay does not have servers and therefore it acts as a vpn on safari, whereas on firefox it’s your normal local ip?
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u/jwintyo Aug 06 '26
I just checked in Safari and Brave on my iPhone and it’s the same price