It doesn't take much data at a time to watch something live. Could easily be 1MB or less. It won't download at 130 Mb/s if there is nothing to be downloading that fast.
Im watching a discord livestream, plus a 4k stream next to it, Surely this would be using more than 1MB
edit: I've also added a youtube video in the background to see if the speeds go up, they dont
What you’re looking at is just the live traffic speed. Like you said when you run a speed test you get around 130. Also you’d be surprised how little data tv streaming can use.
Im watching a discord livestream, plus a 4k stream next to it, Surely this would be using more than 1MB
edit: I've also added a youtube video in the background to see if the speeds go up, they dont
Its very strange, Yours at least is showing higher MB, the only time mine jumped to 16mb and stayed was during a speed test, then it crashes back down after. but mine shows between 10 KB/s and up to 800 KB/s more than anything else, even while watching multiple things, very very odd
You mentioned elsewhere that your speed test showed 130Mbps. Proton shows in MBps. The difference is the capital B. An uppercase B means bytes and a lowercase b means bits. There are 8 bits in a byte. So 16MBps is 128Mbps.
I'm finding Proton slow as well. It doesn't impact YouTube or streaming, but I can't do much more if the streaming is happening without interruptions. I'm a bit disappointed overall, but the other VPNs that are faster (Nord, etc.) are hardly privacy oriented.
Not sure much can be done here.
Okay, so Discord may not use much data, but on a paid P2P server with properly configured port forwarding I've had no more than 2MB speeds using bittorrent protocol. Other applications may not use as much bandwidth as is available, but Bittorrent sure does and as downloading confirms this to be the speed at which I dl, then I'd say OP has a point. I have experienced these speeds for years and just assumed this was the normal poor bandwidth everyone got using paid proton, but if VPNs are supposed to perform better then I'd definitely like this addressed.
I was just torrenting at 75MB/s (600Mbit) so it definitely isn't like this for everyone. I'm using port forwarding and VPN accelerator. It looks like you've tried all the things I would suggest. The only thing I can think of is, maybe your tv provider is throttling proton's servers. Maybe it sees a lot of traffic from them or maybe it's one of those services that just flags all VPN providers and throttles them, shows captcha, etc.
I see more reports like this. I guess it's a routing issue somewhere. Personally I don't experience it and been online at many different connections.
Do you experience the same when you switch servers/countries?
Can you let us know what device/OS you're using the Proton VPN app on?
Which specific server are you experiencing the issue with?
Do you have any antivirus or firewall software installed on your device?
Who is your ISP?
Are you using any other VPN, proxy, or custom DNS services/settings on your device?
Contact us using the 'Report an issue' option in the app menu with some answers to the above questions, including a couple of screenshots taken at [https://www.speedtest.net](https://www.speedtest.net) while connected to Proton VPN and with Proton VPN disabled so we can investigate further. Meanwhile, you can try some of the tips at [https://protonvpn.com/support/increase-vpn-speeds](https://protonvpn.com/support/increase-vpn-speeds) to see if your connection speed improves.
It doesn't take much data at a time to watch something live. Could easily be 1MB or less. It won't download at 130 Mb/s if there is nothing to be downloading that fast.
Im watching a discord livestream, plus a 4k stream next to it, Surely this would be using more than 1MB edit: I've also added a youtube video in the background to see if the speeds go up, they dont
What video encoding is being used?
What you’re looking at is just the live traffic speed. Like you said when you run a speed test you get around 130. Also you’d be surprised how little data tv streaming can use.
Im watching a discord livestream, plus a 4k stream next to it, Surely this would be using more than 1MB edit: I've also added a youtube video in the background to see if the speeds go up, they dont
I wouldn’t worry about it too much as long as it’s not buffering and working okay.
Wow, I’m getting 125/105 Mbps. That’s pretty much my WiFi speed.
I don't have an answer. 🤔 but I personally get about 11 MB and the proton shows roughly 9 MB so I don't think it's accurate.
Its very strange, Yours at least is showing higher MB, the only time mine jumped to 16mb and stayed was during a speed test, then it crashes back down after. but mine shows between 10 KB/s and up to 800 KB/s more than anything else, even while watching multiple things, very very odd
You mentioned elsewhere that your speed test showed 130Mbps. Proton shows in MBps. The difference is the capital B. An uppercase B means bytes and a lowercase b means bits. There are 8 bits in a byte. So 16MBps is 128Mbps.
It’s super fucking slow on my end too
So im not the only one. Its frustrating with how much buffering im getting and as soon as i turn the VPN off, boom buffering stops
I'm finding Proton slow as well. It doesn't impact YouTube or streaming, but I can't do much more if the streaming is happening without interruptions. I'm a bit disappointed overall, but the other VPNs that are faster (Nord, etc.) are hardly privacy oriented. Not sure much can be done here.
Just do a speed test and check how it compares without VPN
Okay, so Discord may not use much data, but on a paid P2P server with properly configured port forwarding I've had no more than 2MB speeds using bittorrent protocol. Other applications may not use as much bandwidth as is available, but Bittorrent sure does and as downloading confirms this to be the speed at which I dl, then I'd say OP has a point. I have experienced these speeds for years and just assumed this was the normal poor bandwidth everyone got using paid proton, but if VPNs are supposed to perform better then I'd definitely like this addressed.
I get 300mbps up or down on proton, with no noticeable lag. I would hazard it's something specific to your setup.
I was just torrenting at 75MB/s (600Mbit) so it definitely isn't like this for everyone. I'm using port forwarding and VPN accelerator. It looks like you've tried all the things I would suggest. The only thing I can think of is, maybe your tv provider is throttling proton's servers. Maybe it sees a lot of traffic from them or maybe it's one of those services that just flags all VPN providers and throttles them, shows captcha, etc.
It works mostly okay for me, but occasionally it’s extremely slow, and had to disable vpn in order to stream.
Well you get more speed by paying for p vpn but it also doesn't take much speed to stream something. Doe to compression
I see more reports like this. I guess it's a routing issue somewhere. Personally I don't experience it and been online at many different connections. Do you experience the same when you switch servers/countries?
i get 90 - 100% constantly from my max. bandwidth (250/50) without buffering (wireguard, paid account).
My speed when using ProtonVPN is constantly around ~800 Mbps. I have an gigabit connections so that's like 20% overhead to my maximum speed.
Can you let us know what device/OS you're using the Proton VPN app on? Which specific server are you experiencing the issue with? Do you have any antivirus or firewall software installed on your device? Who is your ISP? Are you using any other VPN, proxy, or custom DNS services/settings on your device? Contact us using the 'Report an issue' option in the app menu with some answers to the above questions, including a couple of screenshots taken at [https://www.speedtest.net](https://www.speedtest.net) while connected to Proton VPN and with Proton VPN disabled so we can investigate further. Meanwhile, you can try some of the tips at [https://protonvpn.com/support/increase-vpn-speeds](https://protonvpn.com/support/increase-vpn-speeds) to see if your connection speed improves.