As of 6 Nov 2026, the panel rates Cloudflare Zero Trust 3.5/5 and Proton VPN for Business 3/5 in Business VPN & Zero Trust Access. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 6 of the 6 judges pick Cloudflare Zero Trust and 0 pick Proton VPN for Business. Cloudflare Zero Trust scores higher on 5 of 7 criteria (Logs, audit trail & incident response, Identity, access policy & device posture, Access model & connectivity, plus 2 more). Proton VPN for Business scores higher on 2 of 7 criteria (Pricing transparency and European sovereignty). Provenance — Cloudflare Zero Trust: Rest of world; Proton VPN for Business: UK / wider Europe. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
Five criteria lean Cloudflare Zero Trust and two lean Proton VPN for Business — that split is the answer here. Four criteria go to Cloudflare by six judges to zero — access and connectivity 7.3 to 5.7, identity and policy 7.7 to 6.0, visibility and audit 7.2 to 5.0, deployment and administration 6.7 to 5.2 — and architecture and assurance runs 6.5 to 5.7 with three judges leaning Cloudflare and three ties. Proton takes pricing transparency 7.3 to 4.0, six judges to zero, on four public tiers from VPN Essentials at €6.99/user per month to Workspace Standard at €12.99/user per month against Cloudflare's "Annual custom price per user" Contract Plan. Sovereignty goes Proton's way 6.2 to 5.7, with three judges leaning Proton, one Cloudflare, two tying. Weighted totals span 6.1 to 7.0 for Cloudflare and 5.3 to 5.9 for Proton. No overall winner: the benches lean differently by criterion.
Choose Cloudflare Zero Trust if
You need deny-by-default, per-application access into your own network rather than whitelisting a dedicated exit IP at the perimeter — access and connectivity leans Cloudflare Zero Trust six judges to zero, 7.3 to 5.7.
Your auditors ask what is retained and for how long: Cloudflare Zero Trust states admin logs kept eighteen months on every plan and access logs up to 180 days on Enterprise — though requests matching a Bypass policy are not logged — while the Proton verdict reports opt-in monitoring with retention periods that are not published; visibility and audit is 7.2 to 5.0, six judges to zero.
Your identity stack runs on Microsoft Entra ID, Google, Okta or GitHub and you need SCIM revocation that forces re-attestation — identity and policy is 7.7 to 6.0, six judges to zero.
You require documented encryption — the verdict credits MASQUE over TLS 1.3 with hybrid ML-KEM — and a published subprocessor list; architecture and assurance is 6.5 to 5.7 with three judges leaning Cloudflare, three ties, and zero leaning Proton.
Your users should reach internal apps from a browser without installing VPN clients — the bench credits agentless browser access, and deployment and administration leans Cloudflare Zero Trust 6.7 to 5.2, six judges to zero.
Choose Proton VPN for Business if
You need a per-user price on the page before committing: four public tiers from VPN Essentials at €6.99/user per month, minimum 2 users, to Workspace Standard at €12.99/user per month — pricing transparency leans Proton VPN for Business six judges to zero, 7.3 to 4.0.
Your procurement must compare vendors on published numbers; Cloudflare Zero Trust's Contract Plan is an 'Annual custom price per user', and its verdict reports we found no public per-user price for paid tiers or add-ons.
You lease dedicated IPs for partners to whitelist and want the cost stated in advance — Proton publishes dedicated IPs at +€39.99/month per IP.
Sovereignty is your deciding criterion and the Geneva entity weighs in your favor: three judges lean Proton on sovereignty, 6.2 to 5.7, with Proton AG in Geneva; note the verdict leaves where account data and logs are hosted an unanswered question, and the captured sovereignty attributes read 'unknown' for both products.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Operations Manager
Runs operations at a fifty-person consultancy where a third of the work is done by freelancers on their own laptops and the rest of the team travels to client sites. Has no IT department, only an external provider billed by the hour. Wants each freelancer to reach one project system and nothing else, access that ends with the contract, a setup a non-specialist can follow, and no call to the helpdesk from a hotel lobby.
Cloudflare Zero Trust
This judge's pick
Proton VPN for Business
Criterion by criterion
Access model & connectivity
Cloudflare Zero Trust
Access is per application rather than whole networks, and agentless browser access to self-hosted applications means a freelancer on their own laptop needs no managed device or client install — exactly the contractor case I run. The device client, IPsec on-ramps and tunnel off-ramps are documented with their protocols and encryption (MASQUE, TLS 1.3 with hybrid ML-KEM, IPsec ESP). We found no public information on per-platform client lists, always-on behaviour, or named gateway regions — the pages describe a global network without naming where.
Proton VPN for Business
This is a gateway VPN that fits my freelancer pattern: dedicated static IPs in more than twenty countries, WireGuard and OpenVPN plus a custom protocol option, split tunnelling, a kill switch, and an always-on mode an administrator can enforce, with user groups limited to particular gateways and shared servers. Access per application is described at the level of restricting servers, apps or SaaS tools by user, group or role. I found no public information on connectors into our own firewalled systems, links to cloud networks, clientless browser access, or clients beyond the named Windows, iOS and Android apps.
Identity, access policy & device posture
Cloudflare Zero Trust
Deny-by-default with per-application Allow policies is precisely "reach one project system and nothing else", and single sign-on with Microsoft Entra ID, Google, Okta plus SCIM provisioning means revoking a freelancer in the identity provider re-attests their attributes and ends access — the contract-end scenario I need. Device posture signals are checked continuously per request from the client or a third-party provider, and non-identity attributes are re-evaluated during the session. We found no public information on just-in-time approval flows or named EDR/MDM posture sources.
Proton VPN for Business
Single sign-on with Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace or any SAML provider, SCIM that mirrors identity-provider groups automatically, enforced two-factor with a count of who has enabled it, and time-limited role-based access for external users with instant revocation — that covers access ending when a freelancer's contract ends. Administrators get granular roles inherited through groups. I found no public information on device posture checks such as disk encryption or EDR status gating access, or an approval step for just-in-time grants.
Logs, audit trail & incident response
Cloudflare Zero Trust
Access, admin, DNS, HTTP, network, device posture and session logs exist with retention stated per plan — 24 hours on the free tier, up to 180 days for access logs on Enterprise, 18 months for admin logs — plus Logpush to SIEM or cloud storage on the contract plan and a webhook and PagerDuty alerting API. That lets me prove which freelancer touched which system and when. We found no public information on a live session view with the ability to disconnect a user.
Proton VPN for Business
The activity monitor logs sign-in events and account changes per user with device, app version and server IP, searchable by name or email, filterable by time and exportable as CSV, while the gateway monitor shows who is connected to which gateway and on what device; the vendor is explicit that no online activity, IP addresses or session lengths are recorded by default. Monitoring is opt-in and collects nothing while off, retention periods are not stated, and a SIEM connector appears only as an integration on the top plan without named destinations.
Deployment, API & administration
Cloudflare Zero Trust
A central dashboard with a read-only lock for Super Administrators, management through API or Terraform, scoped API tokens limited to Zero Trust settings, and self-service termination from the account dashboard is a set-up I could hand to our external provider without specialist knowledge. Support channels are stated per plan — community forums and Discord on free, chat and ticket on pay-as-you-go, phone, chat and ticket on contract. We found no confirmed details on MDM-based client rollout, multi-tenant administration, or time to first connection.
Proton VPN for Business
A three-step setup, one central dashboard the vendor says a single IT manager can run, install via MDM, Group Policy or direct download with published Intune scripts for Windows, group-level admin roles, and 24/7 chat plus phone support from six users — this is something a non-specialist can roll out. API support appears only as "API integrations" without published documentation. I found no public information on configuration as code or a self-hosted edition, and the MSP portal pilot is for the password manager, not the VPN.
Architecture, reliability & security assurance
Cloudflare Zero Trust
A 100% uptime guarantee (SLA) appears on the pricing page, encryption is documented in real depth (end-to-end post-quantum protection on private network traffic, TLS 1.3 with hybrid ML-KEM on internal hops, a testable public test site), and ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2 Type II and the German C5:2020 catalogue are stated with compliance documentation downloadable from the dashboard. The data processing agreement commits to an independent external audit report no older than thirteen months. We found no public information on a bug bounty, a public status page with incident history, or what happens to existing connections when the control plane is down.
Proton VPN for Business
Open-source apps with public repositories, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II stated, a bug bounty with legal safe harbor and a published disclosure policy with response timelines, plus WireGuard, ChaCha20, Curve25519 and forward secrecy — that is real, checkable assurance for a company our size. I found no public information on a published architecture or whitepaper, audit reports from the auditor, control-plane failover, a status page or incident history. One caution from the terms: the SLA section states it does not apply to the dedicated IP feature of the business and enterprise subscriptions.
European sovereignty
Cloudflare Zero Trust
The contracting entity is Cloudflare, Inc. of San Francisco under California law and arbitration, and information is primarily stored in the United States and the European Economic Area — for a European consultancy that is the wrong default direction. Against that, the subprocessor list is published with locations and a change RSS feed, a versioned data processing agreement is published, and the Data Localization Suite can restrict storage to a specific geographic region including control over which EU data centres inspect traffic and where logs go. We found no public information on an EU contracting entity or EU representative; the pipeline marked the sovereignty dimensions unknown on the vendor's own pages.
Proton VPN for Business
The contracting and operating entity is Proton AG in Geneva under Swiss law, with a designated EU representative in Luxembourg, a published data processing agreement, GDPR compliance and ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II stated, and every subprocessor listed by name with location and transfer guarantees — payment and support run through US processors under standard contractual clauses. For me the open question is where account data and identities are actually hosted, which the captured pages do not state.
Pricing transparency
Cloudflare Zero Trust
The free plan is completely clear — "$0 forever", a 50-user limit, with ZTNA, SWG, DEX, network flow monitoring, CASB, connector software and the device client included — which happens to match my headcount, though with only 24-hour log retention. Beyond that the pages give no per-user price for the pay-as-you-go tier, the contract plan is an "Annual custom price per user", and add-ons like Remote Browser Isolation, full DLP, Log Explorer and email security are named but unpriced, so the real annual cost cannot be computed. Taxes are excluded and billed to the customer, and fees are nonrefundable.
Proton VPN for Business
Per-user prices are public for every named plan with minimum users, the dedicated IP add-on is priced at +€39.99/month per IP, and a 22% yearly discount, VAT and reverse-charge handling for business plans, a 30-day money-back guarantee and a 30-day cancellation notice are all stated — I can budget fifty seats and our gateways without a sales call. The Enterprise tier is "Let's talk" and the AI add-on carries no stated price, and the plan pages show per-user monthly figures alongside billed totals without stating which billing cycle each total covers.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Cloudflare Zero Trust
Proton VPN for Business
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
Questions about Cloudflare Zero Trust and Proton VPN for Business
Which is better, Cloudflare Zero Trust or Proton VPN for Business?
As of 6 Nov 2026, the panel rates Cloudflare Zero Trust higher: 3.5/5 against 3/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 6 of the 6 judges pick Cloudflare Zero Trust and 0 pick Proton VPN for Business. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Cloudflare Zero Trust or Proton VPN for Business European?
Cloudflare Zero Trust is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Proton VPN for Business is European (UK / wider Europe). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Do Cloudflare Zero Trust and Proton VPN for Business have a free plan?
As of 6 Nov 2026, Cloudflare Zero Trust’s own pages state a free plan; Proton VPN for Business’s pages as captured do not. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.