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 Information Security Officer
Information security officer at a regional energy supplier that falls under NIS2 and was asked by its auditor who could reach the control systems last year. Wants access granted per resource, not per network, device checks before a connection, every access and admin change in a log that reaches the SIEM, an independent audit of the product, and the identities and logs kept in Europe by a vendor whose subprocessors are listed.
Cloudflare Zero Trust
This judge's pick
Proton VPN for Business
Criterion by criterion
Access model & connectivity
Cloudflare Zero Trust
The per-application model is exactly what I want instead of network-level grants: deny-by-default policies per application with selectors for SaaS, self-hosted and non-HTTP apps, clientless browser access for people without a managed device, IPsec site-to-site on-ramps and off-ramps, and a protocol stack documented in detail (MASQUE over TLS 1.3 with hybrid ML-KEM, IPsec ESP) alongside split tunnel configuration through the device API. We found no public information on client platforms, always-on behaviour, named gateway regions or connectors for the major clouds and Kubernetes, so the documented evidence stops short of the top band.
Proton VPN for Business
Dedicated static IPs and private gateways are offered in more than twenty named countries, WireGuard and OpenVPN are documented alongside split tunnelling, always-on enforcement deployable through Intune, and time-limited access for external users. Access appears to be granted per gateway, dedicated IP or shared server rather than per application, and we found no public information on connectors into our own networks without inbound firewall rules, site-to-site links to cloud networks, or clientless browser access.
Identity, access policy & device posture
Cloudflare Zero Trust
Access follows identity and the device rather than the network: single sign-on with Microsoft Entra ID, Google and Okta, SCIM provisioning that forces re-attestation when a user is revoked in the identity provider, deny-by-default per-application policies composable from Include, Require and Exclude rules, posture signals checked continuously against each request, and policies manageable as code through the API and Terraform. We found no public information on just-in-time access with approval, session re-authentication, or named EDR and MDM integrations for posture, which keeps it below the higher band.
Proton VPN for Business
Single sign-on with Entra ID, Okta, Google Workspace or any SAML provider, SCIM with automatic group sync, enforceable two-factor with reporting, user groups with per-gateway access control and group-inherited admin roles, plus time-limited external access with instant revocation. What decides the score for me is device posture: we found no public information on checks such as operating system version, disk encryption or EDR state gating a connection — the only related wording is a reference to policies based on identity, device and network conditions.
Logs, audit trail & incident response
Cloudflare Zero Trust
For my auditor's question — who reached which application, when — the pages are concrete: access, device posture, DNS, HTTP and network logs with retention stated per plan, admin audit logs kept eighteen months on every plan, Logpush streaming to a SIEM or cloud storage, and webhooks with PagerDuty for alerting, plus an audit log API. The pages also state plainly what is not logged — requests matching a Bypass policy are not logged — but free-tier access logs are kept just 24 hours, and we found no public information on signed or tamper-evident logs or a documented log schema.
Proton VPN for Business
The activity monitor logs user, event type, timestamp, device name and IP with search, filtering and CSV export, a gateway monitor records sign-in attempts and server connections per user, sessions are visible in real time and can be revoked instantly, and SIEM integration is listed on the higher plans. But the monitor is opt-in and off by default, retention periods are not published, the SIEM targets are not named and there is no documented log schema — for NIS2 evidence I need logging that is on by default and reaches our SIEM.
Deployment, API & administration
Cloudflare Zero Trust
The automation depth suits a small team under audit pressure: a documented REST API and Terraform provider covering Zero Trust configuration, scoped API tokens that confine a team member to Zero Trust settings alone, and a dashboard read-only mode that forces every change through the API or Terraform, with support channels stated per plan and self-service termination in the dashboard. We found no public information on MDM client deployment with preconfigured settings, multi-tenant administration, a self-hosted edition, staged update rollouts or support response times.
Proton VPN for Business
A central admin dashboard, admin roles assignable to groups with automatic inheritance, client deployment documented down to Intune install scripts and always-on enforcement, a CLI and API integrations, and a multi-tenant MSP pilot portal with per-seat and per-license pricing components. We found no public information on a Terraform provider or configuration as code, and the API appears as a named integration rather than as published documentation.
Architecture, reliability & security assurance
Cloudflare Zero Trust
The architecture is documented down to the key exchange — on-ramps and off-ramps, hybrid ML-KEM agreement, an IPsec ESP data plane — and the independent assurance I insist on is stated in substance: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, FedRAMP High and C5:2020, compliance documentation downloadable from the dashboard, and a contractual right to an independent external audit report not older than thirteen months, which is exactly what I would invoke for NIS2. We found no public information on a vulnerability disclosure programme, bug bounty, public status page or incident history, and what happens to existing connections when the control plane is down is not described.
Proton VPN for Business
All apps are open source with public repositories, independent security audits, ISO 27001 certification and SOC 2 Type II verification are published, and there is a bug bounty with legal safe harbour and a disclosure policy with acknowledgement and embargo times. For a regulated buyer the gaps are material: no audit report or auditor summary is published, we found no public information on control-plane high availability or behaviour during an outage, no status page or incident history, and the SLA excludes the dedicated IP feature of the business and enterprise subscriptions.
European sovereignty
Cloudflare Zero Trust
Logs and account data can be kept in Europe — the Data Localization Suite restricts storage to a chosen region, and EU traffic inspection and log destinations are controllable — and every subprocessor is listed with its location under a published data processing agreement with a named data protection officer. But the contracting party is Cloudflare, Inc. of San Francisco under California law, primary storage is described as the United States and the European Economic Area, and no EU contracting entity or representative appears on the captured pages, with customer support and account management running through US subprocessors.
Proton VPN for Business
Proton AG in Geneva is the contracting entity, an EU representative is named in Luxembourg, a data processing agreement exists, GDPR compliance is stated, and subprocessors are listed with their locations and transfer guarantees for payment and support processors. However, we found no public information on where account identities, configuration and connection logs are hosted, and support and payment processing run through processors in the United States, Macedonia and Taiwan under contractual safeguards.
Pricing transparency
Cloudflare Zero Trust
The free plan is priced at "$0 forever" with a 50-user limit, plan inclusions and add-ons are published per tier, and taxes, billing methods, the no-refund rule and the thirty-day price-change notice are stated in the terms. However, the contract plan is an "Annual custom price per user", and we found no public per-user price for the paid tiers and no prices for the add-ons, so a buyer cannot compute the real annual cost from the captured pages alone.
Proton VPN for Business
Every published tier carries a per-user price with its minimum seats — €6.99, €9.99 and €10.99 per user per month for the VPN plans, €12.99 for Workspace Standard — the dedicated IP add-on is priced at +€39.99/month per IP, and the yearly discount, 30-day money-back guarantee, cancellation notice, billing cycles, early-termination terms and business VAT reverse-charge handling are all stated. Only the Enterprise tier is unpriced and left to sales, and the MSP pilot names its fee components without figures.
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.