Discontinuing support for OpenVPN on Android

The Proton VPN Android app will soon no longer support the OpenVPN protocol. In this support article, we explain why.

Why are we discontinuing support for OpenVPN?

First released back in 2001, OpenVPN is now an old VPN protocol. Although still as robustly secure as it ever was, it is bloated and slow compared to powerful, sleek, and secure modern VPN protocols, such WireGuard® and our own Stealth protocol.

Learn more about OpenVPN vs. WireGuard

For example, removing OpenVPN support from our Android app reduces its size by around 40%.

Given how good more modern VPN protocols are (including the new VPN architecture that Proton VPN is currently developing), there is simply little reason for us to continue support for OpenVPN. This reality is also reflected in the fact that less than 1% of you now use OpenVPN on your Android devices.

We’ve already discontinued OpenVPN support on our Apple apps, and we’re now starting to discontinue it on our Android app.

You can still manually configure OpenVPN

Our servers continue to support OpenVN connections. If you need OpenVPN for your Android device, you can manually configure third-party apps such as OpenVPN for Android and OpenVPN Connect.