Account credit, proration, and coupons
Proton offers a variety of subscription plans, and you can activate, change, or cancel subscriptions at any time. If you change or cancel your Proton plan, the value of any unused subscription days is added to your account as credits, except for when you are cancelling a Proton VPN Plus plan.
If you cancel your Proton VPN Plus subscription, the subscription simply continues until its expiration date, and no credits are applied to your account.
Here we explain three terms to help you understand how these credits work and give you an example of how we calculate your bill when you upgrade:
Account credit
Account credit is credit in your account that has not been used toward a new Proton plan.
You can get credit when you cancel or downgrade a plan with some days left in your subscription or when you make a payment by Bitcoin. You can also add credit to your account at any time using your credit card, PayPal, or by sending us cash.
The credit is applied to your account in the currency of your last payment and can be used toward your next subscription.
To find your account credits, log in to your Proton VPN account at account.protonvpn.com/login on a computer and go to Subscription → Credits.
To add credit to your account:
1. Click Add credits.
2. Select how much credit you want to add (or add another figure) and in which currency.
3. Choose a payment method.
4. Enter your payment details and click Top up when you’re done.
Proration
A proration is the amount of credit you receive for unused subscription days when you cancel, upgrade, or downgrade an active subscription. The proration is calculated by dividing the amount paid for the subscription term by the number of days in the term, then multiplying that amount by the number of days remaining.
Example: You paid 71.88 EUR for an annual Proton VPN Plus plan. You then decide to cancel the subscription with 100 days remaining at the time of cancellation. The proration amount will be:
71.88 EUR / 365 days x 100 days = 19.69 EUR
You’ll see any proration you have in the Payment summary at the checkout:
Coupons
Coupons are special subscription discounts that we may apply to your account if you:
- signed up for a special promotion
- contributed to Proton’s initial crowdfunding campaign
- purchased a Lifetime Visionary plan
Our Customer Support team may also give you a discount coupon for special situations, for example, to rectify a billing mistake.
Gift codes are also a type of coupon. You can add a gift code to your account in the Payment summary at the checkout. Click Add a gift code.
Plan upgrade example
To illustrate how account credit, proration, and coupons work in practice, let’s suppose:
- You’re subscribed to an annual Proton VPN Plus plan (71.88 EUR/year) with 100 days left on your annual subscription.
- You decide to upgrade to Proton Unlimited (119.88 EUR/year).
- You have a coupon discount of 15 EUR.
- You also have 20 EUR credit.
At the checkout, your account credit, proration, and coupon would be displayed in this section of the Payment summary.
(Please note: the image below is just to show you where to find credits and proration; it does not show the correct figures from the example above.)
Here’s how your final price would be calculated:
1. Your new plan’s cost = 119.88 EUR/year.
2. Your existing plan’s proration = 71.88 EUR / 365 days * 100 days = 19.69 EUR.
3. Your coupon discount = 15 EUR.
4. Your existing credit = 20 EUR.
5. The final amount due is the total from 1. minus the amounts in 2, 3, and 4:
119.88 EUR – 19.69 EUR – 15 EUR – 20 EUR = 65.19 EUR.
You can pay the final amount by credit or debit card, PayPal, or Bitcoin. Bitcoin payments require you to first add credit to your account.