Proton Mail vs Tuta Pricing: Free Tiers, Storage and Domains

The honest answer to proton mail vs tuta pricing is that the two companies are not really selling the same object. Tuta sells encrypted mail and calendar. Proton sells encrypted mail that is also the front door to a suite — VPN, Drive, Pass, Calendar, and more.

That difference shapes every number on both pricing pages. It explains why Tuta's cheapest paid tier is usually the cheaper way to get a custom domain on encrypted email, and why Proton's most expensive tier can be the better value for someone who was about to pay for a VPN anyway.

This post compares the packaging shape — free tier limits, storage bands, domain and alias gating, and multi-user options — as verified against each vendor's own pricing page in September 2026. It deliberately prints no prices, because those change and a stale figure is worse than none.

The verdict up front#

If you want encrypted email and nothing else, Tuta is the cheaper path in almost every configuration. Its entry paid tier already includes multiple custom domains and a large block of extra addresses — things Proton gates to its middle and top tiers. You pay for mail, you get mail.

If you would otherwise buy a VPN, a password manager and cloud storage separately, Proton's top tier is the better deal and it is not close. The mail is arguably the least interesting part of what you are buying at that level.

The decision therefore is not 'which encrypted mailbox is cheaper'. It is 'how many of Proton's other products will I actually open'. Answer that honestly and the pricing question answers itself.

One concession, plainly: Tuta is cheaper than Proton Mail for the mail-only buyer, and Proton's own pricing page does not pretend otherwise. Proton's entry paid tier gives you a single custom domain where Tuta's gives you three. If a custom domain is the reason you are upgrading, Tuta wins that specific comparison outright.

Proton Mail vs Tuta pricing at a glance#

Structure only — no figures. Verify the current numbers on each vendor's page before you buy, because tiers get renamed and limits get revised more often than comparison posts get updated.

Where Proton Mail wins on price#

Proton's pricing argument is bundling, and it is a strong one if the bundle matches your spending. The top personal tier folds in a VPN, a password manager, encrypted file storage, a calendar and more. Priced individually those are four subscriptions.

The second win is the family shape. Proton sells Duo and Family plans that share one large storage pool across members rather than allocating a fixed block per person. Households do not consume mail storage evenly — one person has fifteen years of archive and another has six months — so a pooled allocation is genuinely more efficient than a per-seat one.

The third is alias generosity at the top. Proton's hide-my-email aliases become unlimited on the top personal tier, which matters if you use a fresh alias per signup as a tracking-resistance habit. That is a real feature difference, not a marketing line.

• Best value when you already pay for a VPN, password manager or cloud storage separately.
• Pooled family storage instead of fixed per-seat blocks.
• Unlimited hide-my-email aliases at the top personal tier.
• A single bill and a single account across several products.

Where Tuta wins on price#

Tuta's argument is that you are not paying for anything you did not come for. There is no VPN in the price, no drive, no password manager — and correspondingly, the entry paid tier is cheaper than the equivalent Proton tier for the buyer who only wants mail.

More importantly, Tuta gates less aggressively. Its entry paid tier ships three custom domains and a block of extra addresses. On Proton you reach three custom domains only at the top personal tier. For a freelancer running two or three brands off one mailbox, that difference alone can decide it.

Tuta also puts calendars and labels behind a lower wall. Unlimited calendars and unlimited labels start at the entry paid tier rather than being reserved for a premium band. If your organisational scheme is label-heavy, the free tier's three-label cap is the thing that pushes you to upgrade, and the upgrade you need is the cheap one.

• Cheaper for encrypted mail with a custom domain, at the entry paid tier.
• Three custom domains on entry paid, versus one on Proton's equivalent.
• Unlimited calendars and labels from the first paid tier.
• Multi-user is an add-on per seat rather than a different plan family.

How each one actually charges you#

Neither provider meters usage. Both sell a flat subscription per plan, with a discount for paying annually rather than monthly. That is the simplest pricing model in the category and it is one reason these two get recommended to people who hate surprises.

The difference is in how extra people get added. Proton's answer is a different plan — Duo or Family — with its own storage pool and member count. Tuta's answer is an add-on: you stay on your chosen tier and pay per additional user, with each user getting that tier's storage allocation.

Both models are defensible. Proton's is simpler for a household of four. Tuta's is more granular for a two-person business that wants to add a third seat without repricing the whole account.

Storage is the axis most comparisons skip#

Both free tiers land at 1 GB. That number sounds arbitrary until you realise it is deliberate: it is enough to test the product properly and not enough to live in if you receive attachments.

The paid bands are where the shapes diverge in a way raw numbers hide. On Proton, storage at the top tier is shared across mail, Drive and everything else in the suite. A few hundred gigabytes sounds enormous for email — and it is — but if you also move your photo library into Drive, that pool is doing two jobs.

Tuta's storage is mail and calendar only. There is nothing else that can eat it. So the honest comparison is not 'who gives more gigabytes' but 'how many gigabytes of this are actually available to my mailbox', and on that reading Tuta's number goes further than the headline suggests.

Custom domains and aliases: where the gating really bites#

Neither provider offers a custom domain on its free plan. If a search brought you here asking whether Proton Mail has a free plan with a custom domain, the answer is no, and the same is true of Tuta. Custom-domain support is the single clearest line between free and paid at both companies.

Above that line the two diverge sharply. Tuta's entry paid tier includes three custom domains and its top tier includes ten. Proton's entry paid tier includes one and its top personal tier includes three. In other words, Tuta's cheapest paid plan matches Proton's most expensive personal plan on domain count.

Aliases are the mirror image. Proton's hide-my-email aliases are a first-class privacy feature and go unlimited at the top tier — which Tuta does not match. Tuta instead gives you a fixed block of real extra addresses per tier. A disposable alias and a permanent second address are different tools; decide which one you are actually shopping for before you compare the counts.

Family, multi-user and business plans#

For households, Proton's Duo and Family plans are the cleaner structure. One pooled storage allowance, a member count, one bill. Nobody has to argue about whose archive is bigger.

For small businesses, Tuta publishes a dedicated set of tiers — Essential, Advanced and Unlimited — with an administration console, multiple admin roles, password and second-factor resets, and centralised billing. The top business tier lifts the custom-domain cap entirely, which is the main reason to reach for it.

Proton publishes business pricing separately from its consumer page, so compare those two pages directly rather than extrapolating from the personal tiers. Consumer and business packaging rarely scale linearly at either company.

Who each one is genuinely for#

Neither of these is a bad product and neither is a rip-off. They are optimised for different buyers, and the pricing reflects that honestly.

A third option, honestly#

There is a category of reader who lands on a Proton-versus-Tuta pricing comparison for a reason neither product solves: the mailbox is not too expensive, it is too full. Switching providers moves the mail. It does not read it, sort it or answer it.

That is the job we do, and it is worth being straight about the trade-off. We build AI Emaily — an AI email client that connects to the accounts you already have across Gmail, Outlook and IMAP, triages what arrives, drafts replies you approve before anything sends, and keeps an undo and an audit trail for every action the agent takes. Drafting comes from a Personal Context brain you set yourself plus per-client profiles, not from mining your sent mail.

The honest limit: AI Emaily is not a zero-knowledge encrypted mail provider and does not claim to be. If end-to-end encryption at rest is the reason you are shopping, Proton or Tuta is the correct answer and we are not a substitute for either. We do not train on user mail and we run zero-retention with our model providers, but that is a different guarantee from the one those two sell. If the encrypted mailbox is settled and the volume is the problem, that is where we fit — AI Emaily runs on a 7-day free trial, card required, and costs nothing if you cancel before day seven.