Proton Meet Gives Europe a Zoom Alternative With Real Privacy

Proton Mail parent company Proton AG launched Proton Meet on March 31, 2026, adding end-to-end encrypted video conferencing to its privacy suite. The service supports meetings of up to 50 participants on the free tier and is available immediately to all Proton users.

Proton Meet uses the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol for encryption. MLS is an open standard designed for group communication, which means even Proton itself cannot access the content of calls. The entire implementation is open-source, consistent with Proton's approach across its other products.

What MLS Encryption Actually Means

Most mainstream video conferencing tools encrypt data in transit but retain the ability to access call content on their servers. Zoom introduced end-to-end encryption as an optional feature in 2020 after significant public pressure, but it remains off by default for most users and disables certain features when enabled.

Proton Meet's use of MLS is different in a structural sense. The protocol was designed from the ground up for group encryption, handling the complexity of participants joining and leaving calls without compromising the encryption state. Because it's an open standard, independent researchers can audit the implementation rather than relying on the company's claims.

For organizations that handle sensitive information, whether legal, medical, or financial, this distinction matters. The question is not just whether data is encrypted during transmission, but whether the service provider can be compelled to hand over call content under legal pressure.

The Jurisdiction Question

Proton is incorporated in Switzerland, which has some of the strongest privacy protections in Europe. Swiss data protection law is not subject to the EU's internal political dynamics, and Switzerland is not party to intelligence-sharing agreements like Five Eyes.

Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams are all US-based services subject to the CLOUD Act, which allows US authorities to compel disclosure of data stored by American companies regardless of where the data is physically located. For European businesses and institutions handling confidential communications, this creates a compliance gap that encryption alone does not fully resolve.

Practical Considerations

Proton Meet offers a tiered structure that balances accessibility with advanced professional needs. The Free tier supports meetings of up to 50 participants for up to 60 minutes. For users requiring more robust capabilities, the Meet Professional plan (€7.99/month billed annually) extends meeting durations to 24 hours and increases the participant limit to 100. This tier also unlocks essential productivity features, including meeting recording, screen sharing, a built-in chat, and an appointment scheduling tool.

For organizations seeking a full-stack solution, the Workspace Standard and Premium plans integrate Meet with the broader Proton ecosystem. These plans scale participant limits up to 250 and bundle the conferencing tool with up to 3 TB of storage, custom email domains, and Lumo, Proton’s private AI writing assistant.

The service integrates natively with Proton Drive, Proton Calendar, and Proton Mail. For organizations already using Proton's suite, adding encrypted video conferencing fills a significant gap in their security architecture. For those actively moving away from US-based collaboration tools, Proton Meet provides a primary, sovereign alternative that competes directly with Whereby and Livestorm.

While Proton often prioritizes security over "feature bloat," the inclusion of recording, breakout rooms, and AI-assisted productivity suggests they are targeting the enterprise market more aggressively than with previous launches. By combining Swiss jurisdiction with the MLS protocol, Proton Meet offers a "privacy-by-default" case that Zoom or Teams simply cannot match structurally. For any business where confidentiality is a legal or operational requirement, Proton has effectively moved the goalposts for what "secure collaboration" looks like.

Sources

• Proton Meet: end-to-end encrypted video conferencing — Proton Blog, March 31, 2026
• Proton Meet security model — Proton Blog, March 31, 2026