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“We need a VPN for the team” is a common ask at small remote-first companies, but “VPN” quietly covers three fairly different kinds of product, and picking the wrong one means either overpaying for infrastructure you don’t need or under-buying something that doesn’t actually solve your problem. Before comparing specific tools, it’s worth being clear on which kind you actually need.

The three kinds of “VPN,” briefly

1. Personal / remote-access VPN: encrypts an individual device’s connection to the public internet, routing it through the provider’s servers. This is what most consumer VPN subscriptions (and their “for business” tiers) actually are — even when marketed with team-admin features layered on top. Good for protecting one person’s traffic on public Wi-Fi or masking their location; it does not, by itself, connect them to your company’s internal network or file servers.
2. Site-to-site VPN: connects two or more office networks (or an office network and a cloud environment) into one encrypted network, without requiring individual software on every device. This is closer to traditional corporate networking infrastructure, and it’s not what an individual VPN subscription provides.
3. Zero-trust remote access (e.g., the category that products like Twingate or Cloudflare Zero Trust are built for): gives specific people access to specific internal resources without putting them on the full network, verifying identity per-request rather than once at connection time. This is increasingly the recommended approach for remote teams specifically, but it’s a different buying decision from “get everyone a VPN app.”

The practical implication: if what you actually need is “our remote employees should be able to securely reach our internal tools and files,” a personal VPN subscription is not really solving that problem — you may need either site-to-site VPN infrastructure or a zero-trust access tool instead, and that’s a decision worth making deliberately rather than defaulting to whichever VPN app is easiest to buy.

This article covers the two VPN services we’ve reviewed and registered with as affiliates — Proton VPN and F-Secure’s VPN — and is upfront that both fall mainly into category 1 (personal/remote-access VPN with some team-admin features), not category 2 or 3.

Proton VPN for Business

Proton VPN’s business tiers add team-oriented controls on top of its consumer VPN app:

• VPN Essentials: $6.99/user/month
• VPN Professional: $9.99/user/month
• VPN and Pass Professional: $10.99/user/month (adds Proton Pass Professional)
• Workspace Standard: $12.99/user/month billed annually ($14.99/user/month billed monthly) — bundles VPN with other Proton business apps
• Workspace Premium: $19.99/user/month billed annually ($239.88 billed every 12 months), or $24.99/user/month billed monthly

Pricing confirmed directly on proton.me/business/plans (official pricing page, checked September 2026) and cross-checked against Proton’s support documentation and third-party pricing trackers. All figures above are verified — no outstanding fact-check items on Proton’s pricing.

→ Compare Proton VPN for Business plans and start a trial

Team-oriented features: centralized admin controls, dedicated IP addresses, private gateways, enforced two-factor authentication, SSO/SCIM on higher tiers, device management (MDM), and Secure Core routing (traffic routed through multiple privacy-friendly-jurisdiction servers before reaching its destination) on all business plans.

What this actually gives a small team: every team member gets an encrypted, privacy-focused connection to the internet, with an admin who can see and manage devices and enforce security policies (like requiring 2FA) centrally. It does not, on its own, replace a corporate network or grant access to internal file servers — that would need to be set up separately (e.g., through Proton’s private gateway feature pointed at your own infrastructure, which is closer to a site-to-site setup, or a separate zero-trust tool).

F-Secure’s VPN (part of F-Secure Total)

F-Secure’s VPN (built on the technology previously branded FREEDOME) is included in the F-Secure Total bundle alongside antivirus and identity protection, priced per device rather than per team seat (see our password manager comparison article for the current F-Secure Total pricing).

Features: one-click connection, split tunneling (route some traffic through the VPN while accessing local network resources directly), an automatic kill switch (disconnects internet if the VPN drops, to avoid leaking unprotected traffic), and DNS leak protection.

What this actually gives a small team: third-party software directories list F-Secure’s VPN as suited to individuals, remote workers, and small businesses looking for secure, private browsing — but it’s licensed and priced per device within a consumer-style bundle, not sold with the same kind of team admin console, dedicated IPs, or SSO that Proton VPN for Business offers.

There’s a structural reason for this, not just a missing feature: F-Secure demerged its corporate/enterprise security business in 2022, spinning it off as a separate company called WithSecure. F-Secure itself has been a consumer-only brand since then — its own site is built entirely around individual and family protection, and the “partners” it talks about are companies that embed F-Secure’s technology into their own consumer products, not businesses buying team licenses. In other words, F-Secure isn’t quietly missing a team VPN console — as the brand is structured today, team/business security (which is what would include a VPN admin console) is a different company’s product line entirely, not something you can currently buy from F-Secure itself. Confirmed by reviewing f-secure.com directly and cross-referencing the 2022 F-Secure/WithSecure demerger, September 2026.

Honest comparison

	Proton VPN for Business	F-Secure VPN (via F-Secure Total)
Pricing model	Per user/month, business tiers	Per device, within a consumer bundle
Team admin console	Yes (all business tiers)	No — F-Secure is consumer-only since its 2022 demerger from WithSecure (its former enterprise business)
SSO / 2FA enforcement	Yes (Professional tier and above)	No team-level equivalent (consumer product)
Dedicated IP / private gateway	Yes	No
Best suited for	A team that wants centrally managed, privacy-focused browsing with real admin controls	An individual or very small team wanting personal device protection (VPN + antivirus + identity monitoring) in one consumer bundle

Neither is a substitute for site-to-site VPN infrastructure or a zero-trust access tool if your actual requirement is “remote staff need access to internal systems.” If that’s your situation, it’s worth at least being aware that purpose-built remote-team platforms exist (the category that tools like NordLayer, Twingate, and Cloudflare Zero Trust compete in) before assuming a personal VPN subscription solves it — we haven’t reviewed those directly and don’t have an affiliate relationship with them, so we’re flagging the category rather than recommending a specific one here.

Which one should you actually pick?

• You want every team member’s browsing traffic encrypted and privacy-protected, with an admin who can enforce 2FA and see connected devices: Proton VPN for Business (Essentials tier is the lower-cost entry point; move to Professional if you need SSO/SCIM).
• You want personal device protection (VPN + antivirus + identity monitoring) for a very small team or yourself, without a dedicated admin console: F-Secure Total.
• You actually need remote staff to reach internal servers, file shares, or admin panels securely: neither of the above solves this by itself — that’s a site-to-site VPN or zero-trust access decision, which is outside the scope of what a personal/remote-access VPN subscription provides.

FAQ

Does a VPN protect us from phishing or malware?
No — a VPN encrypts your connection and can hide your location/IP, but it doesn’t inspect for malicious links or attachments. That’s a separate category of tool (endpoint security/antivirus), which is part of what F-Secure Total bundles in alongside its VPN.

If we already use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, do we still need a VPN?
It depends what problem you’re solving. If the goal is “protect traffic on public Wi-Fi” or “give admins visibility/control over connected devices,” a VPN with team features (like Proton VPN for Business) still adds value on top of Workspace/365’s own security. If the goal is “give remote staff access to an internal server that isn’t in the cloud,” that’s a different, more infrastructure-specific problem.