Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

I would recommend Mullvad over Proton. Proton's CEO is problematic and a bit of a wild card. They also have proven that they care more about money than privacy. They want to be a Google ecosystem and constantly push more product on you. Someone else mentioned this and it's a good thing to live by: if a company's service is free, you are the product. When it comes to being an application that has full control and insight into your network traffic, no thanks.

Mullvad is disgustingly cheap, costing only $5/month. I've been using Mullvad for 15 years now, and it's always been $5/month. You get DAITA plus a whole host of other necessary sailing accoutrements. They have one of the best track records in terms of not shoving marketing bullshit down your throat and being true to what their website and documentation says. The only limitation in terms of network usage is that you can only have 5 devices tied to a single account. It's mega easy to remove a device to free up a slot, though.