Cloud storage decision
Proton Unlimited
A competent developer can reproduce Proton Drive's core encrypted storage and sharing features, but Proton's regulatory positioning, brand trust, audits, and bundled services (VPN, Pass, AI) are durable advantages that are hard to match—so building a narrow, useful replacement is realistic, but recreating the full Unlimited product is not.
Visit website↗Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need — the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship.
What a replacement has to do
- Provide end-to-end encrypted cloud storage with upload/download, folder syncing, secure shareable links, and per-file version history.
What it still won’t have
- Brand recognition and trust of Proton
- Independent security audits and broad open-source ecosystem maintained by Proton
- Regulatory positioning and Swiss legal protections
- Scale (global VPN servers, multi-product integration, and large-user reliability)
- Integrated additional services in the bundle (VPN, Pass, Lumo AI)
What remains hard
- Brand trust
Trusted by over 100 million users and organizations
- Compliance and regulation
Proton is based in Switzerland, and your data does not go to the cloud. Instead, it stays under the protection of some of the world’s strongest privacy laws.
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build an end-to-end encrypted cloud storage web app using Next.js + React for the frontend, Go (or Node) for the API, Postgres for metadata, and S3-compatible object storage for encrypted file blobs. Core features in scope: client-side encryption/decryption (WebCrypto) with password-derived keys, resumable encrypted uploads, folder browsing, per-file version history (retain up to 200 versions), secure share links with optional password and expiry, and an admin page to view storage usage. Out of scope: VPN, password manager, AI assistant, mobile native apps, and account billing. Include robust error handling, input validation, unit and integration tests for encryption and API endpoints, and a deployment script for a single Docker host (or managed K8s).
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Hard moats found in the evidence-3
- Evidence score61
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time — so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productProton homepage
- official pricingProton pricing
- official docsProton Drive docs
- open sourcehaiwen/seafile
- open sourcecloudreve/cloudreve
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
