How to add your card to Proton Mail and subscribe
Proton is a Swiss email and account service. Paid plans for Proton Mail, Proton Pass (password manager) and Proton Drive (cloud storage) are all bought in the same Proton account. Card number, expiry, CVC and billing address are in your card email.
Steps
- 1
Check the plans
Open proton.me/pricing in a browser and compare Mail, Pass and Drive plans, monthly or yearly. Prices as shown on the page.
Screenshot coming — follow the text above for now. - 2
Sign in and open payment methods
Sign in at proton.me, click Settings (⚙️) → All settings, and in Subscriptions find Payment methods, then click Add credit/debit card.
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Enter the card
Enter the card number, expiry, CVC and billing address from your card email and click Save. Enter the expiry exactly as month/year on the card — a wrong one is declined.
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Upgrade
Go to Settings → All settings → Upgrade plan, pick the plan and billing cycle, and pay with the card you just added. Renewals charge this card by default; to stop that, turn off auto-pay for the card under Payment methods.
Screenshot coming — follow the text above for now.
Suggested balance (tax included)
- Keep the price on the plans page plus the $1 fee; if you pay in a local currency, keep a little extra for the conversion.
- Proton charges on our cards in October were small: $0.99 three times and $1.30 once (converted from HKD). Small sample — not enough for a finer suggestion.
Plans and prices as shown on the official page: proton.me/pricing
Common reasons it fails
Proton on our cards in October: 5 charges on 2 cards, 4 succeeded and 1 failed (small sample, so counts):
- 1: wrong expiry date (the transaction shows an expiry check failure). It went through right after the expiry was corrected. Enter the month/year exactly as on the card.
- With several payment methods on the account, renewals charge the default one and Proton tries the others if it fails. Remove cards you no longer use so renewals don’t land on an old card.
- Across all our cards and platforms in October, about 69% of failed charges were a short balance (the charge was more than the card held), about 12% a cancelled card still being charged, about 9% a merchant type outside what the card supports, and about 9% a wrong expiry date (several wrong tries lock it for a while).
Check the balance and transactions, or top up this card: Card lookup & top-up
Proton help: How to add, remove, or edit a payment method
Still stuck? Contact support
Tell us which step failed and what the page said — a screenshot helps.
