Proton VPN CLI

Copyright (c) 2025 Proton AG

This repository holds the Proton VPN CLI. For licensing information see COPYING and LICENSE. For contribution policy see CONTRIBUTING.

Description

Early access release

The official Proton VPN CLI is here. This early access release delivers core VPN functionality now, and we'll build out additional features based on your feedback and priorities.

Current functionality:

• Connect and disconnect from VPN servers
• Select servers by country, city, or server ID
• WireGuard protocol support

Current limitations:

• No advanced features (NetShield, kill switch, split tunneling, port forwarding)
• Cannot run alongside the Proton VPN GUI app
• No server list command (use connection options instead)

We're actively developing additional features. Report issues and request features through https://protonvpn.com/support-form

Have fun on your terminal.

Cloning

Once you've cloned this repo, run:

git submodule update --init --recursive

to clone the necessary submodule.

Installation

You can find the latest beta release and installation instructions on our Proton VPN official website.

Dependencies

For development purposes (within a virtual environment) see the required packages in the setup.py file, under install_requires and extra_require. As of now these packages will not be available on pypi. Also see Virtual environment below.

Virtual environment

If you didn't do it yet, to be able to pip install Proton VPN components you'll need to set up our internal Python package registry. You can do so running the command below, after replacing {GITLAB_TOKEN} with your personal access token with the scope set to api.

pip config set global.index-url https://__token__:{GITLAB_TOKEN}@{GITLAB_INSTANCE}/api/v4/groups/{GROUP_ID}/-/packages/pypi/simple

You can create the virtual environment and install the rest of dependencies as follows:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

CLI misc.

CLI logs are stored under ~/.cache/Proton/VPN/logs/ directory.

User settings are under ~/.config/Proton/VPN/ directory.

Folder structure

Folder "debian"

Contains all debian related data, for easy package compilation.

Folder "rpmbuild"

Contains all rpm/fedora related data, for easy package compilation.

Folder "proton/vpn/cli"

This folder contains the CLI source code.

Folder "tests"

This folder contains unit test code.

You can run the tests with:

pytest

Versioning

Version matches format: [major][minor][patch]

We automate the versioning of the debian and rpm files. All versions of the application are recorded in versions.yml. To bump the version, add the following text to the top of versions.yml

version: <latest version>
time: <date> <time>
author: <your name>
email: <your email address>
urgency: low
stability: unstable
description:
- <A description of the changes this new version contains>
---

Make sure you have the '---' dashes at the end of your block of text. You can use the previous entries as an example.

Finally run scripts/build_packages.py. This will generate a new package.spec file for rpmbuild and a new changelog file for debian.

That's it.