Leaving Google is not a saving. Most of what you would replace costs nothing on either side, and the two rows that do carry a price cost more than the mainstream tools they replace. That is the honest shape of the swap: the total below is what privacy costs, not what it saves.
The swap, row by row
What you use now
Private alternative
What it costs
Mail & calendar
Gmail, Google Calendar
Proton Mail, Tuta, Mailbox.org
pricing varies
Cloud storage
Google Drive
pCloud, Internxt, Filen
pricing varies
Passwords
Google Password Manager
Proton Pass
€4.99 Pass Plus
VPN
None — your network operator sees every site you open
Proton VPN
€9.99 VPN Plus
Browser
Chrome
Firefox, Vivaldi
free
Search
Google Search
Startpage, Qwant, Ecosia, Mojeek
free
Translation
Google Translate
DeepL, free tier
free
Monthly total, priced rows only
€14.98
Two rows carry no figure on purpose. We have not yet read the mail and storage pages into the record, and this site does not print a price it has not read — see our method. The total adds the two rows that do carry one, and nothing else.
Most guides to leaving Google open with a saving. That framing is wrong before the first row, because the Google tools nearly everyone uses are free of charge: Search, Chrome, Translate, a personal Gmail address and the storage that comes with it. You pay for them with what they learn about you, not with money. Replacing them therefore cannot show up as a smaller bill, and a guide that shows you one is comparing against an invoice most readers never received.
So this table does the opposite. It shows what the private replacement costs, row by row, and lets the total be whatever it turns out to be. Five of the seven rows come to nothing: a browser, a search engine and a translator are all free on both sides of the swap, and two more rows we simply have not priced yet. That leaves two rows carrying a figure — passwords and a VPN — and a monthly total of €14.98.
The uncomfortable part is what those two figures look like beside the tools they replace. Proton VPN asks €9.99 where NordVPN's cheapest paid tier is €3.49, and Proton Pass asks €4.99 where NordPass asks €1.99. On both rows the private option is the dearer one, and both of those comparisons are in the same currency as each other because all three vendors quote this edition's reader in their own money. 1Password, the other obvious comparison, does not: it bills every market in dollars at $2.99, which is a like-for-like figure only for a reader in the United States. The full ladders are in Proton Pass against 1Password and Proton VPN against NordVPN.
There is a route through this that costs nothing at all, and it is the one most readers should take first. Both of the priced rows have a tier published at €0 — a plan priced at zero rather than a trial with a deadline. Combined with the three free rows, that makes the entire seven-row stack assemblable without paying anyone, and the paid tiers become an upgrade you choose later rather than the price of entry.
The two blank rows are the ones that matter most, which is precisely why they are blank. Mail and storage are where leaving Google actually hurts — an address people already write to, and files other tools already point at — and they are the rows where a made-up figure would do the most damage. We have not read those pricing pages into the record yet, so the cells say so. When the capture lands they will fill in, and the total at the foot of the table will move with them.
Start with the row you can undo
A browser and a search engine can be swapped in an afternoon and swapped back just as fast, which makes them the sensible first move. Mail is the opposite: the address is the lock-in, not the software, and every account you own is a forwarding problem. Doing the reversible rows first buys you the habit without the risk.
The free tiers are the honest recommendation
On the two rows that carry a price, the free plans are real tiers rather than countdowns — €0 for the password manager and €0 for the VPN. Most people should run those for a month before paying for anything. If the paid step is worth it to you afterwards, it will still be there at €4.99 and €9.99.
Your figures depend on where you are reading from
Every price on this page is read separately in each market we publish, so the numbers above are the ones shown to a reader in this edition's country — never a conversion of somebody else's. The same plan can be dearer or cheaper a border away, and this table will say so rather than quietly averaging it.
What this swap does not buy you
None of these rows makes you anonymous, and a VPN in particular moves the trust rather than removing it: your network operator stops seeing the sites you open and the VPN operator could instead. What the swap does change is the jurisdiction your data sits in and whether the company holding it makes its money from advertising. That is a real difference, and it is a different claim from privacy.
Questions people actually search
Does leaving Google save money?
No, and any guide promising otherwise is comparing against a bill you probably never had. Google's consumer tools are free of charge, so the honest total for this swap is a cost rather than a saving — €14.98 a month for the two rows that carry a price, and nothing for the rest.
Can I do the whole thing without paying?
Very nearly, yes. The browser, search and translation rows are free on both sides, and the two priced rows each publish a plan at €0 — a tier, not a trial. The paid tiers buy more storage, more devices and more servers, which is a decision you can postpone until you have lived with the free ones.
Why do the mail and storage rows have no price?
Because we have not read those pricing pages into the record yet, and this site does not print a figure it has not read. Naming the alternatives without pricing them is the honest half-answer; inventing a plausible number for the row would make the whole table untrustworthy.
Is the private option always the dearer one?
On the two rows priced here, yes. Proton Pass is €4.99 against NordPass's €1.99, and Proton VPN is €9.99 against NordVPN's €3.49 — both same-currency comparisons in this edition. Both gaps are real and both are dated above. The argument for switching is about jurisdiction and business model, not about the bill.
Every figure on this page was read from the vendor's own public pricing page in the market this edition covers, on the date shown at the top, and those pages are re-checked daily. Rows without a figure are rows we have not read — they are never estimated, converted or filled in from another market. The method →
Found a price that no longer matches the vendor’s page? Tell us — corrections are dated and stay on the page.