Cloud storage · checked 2026-10-20

Can I vibecode Proton Drive Plus?

KINDA· weekend project

Encrypting files on your own machine and putting them in a bucket you rent is a small program, and an agent can write a sync tool with chunking, encrypted names and restores in a sitting. The weekend goes on what makes Drive feel like a drive: desktop sync that copes with renames and conflicts, phone apps with photo backup, share links that carry their own key, and shared document editing. rclone with its crypt layer, Cryptomator or Syncthing cover most of that without a subscription, and rented bucket storage is usually cheaper per GB than the plan.

$4.99/moprice

$60you'd save a year

weekendbuild time

—people replaced it

Before you start

What you need on hand.

DifficultyAdvanced · Real infrastructure or OAuth work.

TimeA weekend, plus time to test a full restore

Claude Code, Codex or CursorAny of them can run the prompt.
Go 1.23Builds the single binary; no other runtime is needed.
An S3-compatible bucketBackblaze B2, Cloudflare R2 and similar services work; create a key limited to that bucket.
A safe place for the passphraseNothing can recover your files without it.
Your Proton Drive filesDownload them as ZIPs first; they are the first thing to sync.

Before you buildProton Free gives 5 GB with the same encryption. If your files fit, you don't need Drive Plus or this tool.

1. Install one agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.
2. Make an empty folder and open it in the agent.
3. Paste the prompt below, press enter, and answer its questions as it builds.

The prompt

Build me an encrypted folder sync tool to replace Proton Drive Plus for my own files. Requirements:

- Go 1.23: one binary `vaultsync` with the commands `init`, `sync`, `watch`, `restore`, `share`
  and `verify`. Settings go in ~/.config/vaultsync/config.toml (local folder, bucket, endpoint);
  S3 keys and VAULT_PASSPHRASE come from .env or the macOS Keychain.
- Encryption happens on my machine only: files are cut into 4 MiB chunks, encrypted with
  XChaCha20-Poly1305 (`golang.org/x/crypto`) under keys derived from the passphrase with Argon2id.
  File names and folder paths are encrypted too, so the bucket shows random object names and sizes.
- Storage: an encrypted manifest object in the S3-compatible bucket (`aws-sdk-go-v2`) and a local
  SQLite cache (`modernc.org/sqlite`) with path, size, mtime and chunk hashes. Chunks are
  addressed by content hash, so an unchanged chunk is never uploaded twice.
- `sync` uploads local changes and downloads remote ones. When both sides changed a file, keep both
  and name the older "<name> (conflict <date>)". Deleted files move to a trash prefix for 30 days.
- `watch` runs `sync` after changes (`fsnotify`, 10-second debounce); ./contrib holds a launchd
  plist and a systemd unit.
- `share <path>` re-encrypts one file with AES-256-GCM under a random key, uploads it under a random
  name and prints a pre-signed URL (7 days) to a static page that decrypts it in the browser with
  WebCrypto; the key sits in the URL fragment and never reaches the bucket.
- `verify` downloads a random 1% of chunks, decrypts them and compares hashes;
  `restore <path> --at <date>` brings back a version still held in the trash prefix.
- No accounts, no telemetry, local-first: the only outbound calls go to the S3 endpoint.
- Out of scope: a web interface, phone apps and photo backup, document editing, sharing with edit rights.
- README: bucket setup for Backblaze B2 or Cloudflare R2, backing up the passphrase (losing it loses
  every file), and what the bucket owner can still see (object count, sizes and times).

Opens your agent with the prompt filled in, you press enter. Or copy it and paste it into an empty folder.

Share on X

Max MiskowSponsoredAI agents, automations and MVPs, built for your company.Visit site ›

Then keep going

Next prompts, same folder.

The first prompt builds the core. Run these one at a time in the same folder to grow it into your own Proton Drive Plus.

Add a read-only mount to the sync tool in this folder. Requirements:

- `vaultsync mount <dir>` exposes the vault as a filesystem using FUSE (`hanwen/go-fuse`; macFUSE
  on a Mac), showing decrypted names and sizes from the local manifest cache.
- Chunks download on first read and are kept in an LRU cache under ./data/cache, capped by
  a size in config.toml; reads of the same file reuse cached chunks.
- Opening a file for writing fails with a clear error; writes happen only through `sync`.
- `vaultsync unmount` cleans up, and a crash leaves no stale mount after a restart.
- Update the README with the FUSE install steps for macOS and Linux.

Add a photo inbox to the sync tool in this folder. Requirements:

- A folder ~/PhotoInbox watched by `vaultsync watch`: new images and videos are renamed to
  YYYY/MM/DD-HHMMSS-<hash>.<ext> from EXIF dates (`rwcarlsen/goexif`), then encrypted and uploaded.
- Make 400 px JPEG thumbnails with `disintegration/imaging`, encrypt them as separate small
  objects, and write a gallery index into the manifest.
- `vaultsync gallery` serves a read-only page on 127.0.0.1:4930 that decrypts thumbnails in memory.
- Skip duplicates by content hash, and never delete the original from the inbox until `verify` passes.
- Update the README with how to send phone photos into the inbox using Syncthing.

Add redundancy to the sync tool in this folder. Requirements:

- A second bucket in config.toml; after each `sync`, copy new chunks and the manifest to it and
  record which objects each bucket holds.
- `vaultsync drill` restores a random 20 files from the second bucket into a temp folder
  and compares them to the originals by hash, printing pass or fail.
- Run the drill weekly from the launchd and systemd units, and send an ntfy message
  (topic in config.toml) on a failure or when a bucket falls behind by more than a day.
- Never rewrite or delete objects in the second bucket except through an explicit `prune` command.
- Update the README with the cost of keeping two copies.

What you lose

Phone apps with automatic photo backup
Share links with passwords, expiry dates and revocation
Real-time document and spreadsheet editing with other people
Ten years of recoverable file versions
Two-factor sign-in, account recovery and support

Why people still pay

People pay for encryption they didn't have to assemble: it works across web, desktop and phone, shares files with people who have no account, and the page promises that not even Proton can read the data. For many that promise is the reason to choose it over a general cloud drive.

Moatbrand & trust execution polish

Do the math

Proton Drive Plus or your own copy?

Over

Your usage

Count my time12h ×$/h

Proton Drive Plus, 1 yr$60

Your own copy, 1 yr$51running + build session

You keep$9pays for itself in 8 months

Estimate · Bucket storage for 200 GB depends on the provider's per-GB price, and some charge for downloads; check current pricing. The build is token usage on your agent plan.

Leaving Proton Drive Plus

Take your data, then cancel.

1 · Take your data out of Proton Drive Plus

1In Proton Drive for web, select files or folders and click Download; several items arrive as one ZIP. The page we read states no size limit, so download large libraries in batches.
2We found no single "export everything" button, so download folder by folder and compare the file counts and sizes afterwards.
3The Windows and macOS desktop app keeps folders from your computer in Drive (the Computers tab), so those originals should still be on the machine; check before you rely on that.
4Proton's support has a separate page on importing and exporting documents in Docs: export those on their own, since they are not ordinary files.

2 · Cancel Proton Drive Plus

1Sign in at account.proton.me, open any Proton service, then Settings > All settings > Subscription.
2Scroll to Cancel subscription, click Continue, then confirm.
3The plan stays active until the end of the current billing period and does not renew; the move to Free comes after that.
4Cancelling within 30 days of your first purchase gets a prorated refund of the unused part; later refunds are at Proton's discretion.

You may be asked to remove data over the new plan's limit before the downgrade goes through, and Proton points to its free-plan limits page and Section 9 of its Terms of Service for what happens to data over a limit. Read both before you cancel.
On the same account, Mail over 1 GB on the Free plan stops sending and receiving until you free space, so check other Proton services too.
Moving to another paid plan applies immediately and turns unused time into account credit; you can't change plans while an invoice is unpaid.
Download first, cancel second: the files stay readable through the end of the paid period.

Checked 2026-10-20 against Proton Drive Plus's docs: 1, 2, 3, 4

The escape hatch

Don't feel like building it? These are already free.

SyncthingOpen sourceMPL-2.0 peer-to-peer file sync between your own devices, encrypted in transit, with no server. Files need a device that is online.★ 90k · active Oct 2026 · one-click install
Windows, macOS, Linux, AndroidVisit ↗CryptomatorOpen sourceGPL-3.0 vault that encrypts files, names included, inside a folder you sync with any cloud service; mobile apps are paid.★ 16k · active Oct 2026 · they host it
Windows, macOS, LinuxVisit ↗rcloneOpen sourceMIT command-line sync to dozens of storage services, with a crypt layer that encrypts file names and contents.★ 60k · active Oct 2026 · self-host, real ops
Windows, macOS, LinuxVisit ↗

All 4 free alternatives to Proton Drive Plus ›

The numbers

Proton Drive Plus pricing

Plan	Monthly	Annual, per month	What you get
Proton Free	$0	$0	5 GB of storage, photos and documents, online document and spreadsheet editor, end-to-end encryption.
Drive Plus	$4.99	$3.99	200 GB of storage, 10 years to recover previous file versions, everything in Free.
Proton Unlimited	$12.99	$9.99	500 GB of storage plus Proton VPN, Mail, Calendar and Pass.
Proton Duo	$19.99	$14.99	2 TB of storage, up to 2 users, advanced account protection and the Unlimited apps.
Proton Family	$29.99	$23.99	3 TB of storage, up to 6 users, all premium Proton products included in Duo.

Free tier: 5 GB of storage shared across the account; bigger libraries need a paid plan.
Billing: Monthly at $4.99 or yearly at $47.88, shown on the page's Monthly and Yearly toggle (the yearly price works out to $3.99 a month). 30-day money-back guarantee on Drive Plus, Unlimited and Duo: cancelling within 30 days of the first purchase gets a prorated refund of the unused part; later refunds are at Proton's discretion.
Hidden costs: None found. The limit is storage: past 200 GB the next step is Unlimited at 500 GB. Going back down to Free means removing whatever exceeds the free limits first.
Source: proton.me

Also on the list

Proton Unlimited$12.99/mo · SecurityNOT REALLY

Dropbox Plus$11.99/mo · Cloud storageKINDA

iCloud+$0.99/mo · Cloud storageNOT REALLY

Questions

Proton Drive Plus, briefly

Not answered here? Tell us and we'll add it.

Ask a question ›

Proton Free gives 5 GB for files, photos and documents with the same end-to-end encryption and an online document and spreadsheet editor.

Kinda. The core is a weekend build with the prompt on this page, but real gaps remain: Phone apps with automatic photo backup, Share links with passwords, expiry dates and revocation.

About $4.99 a month on the Drive Plus plan, $59.88 a year (checked 2026-10-20).

Phone apps with automatic photo backup; Share links with passwords, expiry dates and revocation; Real-time document and spreadsheet editing with other people; Ten years of recoverable file versions; Two-factor sign-in, account recovery and support. If any of those matter to you, keep paying.