I’ve been testing VPN services and somehow every one with a client has written their own. Proton, Windscribe, IVPN, Mullvad, AirVPN, NordVPN, and the list goes on.
Don’t these services all do the same thing? Connect to a server to get a list of servers, then use WireGuard or OpenVPN to make a connection, and have some fancy stuff like split tunneling or a killswitch. It should just take configuration by adding profiles per service and it should be possible to use the same client.
What am I missing?
You’re not missing anything. Mullvad and probably some of the others lets you download a client config and use it in whatever app you want.
The ones that don’t allow that are probably shady or just don’t care about your freedoms, behind a guise of “our app is more convenient/safe/etc”.
Proton offers downloading config files as well, at least for paid customers. I do agree that providers that do not provide these are at least somewhat shady in their business practices.
At best, having a separate VPN client can offer some extra features over the standard openvpn/wireguard config files. They can allow quickly changing settings and detect the fastest server.
For free customers too, thats how I use it from my PC.
PIA let’s you download OpenVPN and I think also WireGuard configs for all their servers too.