Proton also have the free version, but both Proton and Windscribe free versions are very limited in number of locations, speed and traffic.
For my use, free version of either of those is completely useless. As I said before, I am not fan of "free" stuff as more often than not they end up being more costly (usually wasting my time) than those I paid for. So yeah, gonna test ProtonVPN "Plus" plan which fits my needs.
Regarding all this lifetime/long term subscription thing, I generally avoid the former (I don't remember taking lifetime plan for anything) but I have nothing about 1 year sub. Not initially though as first few months I like to test the service and if it proves to be reliable, I switch to yearly sub simply because I don't want to think about it every month. And as @dkbit98 said, it's not like I am risking thousands of dollars but 100, tops. I did the same thing with ExpressVPN, and will do with ProtonVPN if it proves to be as good as people claim it is.