The Blocklist Report

Every status change we record, with a dated one-line reason. Monthly roundups are published from this feed.

July 2026: the first full pass

First edition. This month we finished the first verification pass of the whole matrix: 10 VPNs across 8 countries, 80 status calls, 300+ dated sources. Here is what the data says as of July 22, 2026.

Russia is the most hostile country we track. 7 of 10 VPNs are blocked and zero are fully working. Confirmed blocks climbed through July in in-country measurement data (654 confirmed blocks of expressvpn.com since May 1). Mullvad still documents a partial path (QUIC or Shadowsocks to European servers). Proton says Stealth still connects for many; forum reports say the Stealth port is now targeted. We list both claims and call it degraded.
Iran is close behind. 6 of 10 blocked, none working. The PIA domain logged 101 confirmed blocks in 30 days across six Iranian networks. Our first high-confidence verdicts anywhere: PIA and Surfshark, blocked.
China has one survivor. Astrill is the only VPN we verified working (StealthVPN required, install before arrival). The April 2026 firewall upgrade broke most of the rest; NordVPN and Proton connect intermittently with obfuscation.
Turkey: everything is degraded. All 9 verified VPNs need obfuscation to connect since the BTK blocklist and ISP-level DPI arrived in early 2026. None are cleanly working and none are fully dead. Full column.
Egypt blocks the stores, not the tunnels. Vendor websites are blocked on every major Egyptian ISP (Telecom Egypt worst), but tunnels mostly survive. When Discord was blocked in January, Proton signups from Egypt ran 320% above baseline.
India and Indonesia are the good news. 7 working apiece. One find: PureVPN's website is DNS-blocked on Airtel and Vodafone Idea while Jio, ACT, and BSNL are clean; in Indonesia the same site measures clean on every ISP, which flipped that cell to working on July 22. And Indonesia unblocked Reddit in July after 11 years.

Every claim above traces to a dated source on the linked page. How we verify is on the methodology page. Statuses re-verify weekly; anything older than 14 days decays to unconfirmed automatically.

Live feed

Aug 11, 2026: CyberGhost in UAE went from unverified to blocked. CyberGhost confirmed to Comparitech (article updated 2026-01-31) that its VPN no longer works in the UAE; OONI shows its site blocked on both major ISPs and a Dec 2025 to Mar 2026 in-country test found roughly 60 percent connects with VoIP still detected.
Aug 1, 2026: Private Internet Access in Turkey went from degraded to unverified. Moved to unverified 2026-08-01: website block escalation is real but tunnel behavior is unevidenced inside 30 days.
Aug 1, 2026: ExpressVPN in Turkey went from degraded to unverified. Moved to unverified 2026-08-01: all fresh evidence is website-level, no tunnel-level report inside 30 days.
Jul 25, 2026: Windscribe in Egypt went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: website unblocked but no fresh tunnel-level report for Windscribe in Egypt.
Jul 25, 2026: Windscribe in UAE went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: zero OONI coverage and only a stale Feb 2025 connection-failure report for Windscribe in the UAE.
Jul 25, 2026: Windscribe in India went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: no nationwide block found for Windscribe in India, but zero fresh in-country tunnel confirmation.
Jul 25, 2026: ExpressVPN in Egypt went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: website interference documented via OONI, but zero dated tunnel-level reports for Egypt.
Jul 25, 2026: Surfshark in Egypt went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: intermittent website interference and stale tunnel-failure reports for Surfshark in Egypt.
Jul 25, 2026: ExpressVPN in UAE went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: website confirmed blocked on both major UAE ISPs; tunnel status unresolved, no fresh reports.
Jul 25, 2026: ExpressVPN in China went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: website confirmed blocked; last firsthand tunnel reports (2024-2025) were negative but are stale.
Jul 25, 2026: CyberGhost in UAE went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: website confirmed blocked on both major UAE ISPs; tunnel status unresolved and conflicting sources.
Jul 25, 2026: CyberGhost in Egypt went from unverified to degraded. OONI shows CyberGhost's website consistently interfered with on Egypt's major ISPs through July 21, 2026; tunnel status unconfirmed.
Jul 25, 2026: Astrill in Turkey went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: Astrill is not formally blocked in Turkey but has zero independent in-country evidence either way.
Jul 25, 2026: Astrill in UAE went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: zero OONI coverage and only a stale 2021 report for Astrill in the UAE.
Jul 25, 2026: Astrill in Russia went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: thin OONI website signal and zero tunnel-level in-country reports for Astrill in Russia.
Jul 25, 2026: Astrill in Indonesia went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: zero OONI coverage and no fresh Astrill-specific reports from Indonesia.
Jul 25, 2026: Astrill in Iran went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: Astrill's ToS excludes sanctioned Iran and zero independent in-country evidence exists either way.
Jul 25, 2026: Astrill in India went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: no negative signals but zero fresh in-country evidence for Astrill in India.
Jul 25, 2026: Astrill in Egypt went from unverified to unverified. First verification pass: Astrill's website is unblocked in Egypt per OONI, but zero in-country reports exist on the tunnel itself.
Jul 23, 2026: PureVPN in Indonesia went from unverified to working. OONI in-country measurements across about 50 Indonesian ASNs show www.purevpn.com clean (329 of 330 OK over 51 days, zero confirmed blocks) under a censorship model that only DNS-blocks websites; the earlier no-data finding was a query-format artifact, now corrected. Approved by Mus.
Jul 22, 2026: Surfshark in UAE went from unverified to degraded. OONI shows surfshark.com blocked on Etisalat (79 anomalies vs 1 ok) and du (10 vs 0) May-July 2026 with datacenter ASNs clean, and Surfshark own restricted-country guidance prescribes manual setup.
Jul 22, 2026: Mullvad in UAE went from unverified to degraded. OONI shows mullvad.net anomalous on 69 of 69 Etisalat and 8 of 9 du measurements through July 21 2026, and Mullvad own guide names the UAE among countries where downloading or connecting is difficult.
Jul 22, 2026: PureVPN in UAE went from unverified to degraded. OONI shows the PureVPN website blocked on Etisalat (206 anomalies vs 1 ok since April 2026, anomalies every measured day in June-July) and du, with datacenter ASNs clean, and the vendor acknowledges the site block.
Jul 22, 2026: NordVPN in UAE went from unverified to degraded. OONI confirms nordvpn.com blocked on Etisalat (40 of 40 anomalous) and du (6 of 6) through July 21 2026, while archived user reports show a chronic pattern of intermittent obfuscation-only connectivity.
Jul 22, 2026: Surfshark in Indonesia went from unverified to working. OONI shows surfshark.com clean on Telkom/IndiHome, Biznet, First Media, and Indosat with zero confirmed blocks April-July 2026, no Komdigi action exists, and Indonesian users report routine Surfshark use with no complaints.
Jul 22, 2026: Mullvad in Indonesia went from unverified to working. OONI shows mullvad.net reachable with no confirmed blocks May-July 2026, the censorship climate is loosening (Reddit unblocked July 2026 after 11 years), and no complaints exist anywhere.
Jul 22, 2026: Private Internet Access in Indonesia went from unverified to working. OONI shows the PIA site fully reachable on all 27 tested Indonesian ASNs with zero confirmed blocks April-July 2026, no Komdigi action against paid VPNs exists, and no complaints were found anywhere.
Jul 22, 2026: Proton VPN in Indonesia went from unverified to working. OONI shows protonvpn.com reachable with zero confirmed blocks (46 of 52 days fully clean through July 22 2026), and June 2026 Indonesian news documents mass VPN adoption to bypass the Telegram block, which means tunnels function.
Jul 22, 2026: ExpressVPN in Indonesia went from unverified to working. OONI shows expressvpn.com reachable with zero confirmed blocks and one anomaly in 82 days, Kominfo explicitly exempted paid VPNs in its only VPN action, and no complaints exist anywhere; low confidence pending direct tunnel reports.
Jul 22, 2026: NordVPN in Indonesia went from unverified to working. OONI shows nordvpn.com reachable across 37-plus Indonesian ASNs May-July 2026 with zero confirmed blocks, no Komdigi action against VPN apps exists, and community reports describe NordVPN as a routine working tool for bypassing Kominfo blocks.
Jul 22, 2026: Proton VPN in Egypt went from unverified to degraded. OONI shows intermittent interference with protonvpn.com on Egypt largest ISP (roughly half of WE measurements anomalous) with zero confirmed blocks, and heavy in-country Proton usage was documented during the January 2026 Discord block.
Jul 22, 2026: PureVPN in Egypt went from unverified to degraded. OONI shows the PureVPN website blocked on every measured Egyptian ISP through mid-July 2026 (TE Data 85 of 88 anomalous since April), and the vendor own Egypt page implicitly admits interference by prescribing obfuscated servers.
Jul 22, 2026: Private Internet Access in Egypt went from unverified to degraded. OONI shows the PIA website blocked on all four major Egyptian ISPs (the only clean probes ran behind Cloudflare WARP) and PIA own support docs concede connectivity in Egypt is not guaranteed.
Jul 22, 2026: Mullvad in Egypt went from unverified to degraded. Mullvad own restrictive-locations guide names Egypt and prescribes obfuscation, Egypt DPI-blocks plain WireGuard which is now Mullvad only protocol, and dated user reports agree it works only with obfuscation and not on all ISPs.
Jul 22, 2026: NordVPN in Egypt went from unverified to degraded. OONI shows nordvpn.com blocked on Telecom Egypt (67 anomalies, 0 ok) and anomalous on Vodafone and Link through July 21 2026, while tunnel-level evidence is thin in both directions.
Jul 22, 2026: ExpressVPN in India went from unverified to working. OONI shows 0 confirmed blocks in 515 in-country measurements June-July 2026, a June 2026 India-based hands-on review reports normal connections, and no delisting or ISP-block reports exist.
Jul 22, 2026: NordVPN in India went from unverified to working. OONI shows nordvpn.com about 95 percent reachable across Indian ISPs May-July 2026 with only scattered unconfirmed anomalies, no blocking reports exist, and the June 2026 VPN signup surge implies services broadly function; low confidence pending direct tunnel reports.
Jul 22, 2026: Surfshark in India went from unverified to working. OONI shows surfshark.com clean on Jio, Airtel, BSNL, and ACT with zero confirmed blocks June-July 2026; no government action against Surfshark and no negative user reports found.
Jul 22, 2026: Proton VPN in India went from unverified to working. Third-party Appfigures data shows Proton VPN downloads surged 113 percent during the June 2026 Telegram block with Indian registrations 120 percent above baseline, and OONI shows protonvpn.com reachable with zero confirmed blocks; only possible if the app is listed, installable, and connecting.
Jul 22, 2026: Private Internet Access in India went from unverified to working. OONI shows privateinternetaccess.com reachable in 452 of 470 tests with zero confirmed blocks June-July 2026, PIA is absent from every published Indian app-store removal list, and no failure reports from inside India exist in 2025-2026.
Jul 22, 2026: CyberGhost in India went from unverified to working. OONI shows cyberghostvpn.com reachable on 513 of 531 tests June-July 2026 with Jio, ACT, and BSNL fully clean, no delisting order names CyberGhost, and no in-country complaints exist; low confidence pending direct tunnel reports.
Jul 22, 2026: Mullvad in India went from unverified to working. OONI shows mullvad.net clean on Jio, Airtel, and ACT with 0 confirmed blocks across 901 measurements May-July 2026, Mullvad is absent from delisting orders, and no complaints of it failing in India surfaced anywhere.
Jul 22, 2026: PureVPN in India went from unverified to degraded. OONI confirms ISP-level DNS blocking of the PureVPN website on Airtel and Vodafone Idea through July 21 2026 while Jio, ACT, and BSNL are clean; no tunnel blocking or delisting evidence, so degraded rather than blocked.
Jul 22, 2026: NordVPN in Russia went from unverified to blocked. OONI confirms sustained blocking of nordvpn.com through July 21 2026 with confirmed blocks rising, and a May 2026 in-country test of 8 VPNs concluded NordVPN cannot beat Roskomnadzor DPI.
Jul 22, 2026: Windscribe in Russia went from unverified to blocked. Every fresh in-country signal (OONI 12 of 12 anomalies in June, two Russian outage trackers with dated all-protocol failure reports through late June and complaints within 24 hours) says Windscribe fails; only the vendor claims workarounds.
Jul 22, 2026: PureVPN in Russia went from unverified to blocked. OONI-confirmed blocking of purevpn.com through July 21 2026 plus protocol-level DPI against its entire lineup and a Russian reseller marking PureVPN accounts as not working in RF; only stale vendor and affiliate claims disagree.
Jul 22, 2026: Mullvad in Russia went from unverified to degraded. Mullvad itself says Roskomnadzor blocks most of its servers and OONI confirms active blocking of mullvad.net through July 21 2026, but vendor-recommended QUIC is corroborated as a working path by news coverage and ntc.party workaround threads.
Jul 22, 2026: CyberGhost in Russia went from unverified to blocked. OONI shows cyberghostvpn.com increasingly confirmed-blocked through July 21 2026 (518 confirmed blocks since May), CyberGhost ships no obfuscation against protocol-level DPI, and no fresh report of it working exists anywhere.
Jul 22, 2026: Private Internet Access in Russia went from unverified to blocked. OONI shows 252 confirmed blocks of the PIA domain in 30 days across major Russian ISPs, and every user thread found since Sep 2024 says the tunnel and its Shadowsocks fallback stopped working.
Jul 22, 2026: Proton VPN in Russia went from unverified to degraded. Standard protocols are confirmed blocked and OONI shows protonvpn.com blocking worsening, but the Proton GM says Stealth still connects for many with retries; no fresh in-country report settles it, so degraded at low confidence.
Jul 22, 2026: ExpressVPN in Russia went from unverified to blocked. OONI confirmed blocks of expressvpn.com escalating into July 2026 (peak 18/day Jul 20), ntc.party threads report it blocked and unloggable, and 2026 press calls it effectively non-functional; only affiliate anecdotes disagree.
Jul 22, 2026: Surfshark in Russia went from unverified to blocked. OONI shows surfshark.com confirmed-blocked daily through July 2026 with blocks rising, and every archived in-country report since mid-2024 says all protocols fail; only affiliate sites claim otherwise.
Jul 22, 2026: Surfshark in Iran went from unverified to blocked. OONI July 2026 confirms DNS blocking of surfshark.com on 19 of 20 probes with Iran censorship fingerprints across six-plus ASNs; community history says only obfuscated or proxied setups ever worked.
Jul 22, 2026: Mullvad in Iran went from unverified to blocked. OONI July 2026 confirms DNS blocking of mullvad.net on 16 of 20 measurements across seven Iranian ASNs; Reddit trend moved from degraded-but-working in 2022 to not usable by late 2024.
Jul 22, 2026: PureVPN in Iran went from unverified to blocked. OONI July 2026 shows confirmed DNS blocking of purevpn.com on 12 of 20 recent measurements across six Iranian ASNs, with no recent working reports found anywhere.
Jul 22, 2026: Windscribe in Iran went from unverified to degraded. Windscribe ships Iran-specific circumvention tooling and user reports through January 2025 describe intermittent carrier-dependent access with obfuscation alongside recurring failure reports.
Jul 22, 2026: CyberGhost in Iran went from unverified to blocked. cyberghostvpn.com confirmed DNS-blocked in July 2026 OONI data across seven Iranian ASNs, and CyberGhost ships no obfuscation to survive Iranian protocol filtering.
Jul 22, 2026: Private Internet Access in Iran went from unverified to blocked. OONI shows 101 confirmed blocks of the PIA domain over 30 days across six Iranian ASNs, consistent with May 2024 community reports that PIA completely stopped working in Iran.
Jul 22, 2026: Proton VPN in Iran went from unverified to degraded. protonvpn.com confirmed DNS-blocked in July 2026 OONI data, but Proton has a documented record of connecting via Stealth during Iranian censorship spikes, so degraded rather than blocked.
Jul 22, 2026: ExpressVPN in Iran went from unverified to degraded. OONI July 2026 confirms expressvpn.com DNS/HTTP-blocked across seven Iranian ASNs; 2024 traveler reports say it worked on visits, so degraded rather than blocked outright.
Jul 22, 2026: NordVPN in Iran went from unverified to blocked. OONI July 2026 confirms DNS blocking of nordvpn.com on 26 of 30 measurements across major Iranian ISPs including TCI and Irancell; no fresh evidence the service connects.
Jul 22, 2026: NordVPN in China went from unverified to degraded. NordVPN itself says its apps are fully blocked in China and pushes manual setup; a July 2026 in-country guide rates obfuscated servers intermittent since the April 2026 firewall upgrade; OONI shows the site anomalous on 56 percent of measurements.
Jul 22, 2026: Mullvad in China went from unverified to degraded. OONI July 2026 shows mullvad.net DNS-blocked on China Telecom and Unicom, and the only fresh usability source relays inconsistent Bridge/Shadowsocks results from users; community background says it works with obfuscation, unreliably.
Jul 22, 2026: PureVPN in China went from unverified to degraded. OONI shows purevpn.com heavily blocked on China Telecom, Unicom and CERNET in the last 30 days while China Mobile stays clean; background sources agree it is unreliable-at-best with obfuscation and it is absent from every post-April-2026 still-works list.
Jul 22, 2026: Windscribe in China went from unverified to degraded. OONI confirms windscribe.com DNS-blocked on most days May-July 2026 and no fresh tunnel evidence exists; the vendor itself only offers a hedged might-work via Stealth or WStunnel.
Jul 22, 2026: Surfshark in China went from unverified to degraded. The freshest dated source (July 2026 guide) rates Surfshark with obfuscation as intermittent after the April 2026 firewall upgrade, matching a multi-year pattern of conflicting user reports; OONI confirms its site is actively interfered with.
Jul 22, 2026: CyberGhost in China went from unverified to blocked. OONI July 2026 shows the CyberGhost site DNS-blocked on major Chinese ISPs, the vendor makes no China claim, and years of user reports show no confirmed connections; with no obfuscation mode there is no workaround path.
Jul 22, 2026: Private Internet Access in China went from unverified to blocked. PIA itself admits China blocks its VPN traffic, OONI July 2026 confirms DNS blocking of its website on four major Chinese networks, and community consensus has been negative for years with no fresh working reports.
Jul 22, 2026: Proton VPN in China went from unverified to degraded. OONI July 2026 shows ISP-dependent DNS blocking of protonvpn.com and July 2026 on-the-ground testing reports about 3 in 10 connections succeeding with Stealth plus Alternative Routing.
Jul 22, 2026: Astrill in China went from unverified to working. Independent community threads from June and mid-July 2026 plus a fresh editorial guide agree Astrill still works via StealthVPN after the April 2026 firewall upgrade; only the website is blocked in-country.
Jul 22, 2026: Proton VPN in UAE went from unverified to degraded. July 2026 guides independently report Proton connects in the UAE only with the Stealth protocol, with du less reliable than Etisalat; no user report contradicts the works-with-workaround picture.
Jul 22, 2026: Private Internet Access in UAE went from unverified to degraded. PIA itself lists the UAE as a restricted region where its app may fail to connect, offering only a manual OpenVPN workaround; 2026 affiliate reviews claiming it works were weighed lower than the vendor admission.
Jul 22, 2026: Private Internet Access in Turkey went from unverified to degraded. PIA lists Turkey as a restricted region where its app may fail to connect and recommends manual OpenVPN; 2026 third-party tests still report connections on major ISPs.
Jul 22, 2026: ExpressVPN in Turkey went from unverified to degraded. 2026 in-country tests report the app connects via automatic obfuscation on Turkcell and Turk Telekom; website itself is BTK-blocked.
Jul 22, 2026: Surfshark in Turkey went from unverified to degraded. On the BTK blocklist; Turkish users report stock apps blocked on Turk Telekom and Turkcell but manual WireGuard/OpenVPN configs connect.
Jul 22, 2026: Mullvad in Turkey went from unverified to degraded. Turkish forum reports from Jun 30 to Jul 16 2026 show Mullvad connecting fine; not on the BTK blocklist, but the vendor classes Turkey as restrictive and past ISP-level blocks recurred.
Jul 22, 2026: PureVPN in Turkey went from unverified to degraded. Named on the BTK 27-VPN blocklist under an active DPI regime; obfuscation-based workarounds are plausibly functional.
Jul 22, 2026: Windscribe in Turkey went from unverified to degraded. Website reported on the BTK banned list, but July 2026 testing says apps still connect via Stealth protocol on port 443.
Jul 22, 2026: NordVPN in Turkey went from unverified to degraded. Turkish user reports through May 2026 show default protocols DPI-blocked on Turk Telekom and Turkcell; works via OpenVPN TCP with obfuscated servers.
Jul 22, 2026: CyberGhost in Turkey went from unverified to degraded. On the BTK blocklist since Dec 2023 and lacks an obfuscation mode; Turkish user reports describe ISP-dependent connectivity.
Jul 22, 2026: Proton VPN in Turkey went from unverified to degraded. Proton confirms connection blocks in Turkey, especially on Vodafone TR; usable via Stealth protocol and Alternative Routing.