How we verify VPN statuses

VPN Passport answers one question: does this VPN still work in this country, as of this week. This page explains how we get to each answer and what our labels mean.

Where statuses come from

Every status in our database is backed by at least one dated source before we publish it as anything other than "unverified". Sources include vendor status and support pages, recent Reddit and forum threads from users inside the country, news coverage of blocking events, user reports submitted on this site, and our own manual tests. Each source is stored with its URL and the date we observed it.

We weigh recency hard. A report older than 30 days is background, not evidence. And we never mark a VPN "working" based on the vendor's own claims alone.

What the labels mean

• Working: recent sources agree it connects and holds a usable connection on major ISPs in that country.
• Degraded: it works partially. Maybe only with a specific protocol or obfuscation mode, or only on some ISPs. The status card says which.
• Blocked: recent sources agree it does not connect for most users in that country.
• Unverified: we have not confirmed it yet. We publish this label instead of guessing. Many cells started here at launch and move as verification passes complete.

Confidence and staleness

Each status carries a confidence level (low, medium, high) based on how many independent sources agree and how recent they are. If a "working" status has not been re-verified in 14 days, the site automatically marks it "unconfirmed since" its last check and drops its confidence one level. Dates are never bumped without an actual re-check backed by a new source.

User reports

The "is it working for you" widget on each page feeds our verification queue. Reports never flip a status by themselves. Five or more consistent reports in a week trigger a manual re-verification, nothing more. Report counts are displayed as-is, even when they are small.

The data is public

The full status matrix is available as JSON at /api/status.json, cached hourly. Cite it freely with a link. Every change we make is logged in the changelog with a dated reason.

Who runs this

VPN Passport is an independent site. Some links pay us a commission (see the disclosure), and we also cover VPNs that pay us nothing, because the point of this site is the accuracy of the grid, not the links.