How we measure internet freedom
Each country gets a freedom score from 0 to 100 (higher = more free), drawn from Freedom House's Freedom on the Net annual report where they publish one. For countries Freedom House does not score, the number is our estimate within the same scale, calibrated against OONI block measurements and Comparitech / Cloudwards 2026 censorship summaries.
Six categories are assessed for each country: social media access, VoIP and video-call apps, VPN legality, news media restrictions, political expression online, and whether the carriers deploy deep packet inspection. The categories produce one of five overall levels — free, mostly free, restricted, heavily restricted, or severely restricted.
The 14 countries with dedicated Fexyn guides carry the deepest data: specific blocked apps with dates, named carriers, regulatory citations, and recommended Fexyn protocols. The remaining countries cover the heavily-censored and free ends of the spectrum at slightly less depth. Quarterly review cycle. See the methodology page for the full sourcing and corrections process.
The most censored countries in 2026
Ten countries account for the most restrictive internet environments, ranked by freedom score (lowest = most restricted):
- 1North KoreaSeverely restricted3/100
Most citizens have no access to the global internet — only the domestic Kwangmyong intranet.
- 2
Citizens have been forced to swear oaths on the Quran not to use VPNs.
- 3EritreaSeverely restricted8/100
Among the most restricted internet environments globally.
- 4
Great Firewall does active DPI probing of suspected VPN endpoints.
- 5
Junta criminalised VPN use in 2022 with sentences up to 3 years prison.
- 6IranSeverely restricted11/100
September 2022 Mahsa Amini protests triggered hardened blocks; June 2025 'stealth blackout' affected most protocols.
- 7AfghanistanSeverely restricted12/100
Taliban-era restrictions on women's internet access in addition to platform blocks.
- 8YemenSeverely restricted13/100
Houthi-controlled and government-controlled regions filter independently.
- 9SudanSeverely restricted14/100
Multi-month nationwide internet shutdowns since April 2023 conflict.
- 10
Roskomnadzor blocked 469 VPN services as of February 2026; Zona.media reported 761 VPN apps removed from Apple's Russian App Store by April 2026.
What gets blocked, and why
The pattern of what governments block tells you what motivates the censorship. Four categories drive most enforcement:
- VoIP and video-call apps — blocked across the Gulf and Egypt for commercial reasons. Etisalat, du, STC, Mobily, Zain and the Egyptian carriers protect licensed call revenue. WhatsApp, FaceTime, Skype, Viber, and Messenger calls all get DPI-dropped while text messaging continues. Around 8 countries on this map have outright VoIP blocking.
- Social media platforms — blocked or throttled during political events (Turkey, Pakistan, Russia, Nigeria) or as long-term policy (China, Iran, North Korea). The pattern is moderation control — governments want platforms to remove content on demand, platforms refuse, blocks follow.
- VPN services — restricted or illegal in 16 countries on this map. The technical enforcement runs through DPI (23 countries) that fingerprints VPN protocols at the carrier level.
- News and political expression — independent and opposition outlets blocked under cybercrime and anti-misinformation frameworks. Common pattern across Russia, Belarus, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela.
How to bypass censorship
Standard VPN protocols (WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2) get fingerprinted by modern DPI within milliseconds. The Russian TSPU stack, China's Great Firewall, Iran's filtering infrastructure, Turkey's commercial DPI gear, and Pakistan's post- December-2025 deployment all identify and throttle these protocols regardless of which destination they tunnel to.
The class of protocol designed for these networks is stealth — a handshake structurally indistinguishable from regular HTTPS to a real public website. VLESS Reality (Fexyn ships it as Fexyn Stealth) does a real TLS 1.3 handshake to a real third-party site. The carrier's DPI sees ordinary HTTPS — there is no VPN fingerprint to detect.
Most major Western VPN brands (NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, ProtonVPN, Mullvad) do not ship VLESS Reality. Their obfuscated modes wrap WireGuard or OpenVPN in TLS padding, which works against passive fingerprinting but gets caught by DPI hardware that does active probing or pattern-matching at the handshake layer. Read what is traffic obfuscation for the full taxonomy.
Frequently asked questions
Which countries have the most internet censorship?
By Freedom House Freedom on the Net 2024-2025 scoring, the most restricted environments are North Korea (~3/100), Turkmenistan (~5/100), China (~9/100), Myanmar (~9/100), Iran (~11/100), Afghanistan (~12/100), Russia (~16/100), Syria (~17/100), and Belarus (~18/100). All run national-scale filtering and most criminalise VPN use. The map's filter dropdown surfaces these at a glance.
Is it legal to use a VPN to bypass censorship?
It varies. In most countries (US, UK, EU, Brazil, India, Turkey, UAE) personal VPN use is legal even where the platform you connect through is blocked. In Russia individual use sits in a grey area with increasing enforcement risk against advertising and providing VPN services. In China, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan VPN use is criminalised and enforcement happens, especially when paired with other content offences. Always check the per-country detail panel for the current legal posture.
What is deep packet inspection?
Deep packet inspection (DPI) is hardware that examines packet contents and metadata in real time to identify protocols, applications, and content. ISPs and governments deploy DPI to fingerprint VPN traffic so they can throttle or block it even when the destination IP is not on a blocklist. Russia (TSPU), China (Great Firewall), Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan all run DPI capable of identifying standard WireGuard and OpenVPN sessions within milliseconds of handshake.
Which VPN protocol works in censored countries?
VLESS Reality is the most reliable protocol against modern DPI. It does a real TLS 1.3 handshake to a real public website, so the carrier sees ordinary HTTPS rather than a VPN tunnel. Standard WireGuard and OpenVPN sessions get fingerprinted in TSPU/GFW environments. Hysteria 2 also performs well in Iran. Fexyn ships VLESS Reality as Fexyn Stealth.
How does VLESS Reality bypass DPI?
VLESS Reality's handshake validates against a real third-party site's real certificate chain. The carrier's DPI sees a connection that is structurally indistinguishable from a normal browser visit to that third-party site — same TLS fingerprint, same SNI, same timing. There is no VPN signature for the DPI to detect. Other 'obfuscation' approaches that wrap VPN traffic in TLS padding can be pattern-matched at the handshake layer; Reality cannot, because the handshake is real.