5 min read
These are different categories of tool, and comparing them feature by feature misses the point. Amnezia and Outline are programs that deploy a VPN onto a server you rent: you pay the host, and everything that follows is yours to handle. A managed service is somebody else's infrastructure on a subscription. The useful question isn't which is better — it's who runs the server, and who fixes it on a Saturday night.
| Criterion | Amnezia (self-hosted) | Outline | Managed service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who runs the server | you, on a rented VPS | you, on a rented VPS | the provider |
| Who can see your traffic | your hosting provider | your hosting provider | the service provider |
| Protocols | OpenVPN, OpenVPN over Cloak, WireGuard, AmneziaWG, IKEv2, XRay Reality, Shadowsocks | Shadowsocks | depends on the service |
| Resistance to filtering | high with Reality or AmneziaWG | moderate: Shadowsocks is well known to filters | depends on the protocol |
| Time to first connection | 30–60 minutes | 20–40 minutes | two minutes |
| Number of countries | as many servers as you rent | as many servers as you rent | all locations included |
| When an address gets blocked | new server, set up again | same | switch to another location |
| Sharing access with others | manual, via config files | easy, one-click keys | per account |
Amnezia is an open-source application that connects to your server over SSH and installs the server side itself. It supports a range of protocols: OpenVPN, OpenVPN over Cloak, WireGuard, AmneziaWG, IKEv2, XRay with Reality and Shadowsocks. Server requirements are modest: KVM virtualisation, a public IPv4 address, 1 GB of RAM, 10 GB of disk, and Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 or Debian 12/13.
Its strength is protocol choice. If one stops getting through, you deploy another alongside it without changing servers. In heavily filtered networks only the masking options are worth the effort — XRay with Reality and AmneziaWG; the rest are recognised by inspection equipment.
It suits people willing to administer a server and wanting control. It doesn't suit people who need several countries: each one is a separate rented machine.
Outline is built around Shadowsocks and one job: handing access to other people quickly. The manager creates keys, you send a key as a link, the recipient pastes it into a client, done. That's why it's popular with people setting up access for relatives and colleagues rather than for themselves alone.
Its weak point is the protocol. Shadowsocks has been known to filtering systems for years, and in networks doing deep traffic inspection it's dropped well before protocols that masquerade as genuine TLS. How that inspection works: what DPI is.
Things a single server cannot provide by definition:
The price is trust. The provider sees the addresses you connect to, exactly as your VPS host would. The difference is whom you'd rather trust, and that a service has a reputation at stake while an arbitrary host does not.
The cost-of-ownership breakdown for a personal server: running your own VPN on a VPS.
Separately from the server question, there's the client. In April 2026 a researcher publishing as runetfreedom documented that popular mobile clients built on the xray and sing-box cores open a local proxy with no authentication, letting any other app on the device learn the real address of your server. v2RayTun, V2BOX, v2rayNG, Hiddify, NekoBox and Clash were among those affected; developers were notified on 10 March 2026, and as of the 7 April write-up nothing had been fixed.
That isn't an argument against self-hosting. It's an argument for looking at the program you paste the key into, not just the server behind it.
It's a managed service running VLESS with Reality masking: the handshake is performed with a genuine site, so operator equipment can't isolate the session from ordinary web traffic. Over a hundred servers, dedicated 10 Gbit/s links, no logs of visited sites, no device limit, registration optional. One app across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch, a separate Android TV build, plus Windows and macOS clients.
An honest boundary: if it matters to you that the server is yours, take Amnezia and rent a VPS. If you need it working on every device in the house without your attention, a service wins on cost of ownership rather than on the feature list.
Is Amnezia a free VPN? The app is free and open source, but you rent the server yourself. What's free is the software, not the access.
How does Outline differ from Amnezia? Outline runs on Shadowsocks and is built around distributing keys to other people. Amnezia supports several protocols including XRay with Reality and holds up better where traffic is inspected.
Which protocol should I use in a filtered network? Ones that look like ordinary HTTPS: XRay with Reality, or AmneziaWG. Classic OpenVPN and IKEv2 are recognised.
Is a service safer than my own server? Neither is automatically safer. In both cases some party can see the addresses you connect to — a provider or your host.
Can I use both? Yes, and it's a sensible arrangement: your own server for tasks needing a fixed address, and a service as the fallback when that address gets blocked.
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