Psiphon VPN (Псифон): what it is, how to download it for PC and does it work in Russia

Psiphon (written «Псифон» in Russian) is a free app from the Canadian company Psiphon Inc. for accessing blocked websites and services. It runs on Android, iPhone, iPad and Windows, requires no account and shows ads in free mode; a monthly Psiphon Plus subscription costs $4.99 in the US App Store. In Russia in 2026, Psiphon connects poorly: according to the OONI project, about 80% of tests on Russian networks in September and October ended in failure.

If you need a service that works reliably on your phone and TV and openly names its protocol, we recommend BessyConnect: VLESS with Reality camouflage, more than 100 servers, no registration. Details and an honest comparison below.

What is Psiphon and who is behind it?

Psiphon is a twenty-year-old open-source project. It was started in 2006 at the Citizen Lab of the University of Toronto, and in February 2007 the company Psiphon Inc. was registered, headquartered in Toronto.

In a blog post on April 28, 2026, the company reported more than 500 million downloads. On Google Play, the main app has a "100M+ downloads" badge. According to the official website as of October 26, 2026, the network has more than 50,000 servers in 33 countries.

The company's help center explains how Psiphon differs from an ordinary VPN: each connection is an SSH session wrapped in an obfuscation layer. The app itself cycles through different connection methods until one works, and remembers the successful one for next time. You can't choose the protocol manually, and you don't need to.

The company also has a second Android app, Conduit: it turns a volunteer's phone into a node of the Psiphon network.

Psiphon Pro and Psiphon Plus: how much does it cost and is there a free mode?

You can download and use Psiphon for free and without registration. The paid subscription is now called Psiphon Plus and removes ads. The name Psiphon Pro, which people still search for, is the former name of the same app on Google Play, not a separate product.

As of October 26, 2026, the psiphon.ca home page describes three options:

• Psiphon Basic — free, with ads, "limited capabilities".
• Psiphon Plus — "the entire network, no ads, all features", from $2.88 a month.
• Conduit access — free for those who run a Conduit station (Android only for now).

In the US App Store, the subscription costs $2.99 a week, $4.99 a month and $34.99 a year. Payment goes only through the App Store and Google Play: Psiphon doesn't accept payments itself.

The official website doesn't say how much speed is cut in free mode. A ProPrivacy review (last updated December 6, 2018) mentioned a 2 Mbps limit for the free version, and a user mentions the same speed in a Google Play review from June 25, 2025. We couldn't verify the current figure.

One more detail from the website: in regions where payment restrictions prevent subscribing, Psiphon promises free unrestricted access. The company doesn't publish a list of such countries.

Download Psiphon VPN for Android, iPhone and PC: where is the official version?

There are four official sources: Google Play, the App Store, the psiphon.ca website and the get@psiphon3.com autoresponder, which sends the Android or Windows file in reply to an empty email. Anything found in software catalogs, torrents and "repacks" is an unofficial copy.

Android. The app is on Google Play, published by Psiphon Inc. If the store is unavailable, the website's download page has an APK. For Android 6 and older there is an outdated Psiphon 3 build without updates. If your phone ends up with two Psiphons, one with a white icon and one with a colored icon, that is normal: according to the help center, both versions are official, and the white one is for regions without subscriptions and for the APK from the website.

iPhone and iPad. Psiphon isn't in the Russian App Store: a check on October 26, 2026, returned an empty result, and searching for psiphon on the Russian storefront returns other VPNs. The app is available in the stores of Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Germany and Ukraine, so you need an Apple ID from one of those countries.

Windows. This is Psiphon's strong point: the PC client is free and official. The psiphon3.exe file weighs about 11 MB and doesn't need installing; you just run it. It works on Windows 10 and 11, and the website has separate older builds for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 and for XP and Vista. The company itself calls the Windows version legacy, i.e. outdated: new features appear in the mobile apps.

What to know about Psiphon on a PC:

1. By default, it changes the system proxy settings. Only programs that respect those settings, such as browsers, go through the tunnel.
2. All of the computer's traffic goes through Psiphon only in VPN mode, which uses L2TP/IPsec. The help center admits this mode can be slow.
3. The genuine psiphon3.exe is digitally signed by Psiphon Inc. You can check the signature in the file's properties, on the "Digital Signatures" tab.
4. If the program crashes, the system proxy may not be restored and the internet will drop. The help center advises connecting through Psiphon again and disconnecting properly, and if that doesn't help, unchecking "Use a proxy server" in the browser's internet options.

Mac. There is no native app yet; the website marks it "in development". Running the Android version through an emulator such as BlueStacks is possible, but it is an extra layer of third-party software; we collected general options for computers in our piece on VPNs for PC.

Lookalikes. Yandex suggestions next to the brand include «psiphon repack», «psiphon скачать торрент» (psiphon download torrent) and «psiphon 272 apk». Nobody has checked such builds. Another example: the domain psiphon.click was registered on May 24, 2026, and isn't mentioned anywhere on the official website. How to spot a fake is covered in the article on fake VPN apps.

Does Psiphon work in Russia in 2026?

It works, but poorly and unevenly. The open OONI measurement database shows that since January 2026, the share of failed Psiphon connections on Russian networks has stayed at 66–86% a month. In 2025, it ranged from 17% to 70%.

OONI is an international project whose volunteers run tests from their own devices. The Psiphon test tries to build a tunnel from scratch and load one page through it. A failure is marked as an "anomaly": a strong signal, but not proof of blocking.

The picture is similar on major carriers. From September 1 to October 25, 2026, 83% of 19,601 tests on the Rostelecom network ended in failure, 90% on Beeline and 85% on MTS.

There is a caveat in Psiphon's favor. The OONI test starts each time without a saved server list, while the real app remembers the successful connection method. So a real user has better chances than the measurement suggests. But the company itself wrote on its blog on April 16, 2026, that in Russia even familiar VPNs are now often detected and stop working, and on June 16, 2026, it called on the Russian diaspora to run Conduit stations to help those inside the country.

Reviews on the Russian Google Play storefront say the same. The average rating there is 2.7, compared with 4.5 on the US storefront (as of October 26, 2026). On August 30 and September 4, 2026, users wrote that the app stopped connecting after an update.

The 2026 blocking isn't limited to Psiphon. On May 30, Meduza, citing the outlet Techora, described outages on May 21–22 and 25 that affected MTProto, VLESS, WireGuard and other protocols.

Why isn't Psiphon working and what to do?

Most often, Psiphon can't find a working path on the carrier's network. Less often, the cause is an outdated version, a glitch after an update or Psiphon's own port restrictions. The steps below are taken from the official help center and ordered from simple to complex.

1. Wait. On a difficult network, connecting may take several minutes. The help center asks you not to press the start and stop button during this time: the app is cycling through connection methods.
2. Update the app. The new version has the latest connection methods.
3. Restart your phone if you see the start_tunnel_failed error. On Android it appears when an update was installed while the VPN was on.
4. Change networks. Switch from mobile internet to Wi-Fi or vice versa. If it works on one network but not the other, the carrier is the issue.
5. Restore automatic region selection. By default, the app picks the server with the best connection itself. If you have pinned one of the 30-plus countries manually, try clearing the selection.
6. Check that the app you need works over allowed ports. Psiphon only passes ports 53, 80, 443, 465, 587, 993, 995 and 8080. Games and email clients on other ports won't work through it.
7. On Windows, turn off VPN mode. A firewall or home router may block the L2TP/IPsec protocol, and in that case the help center advises using the regular proxy mode.
8. Send a report from the app. The Send Feedback option sends encrypted diagnostics to the developers.

If nothing helped, the network is most likely recognizing Psiphon's traffic, and that can't be fixed on the user's side. A general breakdown of the causes is in the article why a VPN isn't working.

If Psiphon on an iPhone "turns itself back on", that is the VPN On Demand feature: turn it off in the app, not in Control Center.

Is Psiphon safe?

By verifiable criteria, Psiphon is more open than most free services: open source code, published Cure53 audits, a detailed data policy and a legal entity in Canada. Its weak points are tracking ads in the free version and the lack of a built-in kill switch.

What the company says about data as of October 26, 2026:

• The IP address isn't recorded. It is used to determine the country, city and ISP, after which the address is deleted.
• Visited websites and traffic content aren't stored.
• Session statistics (duration, volume, protocol, app version) are kept for up to 90 days.
• The company receives about 20 requests for user data a year and, according to it, has fulfilled none.
• Psiphon states plainly that it isn't an anonymity tool.

Ads in the free version are served through Google AdMob. In the App Store, the developer states that device identifiers may be used to track you across other companies' apps, and on Google Play that identifiers and approximate location are shared with third parties for advertising and analytics. The Plus subscription removes ads.

There is no built-in kill switch. On Android, the system "Always-on VPN" setting with "Block connections without VPN" replaces it; on iPhone, "Connect On Demand". The Windows version has no equivalent.

What to replace Psiphon with: alternatives and comparison

It is worth looking for a replacement if Psiphon won't connect on your network, if the ads bother you or if you need a VPN for your TV. Below is a fact-based comparison using official websites and stores as of October 26, 2026.

Where Psiphon is stronger, to put it plainly. It is free, requires no account, has an official Windows client and even a way to get the installer by email if the website is unavailable. The source code is open, and the project has a twenty-year history. For a Windows computer, free Psiphon is an honest option; BessyConnect has no Windows app.

Whether Proton VPN and AdGuard VPN work in Russia is covered in a separate piece. What WARP can and can't do is described in the article Cloudflare WARP instead of a VPN. And if Psiphon was recommended to you along with «Ток» (Tok), «Дед» (Ded) or «Ваня» (Vanya), take a look at our review of popular VPN apps in Russia: it covers the popular "one-button" apps.

Why we recommend BessyConnect

We recommend BessyConnect to those who need a VPN every day on a phone, tablet, Mac or TV and value predictable results. It runs on VLESS with Reality camouflage: the traffic looks like an ordinary HTTPS connection. There are more than 100 servers, no logs are kept, registration is optional, and there is a trial period.

BessyConnect apps:

• iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV — App Store
• Android — Google Play
• Android TV — Google Play
• All platforms — download page

What neither BessyConnect nor any other VPN solves. BessyConnect has no Windows app, so it won't help on a Windows PC. BessyConnect, like Psiphon, isn't in the Russian App Store: on an iPhone you need an Apple ID from another country. If mobile internet has been restricted to whitelists, a VPN as a rule won't help. And no protocol is protected from new waves of blocking forever: in May 2026, outages affected VLESS too, and resilience depends on how quickly a service updates its settings.

If Psiphon connects for you and the ads don't bother you, there is no reason to switch, especially on Windows. But if it hangs while connecting, drops out or you need a VPN for your TV, try BessyConnect: all versions are on the download page.

Frequently asked questions

Is Psiphon free? Yes. You can download and use it for free and without an account, but with ads. The Psiphon Plus subscription removes ads; in the US App Store it costs $4.99 a month or $34.99 a year (as of October 26, 2026).

How is Psiphon Pro different from Psiphon? It isn't: Psiphon Pro is the former name of the app on Google Play. It is now called Psiphon VPN: Secure Access, and the subscription is Psiphon Plus.

Is there Psiphon for a computer? Yes, for Windows 10 and 11 there is the free official psiphon3.exe client on psiphon.ca, and separate builds for older Windows versions. The macOS app is still in development.

Why isn't Psiphon working in Russia? Most likely the carrier's network recognizes its traffic: according to OONI, about 80% of Psiphon tests in Russia in September and October 2026 ended in failure. Update the app, give it a few minutes to connect and change networks.

What can I replace Psiphon with on my phone? We recommend BessyConnect: VLESS with Reality camouflage, more than 100 servers, no registration, a trial period and apps for iPhone, Android, Mac, Apple TV and Android TV. BessyConnect has no Windows app; there, it is worth trying the free Psiphon.

Related articles

BessyConnect Review: Protocol, Servers, Apps & Privacy

An honest BessyConnect review: a VLESS+Reality VPN with 100+ servers in 15 countries, apps for iOS, Android and Android TV, and no browsing logs kept. More

Amnezia VPN: what it is, how to download it, where to get a server

Amnezia VPN is a free open-source client: how to download it for PC, Android and iPhone, how self-hosted, Premium and Free differ, and where to get a key. More

Happ VPN: What It Is, Where to Get Keys, How to Set It Up

Happ VPN is a client app with no servers of its own. Where Happ keys and subscriptions come from, how to set it up on phone and PC, and why it won't connect. More