Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) vs Outline VPN (Outline Foundation, ex-Jigsaw/Google): which wins in 2026?
Head-to-head on the facts that decide the purchase: real prices in the provider's own unit, minimum, KYC, proof, payment and terms - every number sourced in the linked reviews.
The most credible self-hosting on-ramp in the VPN space, built by and for people inside the censorship: the app is free and open source, you connect it to your own $5 VPS over SSH and it deploys the server for you, so your traffic never touches an Amnezia-operated machine. Its signature AmneziaWG protocol is the WireGuard cryptographic core with a serious anti-DPI layer (dynamic headers, randomized packet sizes, QUIC/DNS mimicry), and version 3.1 was rushed out after Russia's June-July 2026 hybrid attack - mass IP blocking, DDoS, and phishing against the team - that knocked the service around for a month and a half. The honesty ledger cuts both ways: security audits by 7ASecurity in 2022/2024/2025 and open code, but also a corporate structure that has drifted from Portugal (IP holder) to Estonia (operations) to a Cyprus-registered entity per today's footer, no public ledger of funding beyond donations and its paid services, self-hosting advocates calling the setup wizard opaque, and an open GitHub issue (since Aug 2024) documenting AmneziaWG being DPI-detected on Russian mobile networks. It is a censorship tool first; as an anonymity or streaming product it is the wrong category.
The most polished way to hand censorship-resistant access to people who cannot configure a VPN: a few clicks in the Outline Manager builds a Shadowsocks server on a $3-6/month VPS, and family, newsroom or NGO members connect with ss:// access keys - which is why it powered Sudan protests, Myanmar crisis access and Iranian traffic spikes. It is the mirror image of Algo: audited four times with real obfuscation (WebSocket-over-TLS, prefixes, SDK strategies) but running a proxy, not a true VPN - no kill switch, no split tunneling on Linux, no anonymity, and your server's operator (you, or whoever you gave a key to) sits inside the trust boundary. Watch items: the server code has not had a tagged release since v1.12.3 in February 2025 while clients moved to the new non-profit, and the 2022 audit's high-severity findings were concentrated in the neglected Linux client.
Short answer: Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) wins overall (6.2/10 vs 4.7/10). Facts checked 2026-11-05.
The facts
 Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) | Outline VPN (Outline Foundation, ex-Jigsaw/Google) | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score (0-10) | 6.2 | 4.7 |
| Privacy & proof | ||
| Logging claim | 'If you use the AmneziaVPN app for a self-hosted VPN, we do not collect any data about… | getoutline.org how-it-works (fetched 2026-11-03): 'It never logs your traffic or tracks… |
| Logging evidence | independently audited | promise only (no proof) |
| Audits | 7ASecurity 2024, 7ASecurity 2022, 7ASecurity 2025 | Radically Open Security 2018, Cure53 2018, Radically Open Security 2022, Cure53 2024 |
| Jurisdiction | Cyprus (EUPHORIATECH LIMITED, Nicosia, reg HE 484287 per sit… moreCyprus (EUPHORIATECH LIMITED, Nicosia, reg HE 484287 per site footer, verified 2026-11-02; IP rights in Portugal with Amnezia LDA, ops in Estonia) - for self-hosted users the operative jurisdiction is wherever their own VPS is hosted | United States - Outline Foundation, 30 N Gould St. #57975, S… moreUnited States - Outline Foundation, 30 N Gould St. #57975, Sheridan, Wyoming (contact address in Terms of Service and on the Google Play developer listing); ToS governed by Wyoming law. The software itself has no jurisdiction: the operative jurisdiction for a self-hosted user is wherever their rented VPS is located and the laws governing their cloud provider. |
| Owner | unknown | unknown |
| Money | ||
| Intro price | $5 /mo | $3 /mo |
| Renewal price | not published | not published |
| Anonymous payment | unknown | fiat |
| Account | ||
| Personal info | none | none for the software - no Outline account exists; access ke… morenone for the software - no Outline account exists; access keys are generated and shared without any registration. Your cloud provider (DigitalOcean, AWS, GCP) will require billing identity under their KYC. |
| Kind | Self-hosted | Self-hosted |
| Facts checked | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-03 |
Score breakdown
Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) leads on privacy & logging (+3), security (+4).
Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) at a glance
++ What holds up
- Self-hosted mode is free, GPL-3.0 open source, and requires no account - your traffic goes only to your own VPS (GitHub README + FAQ, fetched 2026-11-02)
- AmneziaWG is documented in unusual technical depth, protocol mechanism by mechanism, with the WireGuard crypto core unchanged (docs.amnezia.org)
- Survived the largest state attack in its history (summer 2026: IP/subnet blocking, DDoS, API probing, phishing) and published a candid postmortem with compensation to subscribers
- Built and battle-tested where it matters: Russia, Iran, Myanmar, Turkmenistan, China are the actual user base, and an HN user confirmed the setup scripts were 'above board' on a throwaway VPS
- Free tier in genuinely censored countries (Instagram/Facebook/X access) and a Civil Rights Defenders partnership giving free Premium to journalists and activists
- Independent 7ASecurity security audits of clients and protocols in 2022, 2024 and 2025
-- What to watch
- You own the failure modes: a single-user VPS is trivial to block, and Iranian/Russian authorities block hoster IP ranges wholesale - community threads show constant server-hopping
- AmneziaWG has been detected by DPI before (open GitHub issue #1010 since Aug 2024, Russian MTS) and the project itself admits each protocol version is a temporary answer in an arms race
- Corporate opacity: operator entity is a small Cyprus company (EUPHORIATECH LIMITED) per the site footer, while the 2025 TorrentFreak answers named a Portugal IP holder and Estonia operator - jurisdiction depends on which page you read
- No public accounting of funding beyond donations (Patreon/crypto) and revenue from Premium/Hosting/Business - reviewers and community threads raise the question and get no ledger
- Setup wizard hands the app your VPS SSH credentials and historically hid its server scripts; HN users found buggy UI and a server private key embedded in exported config JSON (2025-12)
- Weak OpenWrt packaging (community-maintained packages), Premium torrenting limited to Netherlands and Switzerland with no port forwarding, and Amnezia Free is speed-capped at 8 Mbps without YouTube
- Useless during full internet shutdowns - Amnezia itself says so for Iran-style whitelists, where only satellite or mesh links work
Outline VPN (Outline Foundation, ex-Jigsaw/Google) at a glance
++ What holds up
- Genuinely censorship-resistant: handshake-less Shadowsocks, mandatory AEAD ciphers, probing resistance, plus Shadowsocks-over-WebSockets behind TLS and 16-byte protocol disguises (client 1.15.0+/1.9.0+)
- Four published independent audits: Radically Open Security (2018, 2022) and Cure53 (2018, 2024), reports downloadable from getoutline.org - rare transparency at any price
- Non-profit stewardship since January 2026: Outline Foundation (Sheridan, Wyoming) with internet-freedom leadership, freeing it from the Google/Jigsaw association that some privacy users distrusted
- Near-zero friction for non-technical admins and users: point-and-click Manager, ss:// keys shared by email/SMS, per-key data limits, clients on every major platform (5M+ Play installs)
- No operator: Foundation 'does not operate VPN servers, does not route internet traffic, does not log VPN traffic, does not monitor connections' (ToS section 2, fetched 2026-11-03)
- Scale and field record: 30M+ monthly users, 140,000+ self-managed servers, documented use in Sudan, Myanmar, Iran and Ukraine crisis events
-- What to watch
- It is a Shadowsocks proxy, not a true VPN: no kill switch documented, no split tunneling on Linux, and per HN critics the per-application SOCKS design historically allowed traffic leakage outside the tunnel
- Shadowsocks is detectable under sustained scrutiny: China's GFW identified Shadowsocks servers as early as 2018 (GitHub issue #193) and 2025 client releases were frozen within ~5 minutes by Russian censors (issue #2679)
- Server releases have stalled: last tagged server version v1.12.3 shipped February 2025 - about 20 months without a release while clients iterate (The Proof Desk, 2026-10-31)
- Not an anonymity tool, by its own FAQ; websites 'will most likely be able to tell that your connection is coming from a cloud server', so streaming unblocking is hit and miss
- Trust moves to whoever runs the server: 'Someone with your access key could potentially inspect all your internet traffic if they have access to it' (project warning); public free-key lists are explicitly not affiliated and commonly dead or malicious
- Requires a cloud account and its KYC; the Manager is Windows/macOS/Linux only, so pure-mobile users cannot self-host
Full Outline VPN (Outline Foundation, ex-Jigsaw/Google) review →
FAQ
Which is cheaper, Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) or Outline VPN (Outline Foundation, ex-Jigsaw/Google)?
Outline VPN (Outline Foundation, ex-Jigsaw/Google) is cheaper at $3 /mo versus $5 /mo.
Which has better logging evidence, Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) or Outline VPN (Outline Foundation, ex-Jigsaw/Google)?
Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) has the stronger logging evidence; Outline VPN (Outline Foundation, ex-Jigsaw/Google) relies on claims alone.
Which renewal price is honest, Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) or Outline VPN (Outline Foundation, ex-Jigsaw/Google)?
Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) is free - there is no renewal price to hide; the honest question is what the "free" is funded with. See the linked reviews.
Which needs less KYC, Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) or Outline VPN (Outline Foundation, ex-Jigsaw/Google)?
At least one provider does not document its KYC policy - treat it as unknown, not as "no KYC".
Which has the longer track record?
Outline VPN (Outline Foundation, ex-Jigsaw/Google) has the longer track record (since 2018).
Scores and facts: meta-reviews with dated sources - Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) · Outline VPN (Outline Foundation, ex-Jigsaw/Google). Method: how we verify. More: all providers compared · all head-to-heads.