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.
auditedopen source5 red flagsfacts verified - operator pages (amnezia.org home/about, hybrid-attack postmortem blog), docs.amnezia.org AmneziaWG protocol documentation, GitHub client repo and issue tracker, 7ASecurity audit blog, TorrentFreak annual privacy survey, Wired, TechRadar, Guardian, MediaNama, Cybernews, The Insider, HRW, Privacy Guides forum, HN and Reddit archives all fetched live 2026-11-02
State-level targeting is real and ongoing: Russia's regulator blocked Amnezia IPs in bulk, ran DDoS on its payment infrastructure and phished its staff in mid-2026 (HRW, Meduza, company postmortem) - an adversary that can do this will keep adapting
Russian government pressure has already removed VPN apps including Amnezia-class tools from Apple's App Store (468 'utility' apps removed in 2025 per Apple transparency data cited by HRW); Amnezia distributes white-label clones and side-load channels to cope
The Telegram-borne rumor that Amnezia 'made a deal with Roskomnadzor' during the 2026 outage was denied by the project, but it shows how quickly trust collapses for the demographic it serves
+2 more red flags - expand before signing up
A November 2026 r/AmneziaVPN thread about mass IP bans, and a critical Linux kernel CVE (CVE-2026-98432) threatening Xray-based self-hosted servers with slow distro patches, illustrate that self-hosting shifts security burden onto non-experts
Origin and much of the team and community remain Russian; the operating entity is now Cypriot - neither is damning, but the shifting legal wrappers deserve scrutiny the marketing pages do not offer
Review
draft generated by Qwen3, fact-checked by the vpncomparison editorial desk · review version 2 · prose updated 2026-11-02 · facts as of 2026-11-02 · how we verify
Honesty note: we have not run our own tests on Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) yet (leak tests, speed, kill switch). Everything on this page is source-based meta-research with dated links. When we test it, results appear here and on the change log.
Overview
Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) homepage - live capture 2026-09-29
Amnezia VPN is a free, open-source self-hosted app designed for users in censored regions like Russia, Iran, and Turkmenistan. You install it on your own $5/month VPS, so there’s no subscription to Amnezia itself - your traffic runs through hardware you control. The team, originally tied to Russian digital rights group Roskomsvoboda, now operates under EUPHORIATECH LIMITED in Cyprus, with IP held in Portugal and operations in Estonia. This is not a privacy product in the commercial sense - it’s a censorship-resistance toolkit.
Logging & privacy
Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) privacy policy page - live capture 2026-09-29
In self-hosted mode, Amnezia collects no data: your server is yours, and logs (if any) stay on your machine. The claim is backed by GPL-3.0 client code you can audit, plus three 7ASecurity audits (2022, 2024, 2025) covering clients and protocols - though these are security, not no-logs attestations. There’s no warrant canary. Jurisdictionally, the developer’s Cyprus registration is irrelevant to your traffic path; the real legal risk lies with your VPS provider’s location. No court has tested Amnezia’s no-logs claim because there’s no central operator to subpoena.
Pricing & the renewal trap
Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) pricing page - live capture 2026-09-29
There is no Amnezia subscription fee for self-hosting - the app is free. You pay only your VPS provider, typically $3-5/month. The project offers paid services (Amnezia Premium from $3.30/month, Business $8/user), but they’re optional.There is no renewal trap for self-hosted users: the app is free and the only cost is the VPS you rent, priced on your own terms. Refunds aren’t applicable - you pay your host, not Amnezia.
Features & performance
Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) apps / download page - live capture 2026-09-29
Amnezia supports OpenVPN, WireGuard, AmneziaWG (its anti-DPI WireGuard fork), XRay VLESS Reality, Shadowsocks, and IKEv2, with obfuscation built into multiple protocols. It includes a kill switch, split tunneling, and works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Android TV, and routers. There’s no multihop or dedicated IP. Servers_count is null - because you deploy your own. P2P is allowed on self-hosted setups. Streaming is not a goal; the tool is built for bypassing censorship, not geo-unblocking. We have not run performance tests.
Ownership & track record
The project was founded in 2020 at a Roskomsvoboda-backed hackathon in Russia. Key figures include Mazay Banzaev and Stanislav Shakirov (Roskomsvoboda co-founder). The current operator is EUPHORIATECH LIMITED in Cyprus, with IP in Portugal and operations in Estonia - jurisdictional fluidity that raises questions but no proven risks. Red flags include ongoing state-level attacks (DDoS, phishing, IP blocking in 2026), Apple App Store removals in Russia, and a live GitHub issue (since 2024) showing AmneziaWG detected on Russian mobile networks. Data quality is verified across operator pages, audits, and community sources.
Censorship resistance
Amnezia excels here. AmneziaWG uses dynamic headers, packet-length randomization, QUIC/DNS mimicry, and ChaCha20-protected metadata to defeat DPI. XRay VLESS Reality and OpenVPN over Cloak also resist detection. It’s used in Russia, Iran, and Myanmar, where users report it works when most tools fail. However, in full-shutdown scenarios (like Iran’s 2026 blackout), Amnezia acknowledges ground-based tools are ineffective. Self-hosting helps evade IP blacklists, but mass blocks (as in mid-2026) still cause outages - though the team responds quickly, as with AmneziaWG 3.1.
Verdict
If you’re in a censored country and need a personal, resilient way to bypass firewalls, Amnezia is one of the best options - especially if you can self-host on a $5 VPS. It’s not for anonymity (your VPS is tied to you), streaming, or torrenting at scale. The project doesn’t pay affiliate reviewers - its funding comes from donations, Patreon, and optional paid services. For non-experts, it’s a rare tool that’s both powerful and simple to deploy.
++ 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
Pricing reality check
Intro price
$5 /mo
Refund window
14 days
Notes
There is no subscription to Amnezia in self-hosted mode: the app is free and the only cost is the VPS you rent from any hosting provider, commonly $3-5/month (an HN thread on '$5 VPS' workloads lists Amnezia VPN as a typical resident, fetched 2026-11-02). The project also sells its own hosting (amnezia.host, 'recommended' on its site) and operator services: Amnezia Premium from $3.30/month per the live homepage, Business $8/user/month; TechRadar (Aug 2026) cites Premium at $28 per 6 months / $48 per year. The Premium service takes fiat and crypto via a payment partner (VPNPay/Cryptomus/Stripe per its TorrentFreak survey answers), but a self-hosted user pays nobody but the hosting company.
Check the renewal price above before any multi-year plan - true-cost calculator.
Is Amnezia VPN legit?
Legal domicile: Cyprus (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. Logging claim: 'If you use the AmneziaVPN app for a self-hosted VPN, we do not collect any data about you or your server. The data you enter is used solely to allow the app to access your server and install VPN software. All the data stays locally on your device, is not transmitted or collected.' (live FAQ on amnezia.org, fetched 2026-11-02) - evidence class: independently audited. No incidents on file in our research - absence of evidence is not proof of innocence. Facts verified - operator pages (amnezia.org home/about, hybrid-attack postmortem blog), docs.amnezia.org AmneziaWG protocol documentation, GitHub client repo and issue tracker, 7ASecurity audit blog, TorrentFreak annual privacy survey, Wired, TechRadar, Guardian, MediaNama, Cybernews, The Insider, HRW, Privacy Guides forum, HN and Reddit archives all fetched live 2026-11-02 (not fully verified) as of 2026-11-02 - read the sources below.
The money trail - what review sites earn by recommending this
affiliate status not verified yet
If we sign up for this program, every link here becomes rel="nofollow sponsored" and routes through /go/. Until then our links point straight to the provider's website with zero tracking. Ranking logic physically cannot read affiliate fields - here is the proof.
On the website
Captured by our screenshot bot from the live site (or its public archive). A capture is evidence of what the page showed at capture time - not an endorsement.
Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) homepage - live capture 2026-09-29Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) pricing page - live capture 2026-09-29Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) apps / download page - live capture 2026-09-29Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) privacy policy page - live capture 2026-09-29
Before you pay: check the renewal price, the refund window, and whether a cheaper or free path covers your use case - the honest checklist.
Is Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) legit?
Based on our checks as of 2026-11-02: Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation) scores 6.2/10 in our weighted review. We logged 5 red flags (listed above). Its logging claim is backed by an independent audit. User reports, ownership and the incident record are documented with dated sources in the meta-review below.
What do I actually get with Amnezia?
You get a free, open-source app that installs a VPN server on your own VPS using Docker. No account, no logs, no payment to Amnezia - just SSH access to your server and the app to configure it.
What is the renewal price and total cost over three years?
There is no renewal price - Amnezia charges nothing for self-hosting. Your only cost is the VPS, typically $3-5/month. The `derived_pricing` shows `three_year_cash_total` as null because you’re not paying Amnezia.
What evidence supports the no-logs claim?
In self-hosted mode, the evidence is structural: your data never touches Amnezia’s systems. The client code is GPL-3.0 and auditable; 7ASecurity audited the code for security (2022, 2024, 2025), but these are not no-logs certifications.
Does it work in censored countries like China or Iran?
It works in many censored environments - Russia, Iran, Turkmenistan - but not during full internet shutdowns. AmneziaWG and XRay VLESS Reality resist DPI, but detection occurs (e.g., Russian mobile networks), requiring updates.
Can I pay anonymously?
In self-hosted mode, you don’t pay Amnezia - only your VPS provider. Amnezia accepts BTC, XMR, USDT, and TON for donations and its Premium service, but your server bill depends on the host’s payment options.
What happens if Amnezia shuts down?
The app and protocols are open source - your self-hosted setup keeps working. You’d lose updates and new obfuscation features, but existing servers remain functional unless blocked or compromised.
What’s the honest free or cheap alternative?
For self-hosted, Amnezia is already free. Alternatives include Outline (simpler, less DPI-resistant) or plain WireGuard with your own obfuscation. For non-self-hosted, consider Mullvad or IVPN - flat-priced, audited, but less censorship-focused.
The meta-review: what the internet says about Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation)
We do not expect you to trust us. This review is a meta-review: below you see what other review sites claim - with their conflicts of interest labeled - what users report on Reddit and forums, and who actually operates Amnezia VPN (self-hosted with obfuscation). Every claim links to its source so you can verify it yourself.
What other reviewers say (2)
Every source carries a conflict label from our review-site database. "Affiliate-funded" means the site earns money if you buy what it recommends. We include critical voices deliberately.
Fetched live 2026-11-02 (HTTP 200): TechRadar (affiliate-funded per review_sites.json) covers AmneziaWG 3.0/3.1 in the context of the state attack; quotes founder Banzaev that Microsoft data shows the protocol installed over 15 million times on Windows, making collective-traffic patterns detectable; Premium priced $28/6mo, $48/yr with 14-day money-back; notes the August 4 2026 crackdown blocking 20+ services and Amnezia's recovery from the 'devastating state-sponsored cyberattack that lasted a month and a half'.
Fetched live 2026-11-02 (HTTP 200): result of the 2020 Roskomsvoboda hackathon; quotes Roskomsvoboda's Natalya Malysheva on requests from Russia, China, Iran and Turkmenistan, and Amnezia COO Stanislav Shakirov on Outline/Shadowsocks obsolescence, Cloak tests in China and Iran, and AmneziaWG limits ('it didn't work for all of them' on Chinese home providers); no registration, no logs claims; 250,000+ users in Russia and 200,000+ elsewhere per download counts.
What users say (4)
Reddit, forums, HN - paraphrased and linked, never quoted out of context. Anecdotes, not proof - but refund complaints and leak reports are the best early-warning system this market has.
Fetched live 2026-11-02 (HTTP 200): users report AmneziaWG connections established but silent on Russian mobile operator MTS; community-found workarounds (low junk-packet counts, custom S/H parameters, MTU 1376, later CPS/QUIC-signature values); a maintainer-adjacent contributor notes some providers started blocking all unrecognized traffic; issue remains open into 2026 - a live record of the obfuscation arms race.
Fetched live 2026-11-02 (HTTP 200): 2025-2026 HN voices - AmneziaVPN on a $5 VPS; 'works well with a self-hosted server' vs 'even sophisticated masking like Amnezia gets disrupted frequently'; AmneziaWG recommended wherever WireGuard is DPI-blocked; Russia teenager-level familiarity with 'Amnezia, VLESS, MTProto'; skepticism about Mullvad ignoring censorship breaking.
Fetched live 2026-11-02 (HTTP 200): full 8-comment thread - praise that it is the only open-source stack focused on Russian firewall circumvention and 'above board' on a throwaway VPS, versus complaints about the wizard UI, hidden server scripts and a server private key inside exported config JSON; debate that a private VPN hides nothing, only punches through firewalls.
Fetched live 2026-11-02 (HTTP 200): the project's own subreddit is majority Russian-language and busy in Nov 2026 - threads 'What is happening? Why so many IP bans?' and 'Possible cause of the mass VPN exodus', plus the CVE-2026-98432 Xray-vulnerability thread; users compare AmneziaWG 3 vs VLESS/REALITY setups and share SNI/domain workarounds. Note: arctic-shift body-searches on r/VPN and r/selfhosted returned HTTP 422 this session, so cross-subreddit sampling is thinner than for other dossiers.
AI fact summary - everything we know, compressed
Generated by Qwen3 on 2026-11-02 from our fact database plus the linked sources. It summarizes - it does not add facts. Check anything that matters against the linked sources.
Bottom line: Amnezia VPN (self-hosted) is a free, open-source tool that lets you deploy a personal censorship-resistant VPN on your own $3-5/month VPS. It does not sell subscriptions - your only cost is the server. Its obfuscation protocols like AmneziaWG and XRay Reality are built to evade DPI in high-censorship environments like Russia and Iran, but success is temporary: detection and blocking are ongoing.
The logging truth: In self-hosted mode, Amnezia collects no user data - the app runs locally and installs software on your server, so logs (if any) exist only on your machine. The jurisdictional trail (Cyprus, Estonia, Portugal) is irrelevant for self-hosted users, as traffic never touches Amnezia-operated infrastructure. The claim is structurally sound and verifiable via GPL-3.0 code.
Pricing reality: There is no Amnezia subscription fee for self-hosting - the app is free. You pay only your VPS provider, typically $3-5/month. The project sells optional services (Amnezia Premium from $3.30/month), but self-hosted users pay nothing to Amnezia. No renewal traps exist for this use case.
What reviewers say vs what users say: Affiliate reviewers (TechRadar, Cybernews) praise Amnezia as a censorship-busting breakthrough with strong audits and real-world impact. Users confirm it works in Russia and Iran but report detection events, IP bans, and frustration with setup complexity. The open GitHub issue since 2024 on AmneziaWG detection confirms the arms race is live - reviewers highlight resilience, users live the churn.
Who runs it: The team includes Mazay Banzaev (founder) and Stanislav Shakirov (COO, Roskomsvoboda co-founder), with roots in a 2020 Russian digital rights hackathon. The legal structure is fragmented: Cyprus-registered EUPHORIATECH LIMITED, Estonian operations, Portuguese IP. The shifting entities are noted but not proven harmful.
Sources & how this review was built
Every external source used on this page, with the date we fetched it and its evidence class [A]-[D] (A = primary/operator, B = serious press/research, C = community, D = our own measurements). Methodology: how we verify. Sources disappear or change - if a link is dead, tell us via contact.
Evidence classes on this page:[A] A: 6[B] B: 10[C] C: 4[D] D: 0(D stays empty until our own test phase)
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