Which VPN works on MegaFon and MTS: five checks, not a list

“Which VPN works on MegaFon and MTS” — the reader wants a name, and there is no honest one. Here is what to check on your own SIM instead, before you pay.

Why there is no ready-made list

In July 2026 in Moscow we ran one phone and one profile through three networks in a row. Exactly one thing changed each time — the network. The result is in the table.

The table implies something awkward for any ranking: the answer to “which VPN works” depends not only on the VPN but on which network is on your SIM. An app that “works for a friend on Beeline” may not come up at all on your MegaFon — neither its fault nor yours, just a difference between networks. Other people’s “works / doesn’t work” lists add up votes from different networks, cities and weeks; they say nothing about your SIM card.

We do not compile lists of other people’s apps: we did not measure them, and we describe our own only by what we measured. What we can offer is a check that fits any service, ours included.

Five checks before you pay

1. Test on mobile data, not on Wi-Fi. Turn Wi-Fi off and connect over the SIM. In our tests the same connection came up on Wi-Fi where it did not on cellular. Order of magnitude from our log for 30 days (23 August – 22 September 2026): 95.7 % of attempts succeed on mobile data (782 of 817), 98.0 % on Wi-Fi (1096 of 1118). Failures are twice as frequent on cellular, but a connection still succeeds 96 times in 100 — if it fails every time for you, that is a signal, not the norm.
2. Do not take the “connected” icon for an answer. On MTS the icon lit up while traffic stalled after 2.5 seconds. Connect, open a page, start a video, download something heavy, keep it going for a few minutes and run the four checks in a minute. If you only checked the icon, you checked nothing.
3. Do not treat “change the port” or “use another server” as a cure. On MegaFon port 443 without mimicry did not help, while mimicry on an ordinary high port worked. The server address was not the cause either: an ordinary request to that address failed while a tunnel with mimicry pulled over a hundred megabits. A service that answers “it doesn’t work” with only this is asking you to guess.
4. Ask who picks the traffic shape — you or the app. If the app has a single profile and, on failure, tells you to “try another”, you will be tuning by hand — and again on every change of network: you leave home and the network is already different. You want an app that walks through the paths itself and shows which one you are on — how ours works.
5. Learn the terms before the first payment. Is there a trial without a card (where the catch is in trial periods), how many devices the plan covers (VPN on several devices), how to cancel (a separate guide) and what you are actually buying — a subscription or a key file. Paying blind for something you cannot test on your own SIM repeats someone else’s experience.

What does not prove that a VPN works on your operator

• A “works” review with no network name and no date. MegaFon, MTS and Beeline behaved differently in our measurement, and networks and their settings change over time.
• A single speed test. Two adjacent runs on one tunnel gave us 2.91 and 41.98 Mbps on the same day — why a speed test shows different numbers. One measurement on a cellular network proves nothing.
• The “connected” icon — see check 2.
• A vote-based ranking. The voters come from different networks, many services have few votes, and you cannot verify who is voting.

How Mayak passes these five checks

We build Mayak, so we will say plainly what is confirmed and what is not.

• First-packet mimicry is on by default — the thing that changed the outcome on MegaFon and MTS in our measurement. You do not tune a port or a server by hand.
• The app walks the paths. It notices a drop in the second second and moves to the next path; the screen honestly marks which path you are on. In detail — three paths to the server.
• A trial without a card: 3 days after you confirm your email. Enough to run checks 1 and 2 on your own SIM in your own area.
• Do not put one key on two phones: in our measurement that breaks the link on both, and each device gets its own key — the details.

What we do not know

• Our measurements are Moscow, late July 2026, three networks. In another city or another month the picture may differ.
• We did not measure speed on MTS in that run, so there are no numbers for it and we will not invent any.
• We did not measure Tele2 at all, and Yota runs on the MegaFon network, though a virtual operator may have its own gateway — see the Yota write-up.
• A separate matter is mobile-internet restrictions based on address lists; we cover it in a separate piece and do not promise that the app overcomes any of it.

Short answers

Which VPN works best on MegaFon? One name cannot honestly be given: on MegaFon what decided the outcome for us was not the brand but the shape of the first packet — 20 bytes with a recognisable signature got through where 1200 random bytes did not. So test a service on your own SIM against the five points above; the full measurement is in MegaFon.

Which VPN works on MTS? The same, with a different symptom: on MTS the connection comes up and the stream dies after 2–3 seconds. If a service shows “connected” but pages do not open, that is not a broken phone; the write-up is MTS.

Is a free one good enough? You can test it on your SIM the same way, and the same five questions apply. We have a separate piece on free ones — how to choose and how to check.

It works on Wi-Fi but not on mobile data — what does that mean? That the problem is on the cellular path, not in the phone or the account. The general write-up — why this happens. If it fails everywhere, the cause is different — the list of causes.

What about Beeline and Tele2? Beeline did not interfere with the connection in our measurement — write-up. We did not measure Tele2; more in Tele2.

Can I find out right now which VPN works? No, and a list “for today” goes stale within days — why is covered in “Which VPN works in Russia”.