A VPN that worked yesterday stopped working: what that means

Yesterday everything opened; today the icon is lit and nothing loads. Our own journal says «stopped working» usually means «did not work on one attempt».

First action: try again

The advice sounds insulting — «have you tried turning it off and on again?». It is here not out of politeness but because we counted it. The app records every connection attempt: whether it succeeded and over which step. Here is 21 August to 22 September 2026. We count only attempts that a person started themselves; when the app brings the tunnel back up on its own after a drop (background attempts), that is a different story: those speak about how the app works in the background, not about the road to the server, and we look at them separately.

It reads like this: almost two thirds of the failures went away on the second attempt — with not a single setting changed, and three times out of four the rescue was not some clever workaround but the very same direct route that had just failed.

That happens because «did not connect» and «was blocked» are different things. Between your phone and the server there is a cell tower, the operator's network and equipment that inspects traffic; any link can drop one particular flow and happily pass the next one. A weak signal in a lift looks exactly like a filter on screen.

What changed in the journal over two weeks

The other half of the answer: in early September the direct route started failing noticeably more often for us — and it shows across everyone's journal, not on one phone. To keep the comparison honest we took only app builds of one generation (0.7.x) and only attempts that a person started themselves — otherwise the shift would be explained by people simply updating the app rather than by the network changing.

Failures, as you can see, are in single digits: both before and after 3 September an attempt a person started went through in 97–99 % of cases. What changed is something else — the direct route started failing noticeably more often, and the backup channel picked up the connection. The comparison is rough: in late August the journal had only six people. But across all builds the picture is the same and it holds: the direct route failed on 1.0 % of attempts over 21 August — 2 September and on 7–9 % in every window since (16–22 September: 96 of 1,078). On its own this proves nothing: we were shipping our own changes on those very days, and blaming any shift on the operators would be convenient and dishonest. A second, independent view is needed — and there is one: over the same days news feeds report mass VPN outages and mobile-internet disruptions across dozens of regions. Those are other people's claims; we have not verified them, and only our own journal speaks in numbers here. But when two independent pictures agree on the same days, the coincidence stops being one.

We looked at the same shift from another side in «Paid VPN not working» — on why payment does not buy passage.

Five reasons yesterday worked and today does not

In descending order of how often we see them.

1. The route closed and there is no spare. Filters get updated, and the connection method that passed yesterday stops being let through today. Then everything depends on whether the app has a second method and moves to it by itself — how the steps work is a separate piece. The sign: it does not come up anywhere, and for a long time.
2. The phone switched the app off. A tunnel is held by a process, and a process can be put to sleep to save battery; the VPN icon stays on screen, so the person is sure the connection is there. The sign: it worked for hours, then died on its own, usually overnight — the numbers and the settings.
3. The network changed. You left home, switched from Wi-Fi to mobile data, changed a tariff or a SIM — and landed in a network with different rules. The sign: it works on one network and not on another. See mobile operators and home internet.
4. The paid access ran out. The fastest check of all — thirty seconds in your account. The sign: it fails for every country, and immediately, without long attempts.
5. The app has not been updated for a long time. Traffic-masking methods change along with the filters, and an old build often knows exactly the method that stopped being let through. The sign: it works for people you know on the same service, and not for you.

A one-minute checklist

From the most common to the rarest; after each step, simply try to connect.

1. A second attempt. Ten seconds, and by the table above it closes two thirds of the cases.
2. Update the app. Free, and it often fixes everything: a new build knows new connection methods.
3. Switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data. This is not a random guess but a way to split the causes: if it comes up on one network and not the other, the network is at fault, not the phone and not the service.
4. Change the country. Routes to different countries differ: what does not pass to one often passes to another.
5. Let the app move to the backup channel. If the direct route does not pass on your operator, there is nothing to turn on in our app: it moves to the backup path on its own.
6. Lift the background restriction on the app and turn on auto-connect — then, once the phone puts the tunnel to sleep, something will bring it back.

If there is still no connection after all that, it is worth running four checks in a minute to find out which step actually breaks: without that, a conversation with any support team turns into guesswork.

«Gone from the list», «how to restart it», «I deleted it»

Three neighbouring questions asked in the same words and solved differently.

• How to restart a VPN. Android has no separate «restart» button: turn the switch off in the app, wait a couple of seconds and turn it on again. If that does not help, close the app from the recents list and open it afresh. Restarting the phone itself is rarely needed and almost never the cause.
• It disappeared from the VPN list in phone settings. The system lists only apps that hold the VPN permission. The permission goes away when the app is removed, when a «cleaner» sweeps it and sometimes on a system update — just turn the tunnel on in the app again and confirm the system prompt.
• I deleted the app by accident — is my access gone? No. Access lives in the account on the server, not in the phone: install the app again and sign in with the same account. Keys are re-issued automatically, and there is nothing to pay twice.

What these numbers do not say

The most important part, and we prefer to say it ourselves.

• We count only attempts that a person started themselves. When the app brings the tunnel back up on its own after a drop (background attempts), that is a different story: those speak about how the app works in the background, not about the road to the server, and we look at them separately. The team's service accounts are excluded too. The first version of this article counted both kinds together, which is why the numbers here differ from the earlier ones.
• We are a small service and these are small numbers. 58 failed attempts over the month came from 20 people, and 12 of them from one person: without that person it would be 46 among 19. A sample like that can explain a mechanism; it cannot measure a country.
• «The next attempt» counts attempts, not people. Someone who gave up and deleted the app makes no next attempt — and never enters the denominator at all. This measure is blind to exactly the most disappointed, which means it errs in our favour. The only thing softening it: 57 of the 58 failures did have a next attempt — only one was left with no second try at all.
• «The second attempt helped» ≠ «nothing was wrong». The journal records which step worked, not why the previous one did not. The same «failed» line can hide a lift, a cell tower or a filter.
• The windows are of different lengths. Thirteen days against six, and they are not about the same people: the first window has only six people, the second 24, because new people arrived in those days. So the «before and after 3 September» comparison is rough.
• We only see people who already have our app. Our journal knows nothing about what happens to people on other services — that is what the second support in this article, the news feed, is for, and it is somebody else's.
• This is a 23 September snapshot. Connection reports sometimes reach us late, so the last days of the window may still fill in a little. The neighbouring articles carry the same numbers.

Short answers

Why did a VPN that worked yesterday stop working? Most often because one particular attempt did not go through: 37 failures out of 58 in our journal ended in success on the very next attempt. If that does not help either, the causes by frequency are a closed route, the phone sleeping the app, a changed network, expired access, a stale build.

The VPN suddenly stopped working — what should I do? In order: a second attempt, update the app, switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data, change the country. The full list is above and takes about a minute.

It stopped working on Android — is the phone to blame? Sometimes yes: the phone puts the app to sleep to save battery and the tunnel quietly dies while the icon stays lit. The sign is «it worked for hours, then died by itself»: that case is covered separately.

Every VPN stopped, not just mine. Then the app is not the cause and the analysis is a different one — why no VPN connects.

Will this last long? The honest answer: we do not know, and nobody does. By our journal individual failures pass in minutes, while the direct route has failed noticeably more often since the start of September than in August, and that still holds. We cannot promise that tomorrow will be like before — that is not ours to promise.

Does yours work? For 16–22 September — 1,037 successful connections out of 1,078 attempts that people started themselves (96.2 %). The direct route failed on 96 of them (8.9 %), and the backup channel picked up most of those. That is an honest answer, not «everything is fine here».