I built the first live VPN catalog with per-ISP voting for Russia. Here's what 20 days of data look like
Search "which VPN works in Russia" on Yandex and you get hundreds of "top 10 working VPNs in 2026" pieces, all stale by the time they're written. VPN in Russia doesn't break "in general", it breaks per ISP, per day. Works on Beeline this morning, dead on MTS by afternoon, fine on MegaFon by evening.
Russian-language internet doesn't have a live catalog where status is computed from real per-operator votes - just static listicles and 4PDA threads from 2024. So I built one and used the launch as a test: do people actually need this, or are static reviews enough?
Opened April 24. Today is day 20. Sharing what came out.
The site. Per-ISP voting on each VPN. Land on the home page, see green/yellow/red dots next to each service, know who has a chance today on your operator. Tap a card, see the breakdown: "Beeline 87%, MTS 42%, MegaFon 64%", plus a separate status for ТСПУ whitelist-bypass mode. One click, no signup. Anti-abuse stack underneath but invisible. There's also a verified-owner dashboard with public-reply-only access: owners can claim cards and respond, but cannot delete reviews or move the rating.
The numbers, day 20:
- 140 VPN services
- 1,168 unique voters
- 5,174 votes (3,833 main + 1,341 whitelist-bypass)
- 521 reviews, avg 3.70/5
- 7 VPN owners who verified themselves voluntarily
- 18 public owner replies under user reviews
- 316 unique users on the Telegram funnel bot (6 days)
Zero ad spend. Organic search + direct links from chats. 1,168 voters in 20 days with no marketing answers the original question. Format is wanted.
The surprising finding. Expected VPN providers to run from a catalog with no delete button. Reality: seven came on their own through the verification page, read the rules, agreed. 18 public replies already up. One owner literally writes "yes, that user contacted me directly, sorting it out" in threads. Where the typical Russian VPN's Telegram channel has an SMM person burying criticism, these chose differently. My read: small and mid-size brands can't afford ignore-and-delete, public honest reply outperforms astroturfing for them.
What hasn't worked. Public Q&A is the obvious one. After 3 weeks: zero published Q→A pairs. Users ask, owners answer privately. Need to make the public reply more convenient than the DM. Search traffic is also minimal still: new domain, indexing is a months-long game.
Take-aways.
- The pain is real. 5,174 votes / 20 days / zero marketing means the task actually bothers people. Main pre-launch fear was "nobody cares". Did not materialize.
- "Transparent reviews, no delete button" works in favor of small honest brands, not just against bad ones. Counter-intuitive but factual.
- Simple UI beats clever UI. Single most useful element on the site is a colored status dot next to the name. Not percentages, not graphs. When I sketched it I worried it was too crude. It wasn't.
Catalog: https://vpnstatus.site (Russian-language for now, but the per-ISP status table and protocol filters work universally).
Two questions I'm thinking about:
- Has anyone built similar community-driven trackers for other DPI-heavy regions (China, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey)? The format should generalize.
- Would the same approach land in EU/US? Pain is different there: less "what works today" and more "who actually logs me, who to trust on jurisdiction, are the no-log audits real". Format adapts: per-ISP status becomes community ratings on privacy claims, speed by region, payment anonymity, audit credibility. The independent-from-affiliates gap in EU/US is arguably bigger than in RF. Seriously thinking about whether to take this there next. Open to thoughts.