Alternatives to Lantern
An open-source censorship-circumvention app that gives access to blocked websites and apps. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Lantern
An open-source censorship-circumvention app that gives access to blocked websites and apps.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Lantern.
Psiphon
A censorship-circumvention app that combines several blocking-resilient transports to reach sites blocked in your country.
Psiphon combines several blocking-resilient transports and is free to use, but its free tier shows ads at lower speeds and no macOS or Linux app is listed.
VPN Gate
A free academic VPN network of volunteer-run public relay servers from the University of Tsukuba.
VPN Gate is a free network of volunteer-run relays usable with standard OpenVPN and L2TP clients, but privacy depends on each operator and it keeps connection logs.
Outline VPN
Self-run VPN server built on Shadowsocks, made for censored networks.
Outline VPN uses Shadowsocks on a server you pay for and run yourself, so traffic no longer relies on a provider's infrastructure.
AmneziaVPN
Sets up your own VPN server on a machine you rent, then connects to it, with obfuscated protocols for networks that block ordinary VPNs.
AmneziaVPN installs obfuscated protocols like Cloak, Shadowsocks and AmneziaWG on a server you rent, which means paying for and trusting your own server.
Astrill VPN
A commercial VPN service with a proprietary StealthVPN protocol for restrictive networks.
Astrill VPN is a paid, closed-source service with a proprietary StealthVPN protocol for restrictive networks, plus port forwarding and multi-hop options.
VPN.ac
A commercial VPN service with WireGuard, OpenVPN and obfuscated protocols and servers in many countries.
VPN.ac is a paid proprietary service offering WireGuard, OpenVPN and obfuscated protocols, with most of its locations in Europe and North America.
Shadowsocks
A fast encrypted tunnel proxy for getting past firewalls, with implementations for most platforms.
Shadowsocks is a lightweight self-run encrypted proxy for getting past firewalls, but it is a proxy rather than a full VPN and needs your own server.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Xray
An open-source proxy core from Project X with the XTLS and REALITY protocols for circumventing censorship.
Hysteria
An open-source proxy built on QUIC, designed for speed and resistance to censorship.
NaiveProxy
A censorship-resistant proxy that uses Chromium's network stack to look like normal HTTPS traffic.
v2rayNG
An Android client for V2Ray and Xray proxy servers, using the Xray or v2fly core.
Hiddify
Multi-platform proxy client for WireGuard, Xray and sing-box servers.
v2rayN
A desktop GUI client for Windows, Linux and macOS that runs Xray, sing-box and other proxy cores.
