In short. Over 30 days our log shows 92.9 % of connection attempts coming up at home (260 of 280) and 79.3 % on mobile data (203 of 256; allowing for older builds — between 77 and 79 %). The gap is not about us doing worse on mobile: it is about places with no cellular signal at all — a lift, the metro, a basement. A home has no such places. What share of the failures fell on them the log cannot tell, and the numbers are small — 20 failures over Wi-Fi and 53 on cellular. Not one home in the log failed every time: all 20 Wi-Fi failures belong to four people, and each of them also connected successfully over the same Wi-Fi in the same month. There is nothing to set up on the router; when the direct path does not come up, the app moves to the backup channel on port 443 by itself — at home that is how 14.2 % of connections come up.
These are the words people bring us from search: “not working on home internet”, “won't connect over Wi-Fi but works on mobile data”, “must be the router”, “the ISP is doing something”. Below is an answer built not on guesses but on our own connection log: 536 attempts over 30 days for which the app recorded what network it was on. The snapshot was taken on 7 September 2026.
We build Mayak. The app walks through four paths by itself until the connection stands up, and shows which one you are on — at home that is what decides it. 7 days free once you confirm your email, no card required. The trial is free and needs no card; without an email it is 3 days.
🍎 On iPhone Mayak works through the third-party Happ app — with the subscription link from your account. Happ is not in the Russian App Store; there incy (publisher LLC ITDEV) works instead, checked on 22 September 2026.
Not working on home internet — how common is it?
Less common than on mobile. In the 30 days before 7 September 2026 our log holds 280 connection attempts from a Wi-Fi network and 256 from a cellular one (the app has not recorded the network type from day one: another 177 attempts from older builds are left out of the count). Over Wi-Fi 92.9 % of attempts succeeded (260 of 280), on mobile data — 79.3 % (203 of 256).
The second number comes with a caveat. We count as an attempt both a tap on “Connect” and the walk through the paths the app starts by itself when the tunnel has gone silent: in both cases a person is waiting for the connection. When a working tunnel moves by itself to a better road (say, from IPv4 to IPv6), that is not an attempt, and we left such rows out of the count — 195 of them, all successful and almost all on cellular. But builds before 28 August marked such moves the same way as the walk through the paths, and they can no longer be told apart: there are 24 such rows in the window, all on cellular and all successful. Without them the mobile share is 77.2 %, with them 79.3 %; the honest answer is “between 77 and 79 %”.
What matters is not the percentages but how the failures are spread. All 20 Wi-Fi failures belong to four people, 13 of them to one person. And each of those four also connected successfully over Wi-Fi in the same month: the unluckiest one had 57 successes against 13 failures. In other words, there is no home in the log where Mayak never came up. In five cases out of 20 the next attempt over the same Wi-Fi succeeded within an hour. On cellular the 53 failures likewise fall on six people, 25 of them on one person. Both 20 and 53 are small numbers: nothing more precise than “noticeably rarer at home” can be said on them.
Where the gap comes from. Not from us doing worse on mobile data: a cellular network has places where it physically does not exist — a lift, the metro, a basement, a tunnel, — while at home nobody leaves the coverage. A live case from the log on 7 September: the app walked through all three paths, none answered, and the person was riding a lift at the time; four minutes later the connection came back by itself, without a single tap. The honest limitation: the log cannot tell “in a lift” from “something wrong at the carrier” — in both cases the phone reports to the app that the network is there, the app tries the paths, and a failure lands in the log. What share of the 53 cellular failures fell on lifts and the metro we do not know, and we name no share.
Connection time at home and on mobile is almost the same: the median handshake over Wi-Fi is 252 ms, on a cellular network 253 ms. The difference is in the tail: nine handshakes out of ten fit into 1.8 s at home and 2.6 s on mobile.
⚠️ These numbers come from our own users and our own app over a single month: 19 people with a known network type, eight of whom used both Wi-Fi and mobile data; service accounts (test builds and store review) are excluded from the count, team devices on regular accounts are not subtracted separately. It is an order of magnitude, not national statistics. We do not count by ISP: the log records only whether it was Wi-Fi or cellular, not whose network.
Is it the router?
Almost never, and here is why. To a router our tunnel is a single outgoing UDP stream to a single address, exactly like a video call or an online game. The app connects outward, nothing knocks inward, so there is no need to forward ports, enable “VPN passthrough” or change any setting: Mayak has no setting that is made on a router. (Installing Mayak on the router itself, on the other hand, is not possible — MikroTik and Keenetic do not understand our config, details in the help centre. This article is about a phone connected through a router.)
The log confirms it: 85.4 % of successful home connections (222 of 260) went through on the very first rung — directly, and the full cycle to “connected” took a median of 1.0 s. A home network also has fewer reasons to vanish than a cellular one: nobody leaves the coverage of their own router. Another 14.2 % (37) came up through the backup channel on port 443, and 0.4 % (1) through a nearby entry point. What those rungs are — in the breakdown of the three paths.
The one thing that truly sets a home network apart from a cellular one is IPv6. On mobile data 70.0 % of successful connections (142 of 203) went over IPv6; at home — not one of 260. That is not a broken router: home networks in Russia hardly ever hand out IPv6 (how much of it the country has and why it matters), and the app goes straight over IPv4. It makes no difference to the outcome — the median handshake at home and on mobile is the same, and the link, by Android's own estimate, is twice as wide at home: a median of 64 Mbps down against 28 Mbps on cellular (that is the system's estimate, not our speed measurement).
What a router can do is leave the phone with no internet at all. If the router itself has no link to the ISP, or the Wi-Fi asks you to sign in through a page, the app simply has nowhere to connect. That is a separate picture, covered in “connected, but no internet”.
Is the ISP blocking VPN?
What an ISP does inside its network we do not know and cannot know: our log only sees whether a path came up or not. So we answer with what is measured. In 14.2 % of successful home connections (37 of 260) the direct path did not come up, and the app moved by itself to the backup channel on port 443 — the same port every website opens on. On a cellular network that happened in 9.9 % of cases (20 of 203). At home it happens slightly more often, but 37 and 20 are numbers on which a difference cannot be claimed.
Why exactly it failed — the ISP's equipment, the router or simply a bad minute — the log does not say, and we will not guess. What matters to a person is different: in all 37 cases the connection stood up in the end, and nothing had to be done for it. The price is time: the app reaches the backup channel in a median of 2.6 s instead of 1.0 s directly, and in the worst case out of ten — 12 s. Close the app after five seconds “because it does not work”, and you may simply not wait long enough for the backup channel.
On “it does not work with ISP such-and-such”: we do not count by ISP and keep no lists. The log records only the network type, and any claim that “this ISP interferes” would be an opinion, not a measurement.
Works on Wi-Fi but not on mobile — and the other way round
The most common picture is “everything works at home over Wi-Fi, but not on mobile data”. That one is about the cellular network, not the home: there the shape of the first packet decides the outcome, and it is covered by measurements in a separate article on mobile networks, and there are also places with no signal at all — a lift, the metro, a basement. At home neither trouble exists: 222 connections of 260 went through on the very first rung.
The reverse picture — “works on mobile data, but not at home over Wi-Fi” — is rarer, and it has three explanations we can name honestly:
- Wi-Fi with a sign-in page, or a router with no internet. The app has nowhere to connect. The check — does any website open in the browser on this same Wi-Fi; the breakdown — Wi-Fi with a sign-in screen.
- The direct path failed and you did not wait for the backup one. Those same 14.2 %: the backup channel comes up in a median of 2.6 s, and in the worst case out of ten — 12 s. Give the app half a minute.
- It is the phone, not the network. If another phone connects on the same Wi-Fi, the network is not to blame. Most often it is the VPN slot in Android taken by another app, or a phone that has put the app to sleep.
Works on the computer but not on the phone — what that means
If the computer and the phone are on the same home network and only one of them works, cross the network off: the router and the ISP are the same for both. The cause is in the device. On the phone it is usually the VPN slot (Android gives it to one app) or battery saving, both covered by the links above. We have no app of our own for computers yet — what already works on Windows and Mac today; and we cannot compare the phone with the computer by our log, because only the app keeps that log.
What to do when it will not connect at home
- Check that this Wi-Fi has internet at all. Open any website in the browser. If it does not open, the question is for the router and the ISP, not for the app.
- Switch to mobile data for a minute. Came up — it is the home network, see the next step. Came up nowhere — it is the phone: three causes from our log.
- Let the app reach the backup channel. The direct path takes 1.0 s, the backup one 2.6 s in the median and up to 12 s in the worst case out of ten. Half a minute is a fair term.
- “Settings” → “Check connection”. Shows which of the paths fails for you specifically, instead of guessing.
- Make sure the connection is real. The “connected” icon proves nothing by itself — four checks in a minute.
Rebooting the router is not on this list on purpose: we have not met a home in the log where it never connected, and a minute on mobile data answers the question “network or phone” faster than any reboot.
Mayak does this by itself. The app walks through the paths until the connection stands up and honestly shows which one you are on — at home that is what decides it. We never ask for payment details. A confirmed email opens the access — 7 free days. An email is optional: without one the trial is 3 days.
🍎 On iPhone Mayak works through the third-party Happ app — with the subscription link from your account. Happ is not in the Russian App Store; there incy (publisher LLC ITDEV) works instead, checked on 22 September 2026.
Short answers
Is home internet worse than mobile data for VPN? By our log it is the other way round: 92.9 % of attempts succeed over Wi-Fi against 79.3 % on mobile data. The gap is about places with no cellular signal at all (a lift, the metro, a basement), not about us doing worse on mobile; what share of the failures fell on them the log cannot tell.
VPN not working on home internet — where to start? With a minute on mobile data. Came up — it is the home network, and the first thing to do is give the app half a minute for the backup channel. Came up nowhere — it is the phone, and the causes are covered separately.
Is the ISP blocking VPN at home? What an ISP does, we do not know. What we know is our own side: in 14.2 % of home connections the direct path failed, the app moved to port 443, and in every one of those cases the connection stood up with no action from the person.
Do I need to set anything up on the router? No. The tunnel is an outgoing UDP stream, like a video call; no ports to forward, no settings to change. 85.4 % of home connections went through on the very first rung, directly.
Does Wi-Fi take longer to connect than mobile data? No, the same: the median handshake at home is 252 ms, on cellular 253 ms. Only the route through the backup channel takes longer — 2.6 s in the median, and at home roughly one connection in seven needs it.
Connected over Wi-Fi, but there is no internet. That is a different trouble with its own five causes — the breakdown with a one-minute checklist.
Do your numbers hold everywhere? No. This is our log for the 30 days before 7 September 2026, 19 people with a known network type; service accounts are excluded, team devices on regular accounts are not subtracted separately. In another month and with other people the picture may differ — which is why we say what we measured and when.
The short conclusion: 92.9 % of attempts come up at home and 79.3 % on mobile data (allowing for older builds — between 77 and 79 %), and the gap is about places with no cellular signal at all: a lift, the metro, a basement; a home has no such places. What share of the failures fell on them the log cannot tell, and with 20 and 53 failures that is an order of magnitude, not an exact difference. There is nothing to set up on the router. The one thing where home loses: the direct path fails there slightly more often (14.2 % against 9.9 %), and then the app moves to port 443 by itself — give it half a minute for that.