VPN for Android: which one to choose and why free ones stop working

Picking an app for a phone almost always starts the same way: you install the first one you find, it works for a week, then it stops — and you install another. Below is why that happens with free services, which signs tell you about a service before you install it, and which settings of Android itself break any secure connection, whoever made the app.

Which VPN for Android is better: six signs before you install

We do not write rankings and we do not name other apps — we do not measure other services and will not pretend that we do. What we can name is the signs that tell a working service from one you will delete in a week. All six can be checked before you part with any money.

• Whether there are spare paths, and whether you can see which one you are on. A service with a single path goes silent the moment that path stops arriving. The sign is not in the advertising but on the screen: the app should say plainly which path you are on right now, and move to the next one by itself, without asking you.
• How it can be paid for from Russia. That is checked before buying, with one look at the payment page. If there is nothing to pay with, the subscription will break — if not today, then at the first renewal; ours is described separately.
• Who answers when something breaks. A service should have an address people write to, and answers should come back from it. Best checked before paying: a letter with a question costs nothing.
• Where the app is installed from. The store or the service’s own site — and nowhere else; a link from a chat will not do, even when the name on it is right. Why exactly, and what is known about it not from us, is in the neighbouring article.
• What the app asks of the phone. The list of permissions is visible in the store card before you install. Access to contacts, messages or location is of no use to a secure connection at all — and if it is requested, that is a question that needs an answer.
• What it promises. “Works always”, “no speed loss”, “opens anything” — these are promises nobody can keep, and what they say most reliably is that whoever makes them measured nothing. We do not dress up our own numbers either: here is what an honest speed measurement looks like, and what it does not say.

The point-by-point comparison of paid against free — what the service lives on, what money buys and what it does not — lives in its own article, and we do not repeat it here.

Why free VPNs stop working — and what a paid one changes

“It worked yesterday and not today”, “not one free app connects”, “they all stopped at once” — this is one and the same case, and it has a technical cause rather than an evil intent.

A free service usually has one path. One way of wrapping the traffic, one port, one server address. As long as the network between the phone and that address lets such connections through, everything works. Once it stops, the app goes silent entirely — and it goes silent for every user at once, because the path is shared. Hence the feeling that it “broke for everyone on the same day”: that is exactly what happened.

A spare path costs money, and that is not a figure of speech. A second address, an entry point inside the country, a channel of a different kind — each is more servers, more traffic and more work keeping them alive, every month. A service that takes no money keeps none of that: spare paths simply do not fit its economics. So free things fall away not because they are badly written, but because there is nobody and nothing to fix them with.

The other half of the answer is how free pays for itself. It still costs money, you are simply not the one paying: there are four ways, and we have taken each of them apart. That is the only reason we suggest thinking about it at all — not “but we are faster”.

What a paid service changes. Exactly one thing: it has the means to keep spare paths and people to fix them. It buys neither a guarantee nor speed beyond your own network — what money does not buy is listed honestly. And there is no free-forever plan here: we live on subscriptions, not on advertising and not on selling data, and pretending that “a free option also exists” would be untrue. What exists is a trial — so you can check on your own network instead of taking our word.

Why ours does not fall away: four attempts instead of one

Our answer to “a single path” is simple: there are several, and the phone goes through them by itself without asking you. Four attempts, one after another: straight to the server of the chosen country over a new-style address, straight over the ordinary address, through an entry point inside Russia (from there the traffic goes on to the same server of the same country, and the encryption stays end-to-end) and, if all three are silent, a fallback channel that looks like an ordinary secure web connection. The screen always shows which path you are on; how it works inside and how the app decides a path is alive is a separate article.

Which step people actually connect on is our journal, not our advertising. In the seven days to 20 September 2026, 1171 connections came up:

Read that this way: the first pair of attempts is enough for almost everyone, and the spare paths are needed by one person in ten — but without them that one person would see exactly what people see at a service with a single path. The ladder exists for that tenth.

And what these numbers do not say. In the same seven days the journal holds another 294 records where no step worked at all. We do not pass them off as “our failure rate”: the journal records the outcome, not the cause, and those 294 include a phone in the metro with no signal, mobile data switched off, and our own mistakes — the journal cannot tell them apart. Such records reach us later, once there is a connection again: the queue for them exists precisely because a report has nothing to travel on when everything failed.

Where to download a VPN for Android: the store or the service’s site

The rule is one line long: the store or the service’s own site. Everything else — app collections, links from a chat, “a fresh build without ads” — is someone else’s file with the right name on it, and you have nothing to check it with.

We have two sources, and they differ not in the app but in how updates arrive.

• Google Play. An ordinary install; new versions are brought by the store. That build carries no permission to install applications — the store’s rules forbid an app updating itself, and we took that permission out of it.
• The file on our site — the address is short enough to type by hand: mayaknetworks.com/dl/app; it is the same file that sits in the “Download” block on the home page. The path for phones without Google services, and the spare one for when the store is out of reach. Here the app can update itself, and before installing it compares the file’s signature with ours — a substituted file will not go over it.

Downloading and installing on Android — three steps. The order is the same on a phone and on a tablet.

1. Open a browser on the phone and type mayaknetworks.com/dl/app into the address bar — the Mayak file will download.
2. Open the downloaded file. Android will ask whether apps from this source may be installed: allow it and press “Install”.
3. Open Mayak, create an account right in the app and press “Connect”. What it asks for and what it does not is further down this page.

From Google Play it installs with the ordinary “Install” button — the file steps are not needed then.

Honestly about the unpleasant part: the two builds do not install over each other. The file from the site is signed with our key, the Play build is signed by the store itself — for Android those are different signatures under one name, and the install is refused. Moving from one source to the other is possible, but only through an uninstall: and an uninstall wipes the sign-in, so you will have to sign in again (email or the nine-digit account number and the password — the paid term lives on the account and is not lost). What the phone says at each of the five install refusals — we triggered them for real and wrote them down.

Four Android settings that break any VPN

These four live in the phone itself and affect every app, not just ours. If “nothing works”, they are where to start — otherwise you will keep changing services while the cause stays put.

• Battery saving. When the screen goes dark, Android puts apps to sleep and may unload the one holding the connection — in a lift, in the metro or simply in your pocket. The protection falls away at that moment by itself. Our app can notice this and take you to the right screen; if the button did not open it, the path in the phone is this: “Settings” → “Apps” → the app → “Battery”, and lift the background restriction there. Why this is the commonest cause of “it disconnects by itself” — with numbers.
• The always-on connection and the block on connections without it. This is a system mode of Android: the phone itself holds the secure connection and brings it up after sleep and after a reboot, while the second switch next to it lets no traffic out while there is no connection. It is turned on in the phone settings, in the network and internet section; our app has a button that opens that system screen for you. Step by step — in the help centre.
• Android gives such a connection a single slot. While it is taken by an app you installed half a year ago and forgot to delete, a new one will never come up — not “sometimes”, but never. This is the commonest cause of “the second app does not work either”: taken apart separately.
• Private DNS in the phone settings. With it on, the phone may ask for addresses somewhere other than where the app expects. Honestly: we have not checked this case on a phone — if something behaves oddly, try turning it off and connecting again.

⚠️ We deliberately give no exact paths for the Xiaomi, Samsung, Huawei and other shells: they rename these items and put them elsewhere, and inventing a path we have not seen is not allowed. Look for the meaning of the words, not for our line.

How to install Mayak on a phone

The order is short, and it has neither manual settings nor files to move around.

1. Install the app from Google Play or as a file from the home page — your choice, it is the same app.
2. Create an account right in the app. The key for this phone the app makes for itself, and the secret half of it never leaves the phone — there is nothing to buy, forward or store separately.
3. Press “Connect”. From there the app goes through its four attempts by itself and writes on the screen which path worked.

What it will ask for. The Android consent to create a secure connection — a system dialog that appears once. Permission to show notifications — so you can see the state of the connection in the shade. And an email — it opens the trial.

What it will not ask for. Payment details for the trial — none at all. And access to contacts, messages, location or your files: there are no such permissions in the app whatsoever, so there is nothing to grant or refuse. There is one camera permission — it serves the single screen where you can point the phone at a code instead of typing eight characters by hand; if you would rather type, that way is always there.

How many devices. One subscription serves several devices at once, and how many depends on the plan; above the limit the app says plainly that the maximum number of devices is in use, and spare ones are removed under “Settings” → “My devices” or in the cabinet. What exactly is sold and how a device is counted — in the neighbouring article; a TV with Android TV is set up by its own instructions.

What we checked

• Four attempts — from the app’s own code, not from a description. On 20 September 2026 we read the file of our app where the steps are listed: there are exactly four, in the order described above.
• The step numbers — from our own connection journal. For the seven days to 20 September 2026: 1171 connections that came up, of which 1050 on the first two attempts, 95 on the fallback channel, 26 through Russia, and separately 294 records where no step worked. What that last line means we checked against the code that writes it: it is “none delivered”, not “the app did not report”.
• How the two builds differ. Read on 20 September 2026 in the build’s own settings: the one that goes to Google Play has the permission to install applications removed (the store’s rules forbid self-updates), and the one on the site keeps it, because otherwise there is nothing to deliver a new version with.
• The full list of permissions. Read inside the app itself on 20 September 2026: internet, network state, start after a reboot, notifications, camera (the screen with the code) and installing applications (only in the build from the site). Contacts, messages, location and files are not in the list; the phone-state permission was removed back on 31 July 2026.
• What the app does about battery saving. It sees for itself that the system has restricted its background work, says so in words and leads to the right screen — and if that screen was not found, it prints the path in the phone settings. Checked against the app’s strings and code on 20 September 2026.
• The always-on connection. The app has an item that opens the Android system screen directly, and a fallback hint for when opening it failed. That the item is named differently on different phones has been written in our help centre for a long time, and it is not our invention.
• About the signatures of the two builds. This is not reasoning but a refusal triggered for real: on 16 September 2026 we installed a copy signed with a different key over the installed app and got “signatures do not match”; after an uninstall the same copy went in.

What we do not know

We try to make sure nothing more can be inferred from our text than is in it.

• How other services are built. We do not measure them, keep no rankings and name no names. Everything said about “a single path” is a description of a mechanism, not a statement about a particular app: some of them may well have spare paths.
• What exactly stands behind those 294 records. The journal writes the outcome, not the cause; whether the phone had any network at all it does not know.
• We have not checked private DNS on a phone. The item is named because it can interfere, but we have no measurement of our own, and we will not pass a guess off as a check.
• What these settings are called on your make of phone. The Xiaomi, Samsung, Huawei and other shells rename and move these items; we have not checked them and give no exact paths.
• Whether it will work for you. That depends on your network and is checked only on your own phone — which is what the trial is for. We do not count by carrier or provider and keep no lists of “where it works”.
• Whether there will be an iPhone app of our own. We name no dates. Today our own app is for Android, and 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

Which VPN is best for Android? The one with spare paths, a payment method that works where you live, and support that answers. The six signs that show this before you install are at the top of this article; we name no other apps and write no rankings.

Why do free VPNs stop working? Because they usually have one path, and spare ones cost money. As soon as the network stops letting that single path through, the app goes silent — for everyone at once.

Do you have a free VPN for Android? There is no free-forever plan. There is a trial on one device — 7 days after you confirm your email, no card.

Where do I download the app for Android? From Google Play or as a file at mayaknetworks.com/dl/app — the same file that sits in the “Download” block on the home page. The three install steps are written out above. Nowhere else: someone else’s file with the right name is something you cannot check.

Which paid VPN should I choose for Android? The one you managed to check on your own network before paying. What the payment gives and what it does not — taken apart point by point; what it costs here and how it is paid for from Russia — in the article about payment.

Can I use it without registering? Not here: the access belongs to an account, and without one there would be nothing to pay for. The account itself takes a minute to create right in the app, and its nine-digit number (like “472-918-563”) later works for signing in too.

I need a Russian location — do you have one? Yes, Russia is among the countries you can connect through — useful, for example, to open a Russian service from abroad.

Why does the VPN turn itself off on Android? Most often the network is not to blame — battery saving is: the phone unloads the app in its sleep. Taken apart with numbers.

I installed a new app and it does not connect either. Check whether an old one is holding the slot: in Android there can be only one such connection. In detail here.

What about a tablet or a TV? An Android tablet — the same app, nothing special. For a TV there are separate instructions.

Is there an app for iPhone? Not our own, and we name no dates — but 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. What works today on other platforms is listed in the help centre.