Psiphon Pro is a free and open source anti-censorship tool. It is designed to allow people living in restricted counties to freely access the open Internet. As we will see in this Psiphon review, Psiphon achieves this using a combination of VPN (Virtual Private Network) and Secure Shell (SSH) technologies. This means that if one option doesn't work, the other can.

All tests were performed on my fiber connection. When connecting via VPN, it is not possible to select the server's location - Psiphon Pro selected India for me.

Don't expect fast speeds when using Psiphon Pro. The Android app was much closer to the promised 2 Mbps, and the Pro app even delivered a little more at the 5 Mbps that was promised.

Easy to use

To download the Android app for free, just go to the bottom of this page, where you will download the Psiphon Pro. You can also download the apps for Windows and iOS, ready for sideloading, on the developer's website. No registration is required for this.

The Android app works only in SSH mode. It automatically selects the servers for you.

If you downloaded the apk file for sideloading, you will not see ads. If you downloaded the app from the Play Store , you will see some very discreet ads in the space occupied by the Psiphon pro logo at the top of the screen.

You can check your bandwidth usage in the Statistics section. This can be particularly useful in countries where data from the mobile Internet is expensive.

Psiphon Pro usually only proxy in your browser, but with Android 4.0 + it is possible to proxy across the device. In this mode, Psiphon acts much like a full VPN.

Psiphon Pro for Android

The Pro version of the app is very similar to the free version. It allows you to support developers by accepting ads or upgrading to faster service through in-app purchases.

The ads are quite intrusive. In addition to more prominent ads on the main screen, you receive a video ad every time you connect to a Psiphon server and your browser loads the Psiphon pro news / blog page.

Basically, if you are not using the Pro version of this application, you will want to upgrade to a paid subscription as soon as possible!

When you pay for a subscription, ads disappear and your bandwidth increases. The “maximum speed” plan updates its speed limit from 2 Mbps to 5 Mbps

The Pro version gives you the option to proxy your entire device or just the Psiphon pro custom browser that comes with the app .

Remembering that all these features are released in the apk for download at the link below!

Safety when using Psiphon Pro

By default, Psiphon pro uses SSH to provide a secure connection to its servers. This is safe enough to circumvent most forms of censorship. Organizations like the NSA and CIA, however, are known to have tools that can decrypt SSH, allowing them to read the content of SSH sessions.

For VPN connections, Psiphon pro uses the L2TP / IPsec VPN protocol. Despite some largely theoretical issues, this is generally considered to be safe. The Psiphon website does not explain what key size or encryption is used to protect the data, but whatever is used will be fine by simply ignoring censorship.

The Psiphon pro website provides SHA1 cryptographic hashes for your Windows and sideloaded Android applications. This is a relatively weak form of data integrity compared to PGP digital signatures, but it should provide some confidence that the downloaded files have not been tampered with.

Psiphon pro will automatically change Android Domain Name System (DNS) settings to point to a whitelist of verified DNS servers. This should ensure that you do not experience a DNS leak when using Psiphon.

Psiphon pro as an SSH tunnel

Psiphon Inc. operates a network of servers worldwide. By default, the application connects to one of these using an encrypted Secure Shell (SSH) connection with handshake obfuscation.

SSH servers are in many ways similar to standard HTTP proxies (HTTP over SSL / TLS). For a quick and fairly simple summary of the main differences between SSH and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), please check.