Telegram ban in India sparks a rush to VPNs

Telegram ban – India’s week-long restriction on Telegram over alleged exam-related fraud turned into an immediate download spike for VPN apps and competing messaging services, with users also attempting to reach Telegram through repeated DNS requests. The Delhi High Court re

By Tuesday evening, India had already sent a clear message to anyone trying to share or seek exam material on Telegram: the app would be cut off—at least temporarily.

And for many users, that message didn’t land as a pause. It landed as a scramble.

App intelligence firm Appfigures said the day India announced the Telegram restriction marked the biggest day for VPN app downloads in the country since at least the start of 2025. Downloads of major VPN apps rose 49%, climbing from a recent daily average of 139,000 to 208,000.

Proton VPN and Turbo VPN were among the biggest beneficiaries. Appfigures reported that on Apple’s App Store in India, downloads of Proton VPN jumped 113%, while Turbo VPN downloads rose 85%. On Google Play, Proton VPN climbed 64% and Turbo VPN increased 35%. NordVPN’s App Store downloads increased 41%, while ExpressVPN’s Google Play downloads rose 31%.

The sudden demand didn’t just lift downloads—it pushed services up app-store rankings. Appfigures said Proton VPN rose from 18th to 5th in Apple’s Utilities rankings between June 16 and June 18, while its Google Play ranking climbed from 8th to 2nd in the Tools category.

What triggered the restriction was India’s decision to temporarily block Telegram until June 22. citing concerns that fraudsters were using the platform to target candidates ahead of a re-test for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate). described as the country’s largest entrance examination by applicant volume. The Indian government said the measure was needed to prevent the spread of fake exam papers and related scams.

Telegram challenged the order in the Delhi High Court, arguing that authorities should target specific content rather than block the entire platform.

The response from users extended beyond just VPN downloads. Proton said daily registrations from India rose 120% above baseline levels on Wednesday. That followed a spike on Tuesday evening. when hourly registrations had already jumped 150% after the Telegram restriction. which the company called “extremely noteworthy” given its existing scale in the country.

Windscribe said it saw a similarly sharp pattern. The company reported that signups from India peaked roughly 100% above baseline levels, and first-time downloads of its iOS app rose about 89%.

Rebecca Rosenberg, growth operations manager at Windscribe, tied the behavior to a familiar cycle: “The spike in India follows the same general trend we see in areas that ban specific apps, introduce age bans or verification requirements, or otherwise restrict internet access.”

Even across the broader category, the movement was visible. Sensor Tower told TechCrunch that downloads across the VPN app category in India rose 10% day-over-day on June 17, reversing a decline seen over the previous two weeks.

Users weren’t only switching to VPNs. Appfigures reported that downloads of Signal in India surged 72% on Apple’s App Store and 322% on Google Play following the restriction. Viber’s App Store downloads increased 216%.

Telegram’s ban also sent some people searching for alternatives closer to the app itself. Appfigures said Telegram-linked messaging app iMe recorded one of the sharpest jumps: its Google Play downloads rose from a recent daily average of about 827 to 50,900 on June 16.

Yet the restriction didn’t immediately drain Telegram usage. Sensor Tower said Telegram’s daily active users in India rose 17% on the day the measure was announced—the app’s largest day-over-day increase in the country since a widespread outage of Meta’s services in 2021.

That mismatch—more VPNs and rivals on one side. Telegram activity rising on the other—also shows up in the web-access layer. Cloudflare Radar Lead Lai Yi Ohlsen told TechCrunch that DNS requests for Telegram domains in India increased sharply over the two days after the measure was announced. The company cautioned that higher DNS traffic doesn’t necessarily mean Telegram was successfully accessed. and could reflect users repeatedly attempting to reach Telegram after it was blocked.

Inside the legal fight, Telegram pointed to efforts to cooperate during hearings in the Delhi High Court this week. Its lawyers said the company had removed channels identified by authorities and questioned the need for a platform-wide restriction affecting what Telegram says are over 150 million users in India.

Government lawyers defended the measure as a temporary, event-linked response tied to the NEET re-test. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that a permanent ban could raise proportionality concerns, but argued the current restriction had a “logical nexus” to the objective being pursued.

After hearing arguments from Telegram and the government on Thursday, the Delhi High Court reserved its order and is expected to deliver its verdict on Friday.

For many people. the numbers so far suggest a familiar lesson from prior internet crackdowns: when access is narrowed. demand doesn’t disappear—it reroutes. Sensor Tower said VPN downloads in the U.S. rose more than 40% week-over-week when TikTok was briefly removed from U.S. app stores in 2025. Windscribe said it has observed similar patterns following restrictions in countries including Iran and Russia.

Telegram ban India VPN downloads Proton VPN Turbo VPN Signal Viber iMe Delhi High Court NEET re-test Appfigures Sensor Tower Cloudflare Radar