Why Anthropic Bans Users by Region and How to Fix It

Claude users in Russia have run into mass account blocking and demands to pass verification.

We conducted our own investigation and found out the signs that Anthropic uses to restrict access, so you can keep or restore access to Claude.

We don’t encourage violating Anthropic’s ToS; all the information is provided purely for informational purposes, for the service’s legitimate customers

Hypothesis: How Anthropic Bans Accounts in Blocked Countries

Claude’s developers don’t officially disclose exactly how they identify users from unsupported regions. The company’s help pages list only general grounds, such as registering from an unsupported region and violating the terms of service.

At the same time, Claude’s creators report more than 11 million blocked accounts in the first half of 2026.

0.38% of accounts restored by Anthropic after appeals

The online community started wondering about the mechanisms behind such a severe policy. In late October, a points system theory appeared in a thread on X (Twitter). According to it, on registration a Claude account gets a starting score that changes depending on the user’s actions. In particular, points are docked for:

frequent switching between devices,
suspicious IPs and proxies, especially data-center ones, as in the case of Google Gemini,
burning through the weekly token quota in a few hours.

We decided to check whether that’s really the case. To do this, we conducted our own research to answer the question: “By what signs does Anthropic identify accounts from forbidden countries?”

The Amnezia Experiment: Testing Access to Claude

Conditions

We studied Claude’s behavior using different:

clients — on the web and through the app;
email providers — Proton and Tuta, to rule out dependence on a specific service. In the first case the addresses were a few months old, in the second a few hours;
IP addresses — “dirty” and “clean”;
VPNs — Amnezia VPN versus another service.

The tests were run on October 31, 2026. All the Claude accounts were new, on identical Windows 10 virtual machines through the Firefox browser, with cookies cleared before each session. The connection went through a router on OpenWrt

Experiments and Results

We register Claude accounts with different sets of parameters:

Web client, “dirty” IP, third-party VPN, Proton — the account is blocked, KYC verification through the Anthropic portal is required.
Web client, the same third-party VPN, “clean” IP, Proton — the account is blocked, KYC verification is required.
Windows app, Amnezia VPN, clean IP, Tuta — no KYC requested, limits used up normally, no blocking.
Web client, Amnezia VPN, the same IP, Proton — no KYC requested, normal operation, no blocking.
Web, Amnezia VPN, a different IP in another country, Proton — no KYC, normal operation, no blocking. Just in case, we logged into the account under the IPs from the third and fourth attempts, without even clearing cookies — no change.

Conclusions

We’re primarily interested in the “borderline” tests No. 2 and 3: both IPs are “clean,” yet on the third-party VPN access was blocked, while on Amnezia VPN it wasn’t.

It turns out it’s not only about the formal “cleanliness” of the address. Access is also affected by whether the VPN provider’s range falls into the lists of data-center and VPN addresses compiled by Anthropic.

Our IP addresses weren’t on the screening lists at the time of testing, so Claude was accessible both on the web and in the app

In our experiment, the reputation of the IP address turned out to be the deciding factor between an account ban and normal operation. To be clear: we can’t guarantee that it will always be this way. Services’ rules, like the reputation of IP ranges, don’t last forever. We’ll be sure to let you know if the situation changes.

What We Can Claim

The results of our experiment are unlikely to pass academic peer review. Five connections in a single day is a limited sample. In some cases, the parameters named may not work. In any case, we urge you to be careful when working with resources that are fussy about geography.

What we did clearly debunk is several myths related to Claude account bans.

Burning through limits. In our experiment, using up the weekly quota on its own didn’t raise suspicion. In tests No. 3 and 5 we used up the limits completely — no small feat, but we persevered. Neither blocking nor a verification request followed.
The browser version. Experts on X (Twitter) claim that access through a browser is riskier than through the app. In tests No. 4 and 5, browser-based Claude worked through Amnezia VPN — with no blocking and no KYC. On a “clean” IP, the web behaved the same as the app.
Logging back in from a different IP. In test No. 5, we deliberately changed the country and IP, then logged back into the account from session No. 4. We just refreshed the page without clearing cookies. Switching between addresses within Amnezia VPN went without consequences.

Does Amnezia VPN Help?

We believe that Anthropic’s regional blocking is tied primarily to the reputation of the IP address, not to the browser language, time zone, or other parameters.

In our tests, connecting through Amnezia VPN gave stable access where the third-party service gave up.

If you want to additionally protect your connection in an “allowed” country or you’re traveling through “forbidden” regions, Amnezia VPN will help restore access to Claude.