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Censorship Monitor · Social media Last test

Where is TikTok banned?

ByteDance’s short-video app · www.tiktok.com

TikTok has never been offered in mainland China, and India has banned it since 2020. Others have blocked it over harm to society or children, and a US law that threatened a ban ended with a US joint venture taking over in 2026.

Every day we open TikTok from inside 24 countries, mostly over home broadband, and record where it’s blocked, since when and how.

Country by country

TikTok in each country we test

Blocked means the networks we test there failed to open www.tiktok.com, twice, while it opened elsewhere. “Turned away by the site” means TikTok itself refused visitors from that country.

TikTok in each country we test
CountryResultIn our tests sinceHow it fails
ChinaChina Unicom and China MobileBlocked29 Sep 2026 (our first test)the connection never completes on China Unicom and China Mobile
IranSeveral networks, mostly data centersBlocked29 Sep 2026 (our first test)the name points to a private address on Iran Telecommunication and ArvanCloud
AustraliaTelstra and OptusOpens
BelarusBeltelecom and MTS BelarusOpens
BrazilClaro and VivoOpens
EgyptSeveral networks, mostly data centersOpens
FranceOrange and FreeOpens
GermanyDeutsche Telekom and VodafoneOpens
IndiaJio and AirtelOpens
IndonesiaTelkom Indonesia and XL AxiataOpens
ItalyTIM and FastwebOpens
MalaysiaTM Unifi and MaxisOpens
NetherlandsKPN and ZiggoOpens
PakistanPTCL and NayatelOpens
RussiaRostelecom and MTSOpens
Saudi ArabiaSeveral networks, mostly data centersOpens
South KoreaKT and SK BroadbandOpens
SpainMovistar and OrangeOpens
ThailandAIS Fibre and TOTOpens
TurkeyTürk Telekom and Turkcell SuperonlineOpens
UAEEtisalatOpens
UKBT and Virgin MediaOpens
USComcast Xfinity and AT&TOpens
VietnamViettel and FPT TelecomOpens

“In our tests since” is when our own tests first showed the result, not when a ban began: where it reads “our first test”, the block may be older. Older results are excluded from current totals.

Outside the countries we test

Where else TikTok is banned

Our daily test covers 24 countries. These are the other places where governments block or restrict TikTok, or did until recently, from dated reports; North Korea is listed because ordinary users there can’t reach the global internet at all.

  1. Gabon. Media regulator suspended social media “until further notice” in February 2026, citing false information and cyberbullying.
  2. Kyrgyzstan. Restricted from 18 April 2024 at the security service’s request, citing harm to children’s development.
  3. Jordan. Blocked during truck drivers’ fuel-price protests in December 2022, officially as a temporary measure.
  4. Uzbekistan. Regulator restricted it in July 2021 under a law requiring Uzbek users’ data to be stored locally.
  5. Long-standing North Korea. Ordinary users can connect only to a state-run intranet, not the global internet.
  6. Albania (lifted February 2026). Government blocked it from March 2025 after a schoolboy’s fatal stabbing; lifted in February 2026.
  7. South Sudan (lifted January 2025). Regulator suspended it over videos of alleged killings of South Sudanese in Sudan; lifted after five days.
  8. Nepal (lifted August 2024). Banned for harming “social harmony”; lifted after TikTok agreed to help police trace misuse.
  9. Senegal (lifted February 2024). Suspended during political unrest in August 2023; quietly restored in February 2024 without an official announcement.

Background

Where TikTok is restricted, and why

TikTok isn’t offered in mainland China: there its owner, ByteDance, runs a separate app, Douyin, and China’s censors have blocked tiktok.com since at least 2019. TikTok also chose to stop operating in Hong Kong in July 2020, days after Beijing imposed a national security law on the city. In Iran, Freedom House lists TikTok among the major platforms that remained blocked or filtered through May 2025.

India banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps on 29 June 2020 under Section 69A of its IT Act, citing threats to its sovereignty and security and to users’ data, and in September 2025 the IT minister said there was “absolutely no proposal” to bring it back. In the US, a 2024 law ordered ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban; the app went dark for several hours in January 2025, and a majority-American joint venture took it over on 22 January 2026.

Other bans have been about TikTok’s effect on society. Nepal banned it from November 2023 to August 2024, citing harm to “social harmony and goodwill”, and lifted the ban once TikTok agreed to help the police trace misuse; because it had registered, TikTok was spared Nepal’s September 2025 block on unregistered platforms. Albania blocked TikTok in March 2025, after a schoolboy was stabbed to death in a fight that began on social media, and lifted the ban in February 2026.

Some limits come from TikTok itself or from security rules. In March 2022 TikTok stopped people in Russia from posting new videos or live streaming, after the Kremlin made spreading “fake news” about its invasion of Ukraine a crime, and cut them off from non-Russian content. In 2023 the UK banned TikTok on government devices over data-security risks, in line with the US and Canadian governments and the European Commission; those bans cover only official devices.

Key dates

  1. Albania lifts its TikTok ban, almost a year after providers were told to block the app, as a court challenge is due to be heard.
  2. A majority-American joint venture takes over TikTok’s US app, with Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX as its managing investors.
  3. TikTok goes dark in the US for several hours after the Supreme Court upholds the law that required its sale.
  4. Nepal lifts its TikTok ban, imposed in November 2023, after the company agrees to help the police trace misuse.
  5. TikTok suspends new uploads and live streaming in Russia after a law against “fake news” about the war in Ukraine.
  6. India bans TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps under Section 69A of its IT Act.

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History

Changes for TikTok

  1. TikTok is no longer blocked in India

Method

How we test

  • Test machines on the two biggest home-internet providers in most countries open the homepage every day.
  • A failure counts only when it happens twice on the same network, while the site opens from other countries.
  • A change is published only after re-checks a few hours later and again the next day, on several machines per provider, confirm it. It’s dated from the first sighting.
  • Test machines caught getting around blocks, through a VPN or a filter-dodging tool, are set aside.
  • We test websites, mostly over home broadband. Apps, calls and mobile networks can behave differently.

Questions

TikTok blocks: questions

Which Countries Have Banned TikTok?

India has banned it since June 2020, and it isn’t offered in mainland China, where ByteDance runs Douyin. Freedom House says Iran kept it blocked or filtered through May 2025. Nepal banned it from November 2023 to August 2024 and Albania from March 2025 to February 2026, while the US settled on a sale instead of a ban.

Why Is TikTok Banned on Government Phones?

Because of data-security fears, not a public ban. The UK barred TikTok from government devices in March 2023 as a “precautionary” step, after a security review of how sensitive information on official devices could be accessed, matching earlier moves by the US and Canadian governments and the European Commission. The bans cover only official devices.

Why Did Albania Ban TikTok?

Prime Minister Edi Rama announced a one-year ban in December 2024, after a 14-year-old was stabbed to death near a school in Tirana in a fight that had begun on social media. Providers blocked TikTok from March 2025, and the government lifted the ban in February 2026, as a court challenge to it was due to be heard.

Free to use

Cite these results

Quote or republish today’s results with a link to this page: the monitor’s data is under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0).

Sentence to quote

As of 13 Nov 2026, www.tiktok.com is blocked in 2 of the 24 countries in the vpnAlert Censorship Monitor’s daily test: China and Iran.

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Source: vpnAlert Censorship Monitor, test of 13 Nov 2026, https://vpnalert.com/tools/censorship-monitor/tiktok/ (CC BY 4.0)

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<a href="https://vpnalert.com/tools/censorship-monitor/tiktok/">vpnAlert Censorship Monitor: Where is TikTok banned?</a> (test of 13 Nov 2026, CC BY 4.0)

APA

vpnAlert. (2026, November 13). Where is TikTok banned? vpnAlert Censorship Monitor. https://vpnalert.com/tools/censorship-monitor/tiktok/

MLA

“Where is TikTok banned?” vpnAlert Censorship Monitor, vpnAlert, 13 Nov 2026, vpnalert.com/tools/censorship-monitor/tiktok/.

Chicago

“Where is TikTok banned?” vpnAlert Censorship Monitor, test of November 13, 2026, https://vpnalert.com/tools/censorship-monitor/tiktok/.

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vpnalert.com/tools/censorship-monitor/tiktok/ |title=Where is TikTok banned? |website=vpnAlert Censorship Monitor |publisher=vpnAlert |date=2026-11-13 |access-date=2026-11-13}}