Viber, the Rakuten-owned messaging and calling app, has been blocked in China since 2014 and in Russia since December 2024, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran and Egypt have banned it or its calls.
Every day we open Viber from inside 24 countries, mostly over home broadband, and record
where it’s blocked, since when and how.
4 of 24tested countries with a confirmed block of Viber
Blocked in China and Russia, and on some networks in Iran and Saudi Arabia. 24 of 24 results confirmed in the last 48 hours.
Blocked means the networks we test there failed to open www.viber.com, twice, while it opened elsewhere.
“Turned away by the site” means Viber itself refused visitors from that country.
* First observed on this date: the block may be older. Older results are excluded from current totals.
Background
Where Viber is restricted, and why
Viber was Russia’s third most popular messenger, after WhatsApp and Telegram, when Roskomnadzor blocked it on 13 December 2024 for breaking rules that, it said, stop messengers being used for terrorism, extremism, recruitment and drug sales, and for carrying illegal content. Russian courts had fined it before, including 1 million roubles in 2023 for not removing what the authorities called false information about the war in Ukraine, and in April 2025 a Moscow court fined the blocked service another 800,000 roubles.
Saudi Arabia’s regulator banned Viber in June 2013, saying it didn’t meet Saudi rules; in March it had warned that Viber, WhatsApp and Skype would be barred unless they provided a monitoring server, and only Viber was. When the kingdom reopened internet calling in September 2017, Viber stayed blocked. The UAE’s regulator said in September 2014 that Viber had never been licensed there and that external internet calling services like it are illegal, since only Etisalat and du may provide them.
Iran blocked Viber in 2014 because it was developed in Israel, Freedom House says, and Telegram replaced it as the country’s most used messenger. Egypt has long banned calls through apps such as Viber and WhatsApp; its regulator said in late 2024 that it would lift the ban, but Freedom House found it still in place in mid-2025. In China, censors began blocking Viber in October 2014, and independent tests from inside China still found viber.com blocked in August 2026.
Viber has also taken sides in fights over encryption in democracies. In April 2023 its chief executive signed an open letter with the heads of WhatsApp, Signal and other messaging apps warning that the UK’s Online Safety Bill could undermine end-to-end encryption and open the door to routine surveillance of personal messages.
Key dates
A Moscow court fines Viber, already blocked in Russia, 800,000 roubles for failing its duties as a messaging service.
Roskomnadzor blocks Viber in Russia for breaking rules it says are needed to stop messengers being used for terrorism, extremism and drug sales.
Saudi Arabia reopens internet calling for apps that meet its rules, but Viber stays blocked.
China’s censors begin blocking Viber, after cutting off the Line and KakaoTalk messengers earlier in the year.
The UAE’s regulator says Viber was never licensed there and that external internet calling services like it are illegal.
Saudi Arabia’s telecoms regulator bans Viber, saying it doesn’t meet the kingdom’s regulatory requirements.
Get past a block
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History
Changes for Viber
No confirmed changes since monitoring began on 29 Sep 2026. When a block appears or lifts, and a re-check on several machines agrees, it shows up here.
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.
China has blocked it since 2014 and Russia since December 2024. Saudi Arabia banned it in 2013 and kept it blocked when it reopened internet calling in 2017, Iran blocked it in 2014 because it was developed in Israel, and the UAE’s regulator said in 2014 that it was an illegal, unlicensed calling service.
Why Did Russia Block Viber?
Roskomnadzor said in December 2024 that Viber hadn’t met the requirements Russia sets for messaging services, which it says are needed to stop them being used for terrorism, extremism, recruitment and drug sales, and that it carried illegal content. Courts had already fined Viber for not removing content the authorities objected to.
Is Viber Legal in the UAE?
The UAE’s regulator, then called TRA, said in September 2014 that external internet calling services such as Viber are illegal in the country because they were never licensed, and that only Etisalat and du are licensed to provide internet calls. Today’s regulator, TDRA, says operators must block unlicensed calling services.
