Insufficient

RiseupVPN

Censorship toolUnited StatesRank 7 of 68

Paying monthly

— no monthly plan

Paying yearly

— no yearly plan

Coverage

4 countries with an exit

Free tier

Yes free, no data cap

25 out of 100

Security

65 out of 100

Usability

Visit site

Service class

Censorship tool — security leads

Security score

25 of 100 · Insufficient

Usability score

65 of 100 · state known · 64% established · 77.4% of the weight read

Legal entity

Riseup Networks

Jurisdiction

United States

Ultimate owner

Riseup Collective (self-governed autonomous collective; no external owner)

Exposure

Medium · dominant channel: retention

Retention

Nothing that links traffic to a person

Latest audit

Security Research Labs (SRLabs) · 16 May 2025 · One-off · Yes, and the report was read

Countries with exits

Protocols

OpenVPN An obfuscated protocol

Works under active censorship

Claimed to work

Weakest protocol still offered

not applicable

Own DNS inside the tunnel

unknown

Platforms

Linux macOS Windows Android

Simultaneous devices

unknown

Kill switch

On desktop only

Split tunnelling

unknown

Signing up

No account needed

Free tier

A free tier with no data cap

P2P allowed

unknown

Major streaming services reachable

unknown

Price, monthly

not published

Price, yearly

not published

Offered countries that sit under a logging mandateC09_mandate_countries

Country of the ultimate beneficial ownerM11_owner_jurisdiction

Owner group cluster keyM15_owner_group

independent

Date the current owner took controlM16_control_since

not applicable

Role of this brand inside the groupM17_brand_role

principal

Infrastructure shared with cluster siblingsM18_shared_infrastructure

separate

Total published auditsV10_audit_count

Where the security score comes from

Eight channels, each asking one question of the published record and reading a named set of fields to answer it. They multiply rather than add — the factor beside a channel is what is left after the pressure it found, and open a channel to see every field it read, as it is stored. How the model works

Security fields

67 55 of them feed a channel

Established

51 6 left unknown, 10 not applicable

Completeness

88% the share the model could weigh

Citations

71 across 18 documents

Every value carries what it rests on, and the model weighs the four levels differently. Weight, then how many citations on this record sit at that level:

A weighs 1.00 · 12 hereB weighs 0.85 · 59 here

The weights are methodology.json’s own; a claim seen in the artefact itself counts for more than the same claim reported second-hand. The date at the end of a row is the day that value was last read.

A channel does not price every field it reads. The ones it did are marked along their edge and carry what they added; everything else was read and cost nothing. Only a channel that composes field by field can mark a field at all — the rest price themselves by the parameters printed above their rows.

Still open on this record.

Hardware ownership is not stated. Riseup's own government FAQ describes physical control of its core Seattle infrastructure ('not hosted in the cloud'), but says nothing about the VPN gateway machines in Montreal, Paris and Amsterdam, which sit on IP ranges typical of commercial hosts. C08_servers_ownership stays unknown rather than assumed from the Seattle statement.

The bare-minimum VPN log is described only by exclusion. The security page lists everything the 5-day rotating log does not contain (no IP, no fingerprint, no DNS requests, no metadata) but never states what it does contain. C01 is filled none_linkable on that exclusion list, but a reader who wants to know what the bytes actually are will not find it here.

the rest of what is open — 166 more words

Several usability fields have no documentation to read at all. Split tunneling, simultaneous device limits, P2P policy and streaming access are not addressed on any RiseupVPN page found this session, and the kill switch is confirmed only for the desktop tray client, not for Android.

The only independent audit is a client/infrastructure pentest, not a logging audit. The 2025 SRLabs report examined Bitmask and the Menshen bridge registrar for intercept and DPI risks; it never asked what the VPN servers retain, so V11_audit_findings is not_stated and the retention claim in C01 rests on Riseup's own word alone.

The 2012 seizure often cited against Riseup did not touch Riseup's own data. U.S. federal agents took a server from a colocation facility Riseup shared with May First/People Link, but the machine and its data belonged to a third tenant (European Counter Network); no Riseup account or user data was on it, which is why P01_seizure_event reads none_known rather than crediting an event that was never Riseup's to resist.

On the record as a whole.

RiseupVPN is a free client of Riseup Networks, a US 501(c)(4) non-profit collective (riseup.net) operating since 1999; the VPN carries no price of its own and is sustained entirely by donations, which is why U04/U04b are not_applicable. RiseupVPN is a rebrand of the older Bitmask/Riseup-Black client built on the LEAP platform; its four gateways (Seattle, Montreal, Paris, Amsterdam) all sit in countries carrying a logging mandate per countries.csv, and hosting there is physical rather than virtual.

RetentionDoes a record exist that links traffic to a person, and who checked?13 fields read · 2 not applicable · 49.7 points of pressure×0.503

Composed rather than added: a prior of 0.55 on the silent branch, moved by what the paper says (0.1026) and by what the practice shows (0.0), at credence 0.1026 from the audit and 0.665 from how the provider engaged, against a severity of 0.03 for what is actually retained.

Retention linkable to a person as declaredmaterialC01_linkable_retention

none_linkable

Briseup.net13 Sep 2026

Report a problem with C01_linkable_retention

Persistent device identifier the provider holdsC12_device_identifier

none

Briseup.net Bplay.google.com13 Sep 2026

Report a problem with C12_device_identifier

At least one independent auditmaterialV01_audit_exists

yes_verified

Computed

×0.247 of a clean record completeness 88%

Where the drop comes from: Retention. It is the channel this record's risk is concentrated in — on its own it takes a clean record to ×0.503, and its bar above is filled to that.

Exposure is recorded as medium and the integrity status as clean.

Against the rest of the register, this record sits furthest above on Ignorance — ×0.903 where the register averages ×0.662 — and furthest below on Disclosure, ×0.913 against ×0.970.

Published score

Every row above is one field of the published record, and every one of them can be challenged: every row carries Report, or raise something about the record as a whole. A correction with a source behind it is made the same day, and if it moves the score it moves the rank.

Specification

Carried, never scored

Countries with an exit

If this one is not right

Compared with

RiseupVPN

Proton VPN

Mullvad VPN

IVPN

Where the security score comes from