ProxyCraft: VPN and Proxy Service Right Inside Telegram

VPN in 2026 is like a lock on your front door. You can live without one, but it feels off.

The problem is most VPN services were built for a different era. Separate app, separate account, credit card on file, a subscription you forget to cancel. And they get blocked. Russian internet regulators learned to detect and throttle popular VPN protocols years ago. VPN is on, nothing loads. A tale as old as time.

We decided to rebuild this experience from scratch. That’s how ProxyCraft came about - a service that lives inside Telegram. The project is now open-source on GitHub.

Three Products in One

The first thing we figured out at launch: different people need different things. Some want a full VPN for their entire device. Others just need Telegram or WhatsApp to work. Paying for a full VPN to use a single messenger is a waste of money.

So ProxyCraft is three separate products:

Full VPN. All device traffic goes through an encrypted tunnel. YouTube, Instagram, news sites, streaming services - everything works. For those who want complete control over their internet connection.

Telegram Proxy. For those who only need Telegram. Setup takes two taps right inside the messenger. No downloads, no config files. Press a button - Telegram works. Perfect for parents, grandparents, anyone you don’t want to walk through a VPN client installation.

WhatsApp Proxy. Same idea for WhatsApp. Connect and forget. Relevant for countries where WhatsApp gets restricted from time to time.

Pick what you need. Don’t pay for what you don’t.

Two Servers, Two Use Cases

Server geography here solves specific problems.

Amsterdam. The classic scenario: you’re in Russia and want access to YouTube, Instagram, blocked news outlets. Traffic routes through the Netherlands, external services see you in Europe. Everything works.

Saint Petersburg. The reverse: you’re abroad and need access to Russian services. Government portals that won’t open from a foreign IP. Banking apps that block logins from another country. Streaming with geo-restrictions. Traffic routes through Russia, services see you in Saint Petersburg.

This second scenario matters a lot for digital nomads, expats, and anyone wintering in warm countries while still using Russian services. Try accessing Gosuslugi from a Bali IP - you’ll see what I mean.

Why Telegram

When we picked a platform for ProxyCraft, the question was simple: where does our user spend their time? For our audience, the answer is obvious - Telegram.

One-tap signup. You already have Telegram installed. Find the bot, hit Start - you’re registered. No forms, no email confirmations, no passwords.

Everything in one place. Subscription management, VPN config downloads, server switching, usage stats - all through the bot or Mini App. Mini App is a full visual interface right inside Telegram, with tabs, cards, buttons. Looks like a native app but needs no installation.

Payment without cards. We plugged in Telegram Stars - Telegram’s native payment system. Pay with stars right in the bot. No redirects to external sites, no credit card required, no KYC.

What It Looks Like for the User

The entire path from zero to a working VPN takes under a minute.

Open the bot in Telegram. Hit Start.
Get a 7-day free trial. No card required, no strings attached.
The bot generates your personal config and shows a QR code.
Scan the QR code with any compatible VPN client (the bot recommends a few).
Done. VPN is up.

Telegram proxy is even simpler: the bot sends a link, you tap it, Telegram picks up the settings automatically. Two taps. WhatsApp proxy takes a bit longer - you copy a link and paste it in the messenger’s settings, but still no separate apps needed.

After connecting, everything is managed through the Mini App: three tabs - home screen with status, plans, your connections. Switch servers, renew your subscription, check how much traffic you’ve used.

Protocols: Why It Works Under Blockades

Most commercial VPNs use protocols that DPI - deep packet inspection systems - can easily fingerprint. Your ISP sees the telltale traffic patterns and kills the connection. That’s why “VPN is on but nothing loads” happens.

ProxyCraft runs on VLESS - a modern protocol built with one goal: stay invisible to DPI. Your VPN traffic disguises itself as a regular HTTPS request. To your ISP, it looks like you just opened some website. No recognizable patterns, no signatures, nothing to block.

The second layer of protection is a CDN shield. ProxyCraft traffic passes through a global CDN network with thousands of IP addresses worldwide. Even if a specific address gets blacklisted, the CDN routes traffic through other nodes automatically. Blocking the entire CDN would mean taking down a huge chunk of the internet, which nobody’s going to do.

For Telegram proxy, we use MTProto - Telegram’s native protocol with added camouflage. The traffic looks like a regular TLS connection to a popular website. Your ISP physically can’t tell it apart from legitimate HTTPS.

Bottom line: ProxyCraft keeps working even during active blocking campaigns. It’s all about picking the right protocol stack.

Under the Hood

A quick look at the technical side - no secrets revealed, but enough to show what holds it all together.

Every ProxyCraft component runs in containers. Each service - VPN core, Telegram proxy, WhatsApp proxy, bot, database - lives in its own isolated container. Updates to one component don’t break the others, and monitoring gets much simpler.

The bot is written in Python using aiogram 3, a framework for the Telegram Bot API. When a user requests a connection, the bot automatically generates a personal config, creates an account on the VPN server, and builds a QR code. The whole thing takes a couple of seconds.

The Mini App is built with React and TailwindCSS - a standard stack for modern web apps that works great inside Telegram’s WebApp API.

Servers are monitored, backups run automatically. User data won’t disappear even if hardware fails.

The most interesting thing we learned during development: network protocols are a minefield. Camouflage domains that work perfectly in one country can be blocked in another. Messenger proxies require non-standard ports to work reliably. CDN providers handle WebSocket connections differently. We found every one of these quirks the hard way, in production.

Pricing and Trial

Full VPN costs 249 rubles per month for one device. There’s a 7-day free trial - no card required, no auto-billing. Try it, like it, pay through Telegram Stars.

Telegram and WhatsApp proxies cost less - they’re standalone services for specific messengers, not a full VPN.

What’s Next

ProxyCraft is a young service with big plans.

More servers. Currently two - Amsterdam and Saint Petersburg. We plan to add locations in Asia and North America for those who need minimal latency in specific regions.

Smart geo-routing. Automatic server selection based on which resource you’re accessing. Russian site - through Saint Petersburg, foreign site - through Amsterdam. No manual switching.

Auto-failover. If one server goes down, the client switches to a backup automatically. You won’t even notice.

The Takeaway

ProxyCraft is a toolkit for different scenarios. Full VPN for those who want control. Telegram proxy for those who just need their messenger. WhatsApp proxy - same deal.

Everything lives in Telegram. Sign up in seconds, set up in a minute, pay without cards. Two servers cover both directions: access the world from Russia, and access Russia from the world.

The project is open-source — check out the GitHub repository to deploy your own instance.

FAQ

Why does VLESS outperform WireGuard and OpenVPN for DPI bypass in Russia and similar environments?

WireGuard uses a fixed UDP port and a distinctive handshake pattern that DPI systems can fingerprint within milliseconds. OpenVPN’s TLS signature is well-documented in blocklists. VLESS over WebSocket + TLS produces traffic that is cryptographically indistinguishable from HTTPS to a standard CDN — the DPI system sees a TLS handshake to a legitimate-looking domain, not a VPN. The CDN layer adds another obstacle: blocking the VPN endpoint means blocking the CDN’s entire IP range, which creates collateral damage to unrelated services that makes ISPs reluctant to act.

What happens to active VPN sessions during a CDN IP rotation or node failover?

CDN failover is transparent to the VPN tunnel because the reconnect logic operates at the CDN edge, not the VPN client level. The client maintains a TLS connection to the CDN domain name; if one CDN node drops, the domain resolves to a different edge IP and a new TLS session is established. From the VPN protocol perspective, this looks like a brief pause (typically 1–3 seconds) followed by automatic reconnection. Sessions on most VPN clients (including the apps ProxyCraft recommends) support reconnect natively. Persistent UDP-based protocols like WireGuard would disconnect and require manual reconnect in the same scenario.

Can the Saint Petersburg server be used to bypass Russian geo-restrictions on banking apps that use device fingerprinting?

The Saint Petersburg server routes your traffic so that the bank sees a Russian IP, which satisfies the geo-check. However, banking apps that implement device fingerprinting or certificate pinning (Sberbank, Tinkoff) may still flag the session if they detect a VPN client process running on the device, regardless of IP. The workaround used successfully by digital nomads is to connect via the Telegram proxy (not the full VPN) and access the banking app natively — the Telegram proxy affects only messenger traffic, leaving the banking app’s direct connection to the internet unmodified.