AINov 14, 2026, 3:49 AM UTC·2 min read

Claude account bans: a 193-person survey tests the VPN advice

Own VPS, fixed IP, clean DNS: a survey of 193 Claude users checked whether the popular tips for avoiding bans and ID checks hold up. Mostly, they don't.

A laptop showing a chat interface next to a VPN connection icon and an identity verification prompt. — Image: Хабр

Use your own VPS, never change your IP, watch for leaks. That is the standard advice whenever someone's Claude account gets banned. A survey of 193 Claude and Claude Code users set out to see whether the data backs it up.

The author ran the survey after his own bad experience. Anthropic suspended his paid Claude Max 20x organisation, cancelled the subscription and refused a refund, so he moved to Codex. Others had better luck: one user was banned after a Russian passport check, then restored with a refund three hours later. The 16-question form asked about account status, plan, product, identity verification (KYC), VPN type, IP stability, exit country and network diagnostics. No real IPs, emails, cards or documents were collected.

Does your own VPS or a fixed IP help against Claude bans?

Not visibly. The survey compared the "own VPS / WireGuard / OpenVPN" answer with commercial VPNs and found almost no difference in who kept access (Fisher's exact test, p≈0.87). That does not make a private server useless. It means the data does not support "switch to your own VPS and the problem goes away". How often the exit IP changed showed nearly identical results too.

There is a catch in the form itself: WireGuard and OpenVPN are technologies, not ownership types, so the VPS group is not purely self-hosted. One commenter also pointed out a gap. He had a US VPS with the same IP for almost a year, but VPN drops and sleep-wake cycles may have let Claude Code connect directly. He got a KYC request on 29 October. Whether the two are linked is unknown.

What the numbers can and can't tell you

The 193 answers split into 84 people with access problems (60 banned after KYC, 24 restricted after not finishing it) and 86 who kept access. The rest are left out of the strict comparisons. It is a voluntary survey, and people with fresh bans probably filled it in more eagerly, so the percentages describe these respondents only and say nothing about your own odds.

The rules matter too. Anthropic's updated Supported Regions Policy took effect on 12 November 2026. It says using Claude while physically in an unsupported region falls under the restrictions whatever your citizenship. That does not mean an automatic ban on first connection, but it can be grounds for limiting access. The survey did not record where respondents actually were, so it cannot say how many broke that rule.

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