Setting up an iPhone from zero
Install Telegram if it is not there yet, and open the service bot from the button on this site.
Ask the bot for the trial. It replies with a subscription link.
Get a free client from the App Store. Happ is listed there, and its page tells you which iOS versions it supports.
Copy the link from the bot, open the client and use its import-from-clipboard option for the subscription.
Pick one of the five locations (Helsinki, Warsaw, Tokyo, Istanbul or Paris), press connect and accept the system prompt that asks to add a VPN configuration.
Load an IP-lookup page and confirm the address is no longer the one your mobile operator assigned.
What you pay for and what you do not
The app is free, so the money question is only the plan. There are four lengths, one product, and a longer period is cheaper per month. Current prices are listed on the home page and inside the bot; none are copied here, since a number pasted onto a side page goes stale. Payment happens in the bot in cryptocurrency only; card and UPI payments are not offered, and nothing renews by itself. When a period ends, the link stops and you decide whether to pay again.
The link carries no device cap, which lets an iPhone, an iPad and a laptop use it together. That is a convenience, not a licence to hand it to a whole hostel.
What a tunnel on the phone does not do
- Anonymity is not on offer. The service you log into still knows who you are.
- It does not add an Indian address: no server is in India, so Indian apps that expect a local IP from abroad are out of scope.
- It does not speed up a weak signal. The path to the server is one more hop.
- It does not replace the screen lock, the update habit or common sense about links in messages.
- It does not turn on by itself after every reboot unless the client is set to do that, so look at the status icon.
Where iPhone differs from other phones
iOS asks once for permission to add a VPN configuration and then shows a small VPN badge in the status bar. If the badge is missing, the tunnel is down, whatever the app screen says. Some clients also offer a switch that reconnects on its own when you move from Wi-Fi to mobile data; it is worth enabling if you walk between a hostel network and a mobile signal all day.
Separate pages will cover free clients in detail, a step-by-step setup, the iPad, and what to do when you prefer not to touch the App Store at all. This page stays at the level of the whole picture.
Rules, and who made this page
Whether VPN use is allowed depends on the country, and the rules get revised; reading them for where you are is up to you.
This service sells its own plan, so treat the comparison points above as checks you can run yourself rather than as a verdict. A model wrote the first draft; a person read it through and corrected it.