Unblock YouTube videos: How to access restricted content from anywhere

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Surfshark

Our score

9.3 / 10

User rating

Price from

$2.49

Visit Site Read review

Our score

9.3 / 10

User rating

Price $2.49

Visit Site Read review

Available on

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Works with

Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer, YouTube

Pros

• No logs & based in BVI
• Excellent speeds (supports WireGuard)
• Large server network
• Works in China
• Unlimited device connections
• Chrome & Firefox extensions
• Includes ad blocker & malware protection

Cons

• No extensions for Opera browsers

Show less details

Lastly, we have Surfshark — a VPN based in the British Virgin Islands that is relatively new compared to other top VPNs. But nonetheless just as capable. 

Surfshark is fast, it has over 3,200 servers in 60+ countries, with private DNS protection for all connections.

It operates with a ‘no-log‘ policy, and it comes with a number of additional privacy and security features, on top of everything mentioned already.

Surfshark is cheap if you for a longer-term plan, and also has a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Unlike the other providers mentioned above, Surfshark lets you use its service on an unlimited number of devices at once. It is a perfect choice if you wish to give your entire household access to YouTube and other websites that may be blocked in your location.

Lastly, like the other VPNs, it is available on a variety of devices, and has browser add-ons for quick and easy access to YouTube.

If you want to compare these three VPNs to some other providers, we have plenty of other VPN reviews that you can check out.

What is the best proxy for Youtube?

If you wish to use a VPN to unblock YouTube, the mentioned services are the best ones to do it. However, using an entire VPN, with all of its privacy and security features just for YouTube is a bit of an overkill.

If you do not have an interest in things like foreign countries’ Netflix and similar services, and you only want YouTube, you can just as easily access it with competent proxies.

Here are our top picks when it comes to this approach. Although, we should mention that, while we cover these services as proxies — they also have premium versions that include VPNs.

That way, if you ever decide that you wish to do more with your internet access, you can simply purchase one of the premium plans and keep using the same provider.

HideMyAss proxy (free)

For a free proxy service, you can look to HideMyAss (HMA), which also functions as a fully-fledged VPN, if you go for its premium version.

When it comes to bypassing censorship, HMA proxy is just as good as any other provider that we’ve already covered.

Plus, it’s free. And you can install it as an add-on for your Chrome or Firefox browser.

HMA lets you choose between proxy servers in six different locations. It is not a huge amount, but for YouTube, it doesn’t really matter that much.

You can connect to the USA (New York, Seattle), Germany (Frankfurt), Netherlands (Amsterdam), the UK (London), or Czech Republic (Prague), and access virtually any site.

Note: HMA also has a web-based proxy where you can enter the URL of a website to access it through HMA’s own domain. However, we didn’t manage to unblock YouTube with this tool. So it’s recommended to use its browser plugins instead.

CyberGhost Chrome & Firefox extension

Another proxy we can recommend is CyberGhost.

Now, CyberGhost definitely ranks among the top VPNs if you choose its paid service. But it also has a free proxy in the form of browser extensions.

It is easy to install, and quick to use.

All you need to do is select one of the few available servers, and turn the proxy on when you wish to use it, or off when you are done with it.

This proxy offers access to four countries — the US, Germany, Netherlands, and CyberGhost’s native Romania.

How to unblock YouTube without a proxy or VPN?

Those classic workarounds typically involved tweaking a YouTube video’s URL to a slightly modified version.

In the past, this might have worked, but YouTube’s continuous product updates have since made most of these methods obsolete.

613 Tube (doesn’t work❌)

613 Tube is a perfect example of this, which in search results claims to allow you to ‘watch any YouTube video’.

However, our test (see below) shows that it wasn’t capable of unblocking geo-restricted videos.

Sadly, the option to switch servers ‘if the video wasn’t showing up’ also didn’t yield any success.

It seems that 613 Tube is in fact geared towards community-contributed search filtering: removing ads and displaying a less cluttered results page.

Manually editing the URL (doesn’t work ❌)

Other hacks for watching restricted YouTube videos used to involve a bit of URL tampering.

Unfortunately, this method now also doesn’t work.

At least not for all videos, namely the ones we had tested with.

The first option was to remove the part of the video’s URL that says “watch?v=” and replace it with “embed/“.

The video would have played in your browser, in full-width and unrestricted. But, as you can see in the screenshot above, it didn’t work.

While the second trick would have been to type “nsfw” at the start of the URL (just before “…youtube.com”). The new URL would be “nsfwyoutube.com/…”

This approach actually redirects you to a proxy site in order to play the video. But this also failed to work.

Which leads us to conclude that the most reliable way for unblocking YouTube is with a solid VPN.

YouTube censorship — countries where it’s banned

YouTube isn’t accessible in a number of countries.

It has also been previously blocked in certain regions but those restrictions have since been lifted. Most of these blocks had been only temporary as countries either censored it for a specific period, or they removed the blocks once the platform was compliant with content-related requests. 

However, there are still a few countries that have it blocked to this day, including:

• China
• Iran
• Sudan
• Eritrea
• North Korea
• Syria
• South Sudan
• Turkmenistan
• Tajikistan

Why is YouTube blocked in China?

YouTube was originally blocked in China on October 16th, 2007, with the restrictions being lifted in March 2008.

Only a year later, on March 24th, 2009, the government blocked it once again. This time permanently.

The decision was made due to politically sensitive footage on YouTube. By that point, China’s government seemingly came to the conclusion that the platform has too much potential for spreading unwanted news. Plus, it was quickly replaced with local competition, such as Youku.

And so, the website was blocked altogether. Along with most other Google services.

How to check if a YouTube video is blocked in my region?

If you wish to see where certain videos are restricted, there is an easy way of checking this.

You can use several online tools that let you see where any YouTube video is available or blocked.

The most popular tools for this include:

• WatanNetwork
• YouTube region restriction checker

This check can be useful if you use a proxy or a VPN, so that you will know to which countries you need to connect to be able to access the desired content.

How to watch restricted YouTube videos? (Recap)

YouTube has been the biggest video streaming platform for the last 15 years. It has come a long way, but that still doesn’t make it universally accepted. While unfortunate, that is the reality of the situation.

In addition, regional content restrictions make the platform almost unusable in some cases.

On the bright side, there is an entire list of different solutions that you can use to unblock YouTube, as we’ve demonstrated above.

All you need to do is pick one, and enjoy all the videos you can handle.

Whether you choose a VPN or a proxy, YouTube is only a few clicks away.

Which VPNs can unblock YouTube?

To recap, here are our recommended VPN picks for unblocking YouTube:

Ali Raza

Ali is a journalist with extensive experience in writing about cybersecurity, cryptocurrencies and FintTech. His work has been published in a number of major tech and financial publications. Ali holds a master's degree in finance.