Iran is losing an estimated $1.56 million per hour due to government-enforced internet restrictions, which is depleting its already fragile economy and severely disrupting daily life for over 90 million citizens, an internet privacy analyst reports.
The extended disruptions began in January, and the analyst stated that financial losses have persisted even after some internet service was reinstated.
“The ongoing restrictions are costing Iran approximately $37.4 million daily, which breaks down to $1.56 million every hour,” Simon Migliano, head of research at Top10VPN, told Fox News Digital. “The initial complete internet shutdown alone cost the country more than $780 million, and the ensuing stringent filtering is still inflicting substantial additional economic damage.”
“By disrupting internet access, Iran has already bled $215 million from its economy in 2025,” the internet privacy and security analyst further noted.
Migliano explained that his figures were derived using the NetLoss calculator, an economic model that quantifies the immediate effect on a nation’s GDP when its digital economy is shut down.
This model evaluates direct losses in productivity, online commerce, and remote work, utilizing data from sources including the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, Eurostat, and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Iranian authorities initiated the blackout on the night of Jan. 8 during widespread protests against the clerical government.
Although officials subsequently restored a significant portion of domestic bandwidth, along with local and international calls and SMS, most citizens remain largely cut off from free internet access due to pervasive filtering.
“A recent 579% jump in demand for VPNs illustrates a desperate struggle for digital survival,” Migliano said, explaining that even when access is temporarily available, the internet is “heavily censored and practically unusable without bypass tools like VPNs.”
“We observe clear spikes indicating that the moment connectivity came back, users instantly rushed to get VPNs to access websites and services outside the state-controlled network, such as global platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram that are otherwise blocked,” he added.
“Consistently high demand—averaging 427% above normal—suggests Iranians are hoarding circumvention tools in expectation of more blackouts,” Migliano stated.
“The common approach is to download numerous free tools and alternate between them. It turns into a cat-and-mouse game, where the government blocks specific VPN servers and providers change IP addresses to evade the censorship,” he continued.
Iran’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Sattar Hashemi, has recognized the economic damage resulting from the blackout measures.
According to Iranian media, he said recent outages were causing daily losses of about “5,000 billion rials” to the digital economy and close to 50 trillion rials to the broader economy.
“While Iran’s three-week internet blackout has officially ended, connectivity is still severely compromised,” Migliano asserted.
“Access remains heavily filtered, limited to a government-approved ‘whitelist’ of sites and applications, and the connection is highly unreliable all day,” he concluded.