I’m experiencing an issue where users from certain countries are blocked from accessing my deployment, on both my custom domain AND the default .repl.app URL.
Setup Details:
Custom domain: chimigi.com (linked to my Replit deployment)
Deployment type: Autoscale
Application works perfectly for users in US, UK, Central Europe, UAE, Hungary
The Problem:
Users report they cannot access either URL from:
Estonia
South Africa
Iran
What I’ve tested:
Both chimigi.com AND the .repl.app URL return 403 Forbidden errors from these countries
The application works fine from other geographic regions
My analytics show I’ve had successful sessions from these regions in the past
Error Message:
Error: Forbidden
Your client does not have permission to get URL / from this server.
I wish to understand:
Are there known geographic/CDN routing restrictions on Replit deployments for these countries?
Is this related to Cloudflare’s infrastructure that Replit uses?
Is there any configuration or workaround to allow traffic from these regions?
Are there other specific countries that are blocked at the infrastructure level?
This may be a Replit infrastructure issue rather than my application configuration, since:
Both custom domain and .repl.app fail
The same error message appears on both
It’s geographically consistent (same countries seem to be blocked on both)
Request:
Can Replit support please clarify if there are geographic restrictions on deployments, and if so, which countries are affected and why?
Any insights from Replit support would be greatly appreciated!
Well, Replit is based in the United States, so Iran makes sense because there are government restrictions. Unsure about the others, Estonia and South Africa shouldn’t have trade restrictions, but I’m not a lawyer
Agreed - would be surprised if Estonia is on a block list given it is part of the EU (where I’ve tested it with folks in other countries). Would also be surprised if South Africa is on some kind of list. As for Iran, since the website is not selling anything, I don’t know why it should be blocked unless there’s a policy that replit (or cloudflare) is following?
So after going to 64 countries (186 locations) on my Windscribe VPN, most checks of my website worked. That said, the list of countries (please see below) provided that same 403 error. Could this be related to the VPN I used? Was able to access the website from Russia, but not Luxembourg.
Cyprus
Estonia
Georgia
Bosnia
North Macedonia
Moldova
Luxembourg
Latvia
Israel
Iceland
Thanks for bringing this up OP!
I’m actually building an app that needs to be used in ASEAN countries and China. Do you think upgrading to a custom domain would allow users to access the url?
Do you know if the type of deployment (autoscale, dedicated, etc) have an impact on accessibility?
I’m strictly vibe code like jsull mentioned but I could prob look into hiring a freelancer to migrating the app to a decentralized network if that’s a viable workaround.
I would appreciate it if you could provide any insight!
I’m using a custom domain via Cloudflare, but I’m still seeing accessibility issues from above listed countries (tested through VPN). Cloudflare is just acting as a conduit to and from my Replit origin server, with added security features.
When I paused Cloudflare and disabled all its services, all traffic went directly to my replit origin. The IPs that worked before continued to work, and those that didn’t still failed… so it doesn’t look like Cloudflare is the root cause.
”Do you know if the type of deployment (autoscale, dedicated, etc) have an impact on accessibility?” Not sure - my hunch is dedicated would be better, though possibly more costly.
When I told Assistant about migrating the app it got nervous and told me to reach out to Customer Support. Will share an update once I hear back!
This sounds like geo-restricting which I would assume was Cloudflare, but if you disabled it I find that pretty weird. Did you ask those same people to see if they could access replit.com. Within Cloudflare you can choose which countries that you wish to be served to. It’s just like if you run a VPN sometimes you won’t be able to access your local public transportation app because they don’t want traffic from anyone outside of the intended area.
Interesting - and thanks for raising! Just checked and replit.com is accessible from those locations BUT replit.app (which applies to me) is not.. So when I checked for replit projects / apps created by others, I wasn’t able to access those either from those locations. Will check out within cloudflare - still learning. Thanks!
It’s a common issue brands often have. They have a designer who is trying to eliminate irrelevant traffic but sometimes they go overboard and end up geo-restricting a legitimate region.
Closing the loop - I recently heard back on the geo-restrictions from Replit and sharing here:
“access restrictions of this nature are determined by our global edge network provider. At the moment, we are not able to manually whitelist or unblock traffic from specific countries, regions, or IP ranges. This limitation applies across all hosted applications”
Regarding “clarity on which regions or IP ranges may be affected. At the moment, we do not have specific information on the countries, IP addresses, or ranges impacted by the global edge network provider issues.”
Would be nice if they could share extent to which specific regions / IPs etc are restricted as these seem to apply to all Replit apps.
Estonia
South Africa
Iran
Both chimigi.com AND the .repl.app URL return 403 Forbidden errors from these countries
)
Will share an update once I hear back!