Hysteria 2 VPN subscription

Hysteria 2 — what it is and why v2 matters

Hysteria 2 is a from-scratch rewrite of the Hysteria protocol, released in 2023. The first version (2022) was an experiment and had several architectural issues: an extra obfs layer for camouflage, a heavy certificate-based handshake, and dependence on an older QUIC stack. V2 addresses all of those and adds new features.

First, authentication is simplified to a single password string instead of a cert handshake. Lower server load (no cert chain validation on each connect) and faster handshake — from ~300 ms to ~100 ms on long routes.

Second, camouflage moved inside QUIC. Hysteria 1 had an external obfs layer trying to disguise UDP traffic. Hysteria 2 traffic is valid QUIC with a real TLS 1.3 handshake. No wrappers, no fingerprint oddities. Makes it resistant to most modern traffic classifiers.

Third, Brutal is reworked. V1 Brutal was aggressive but unstable — could cause bufferbloat on slow links. V2 adds an adaptive RTT monitor: if latency starts rising, the algorithm proactively slows down without waiting for loss. Same high speed on lossy networks, polite behavior on stable ones.

Brutal congestion control — technical details

Brutal is a custom congestion-control algorithm built by the Hysteria authors specifically for VPN scenarios. Classic algorithms (Cubic, Reno, BBR) are tuned for fair behavior in a shared network — at the first sign of loss they reduce speed, assuming congestion.

For VPN traffic that model is wrong. A VPN connection is usually the only connection that matters to the user, and last-mile loss (Wi-Fi, LTE) isn't caused by congestion but by radio interference. Brutal accounts for that: it uses a user-specified bandwidth ("my network is 50 Mbps") and holds that speed while RTT is stable. Packet loss is ignored as a false signal.

Hysteria 2 vs other protocols

Hysteria 2 vs WireGuard. WireGuard is a UDP protocol with a very simple model: fixed packets, minimal overhead. On stable networks WireGuard is faster (less CPU overhead on ChaCha20 vs AES-GCM in TLS). On unstable networks Hysteria 2 is 2-3× faster.

Hysteria 2 vs OpenVPN. OpenVPN is obsolete — plain TCP or UDP without modern optimizations, congestion control is TCP Cubic, poor on loss. Hysteria 2 beats OpenVPN under any conditions, often 5-10×.

Hysteria 2 vs VLESS Reality. Different niches. Hysteria 2 — speed on unstable networks. VLESS Reality — maximum camouflage on stable networks over TCP/443. Lunaire runs both simultaneously; auto-switch picks based on conditions.

Setting up Hysteria 2 in Lunaire

Get your subscription URL from @lunairevpn_bot. Open a client (Hiddify/NekoBox/sing-box/V2RayNG 1.9+), add profile by URL. In the config list you'll find entries prefixed with hysteria2:// — those are the Hysteria 2 configs. Most clients auto-tag them as primary based on URL-test ping.

FAQ on Hysteria 2