VPN still working in China

VPN
1

Hi everyone,

I will be going to China in a few weeks. I’d be greatful if someone could advice me on which, if any, VPN still works there. I was there last summer and subscribed for Express VPN, Surfshark, and Proton VPN, but none worked, despite good reviews on a multitude of forums. If someone has first-hand experience of a currently working VPN, I’d be very greatful.

Astrill VPN? NordVPN? They have good reviews and are said to work, but that was also the case for ExpressVPN, Surfshark and ProtonVPN.

2

LetsVPN was working fine, like 20 days ago.

3

NordVPN doesn’t work at all for me. Waste of money

4

Not a vpn but I use shadowrocket (or clash if on computer) app with a 机场. I think this is what most locals use now. There’s a bunch of different providers for these, I use flyingbird personally and its been very fast on top of being reasonably priced (15 rmb/100gb for a month) with no # of devices limits. Another one I was considering was youtu6 which has pretty good deals as well, especially for higher amount of data. Main benefit of these is that you can go on chinese apps/websites like alipay without turning it off.

Regardless of what you use, make sure it is installed on all devices and usable before going to china, as most vpns/whatever can’t be set up here without having a vpn in the first place.

Astrill is a vpn that has been more or less the china expat vpn for the last decade, but its expensive and doesn’t work on mobile devices half the time (try turning it on in a subway lol). Upside is that they are primarily catered towards this market so they focus hard on making sure it works in china.

I wouldn’t rely on any vpn that isn’t explicitly marketed towards use in china. These will work until they don’t.

5

Astril, WannaFlix, Mullvad - all work

6

NordVPN doesn’t work. Let’s Vpn or Astrill are ok

7

Proton VPN and SurfShark are working. I’m on SurfShark right now

8

Astrill works good here

9

I’m usually Astrill now.

10

I’m using lets vpn right now, super stable, works all the time across many parts of China, super cheap and very clean app, Astrill and Mullvad is way to expensive compared to LetsVPN with not much benefits unless u need like stuff to hide ur ip which is useless for normal browsing

11

hotspotshield works ootb on iphone but very slow .-.

12

I wasin chinafor 9 weeks from march 1 2024. We used LetsVPN (group of 6 people) and it worked really well. Never dropped a single time. Just make sure to download it (don’t open it) before getting there

13

I used veee+ and it worked perfectly without any interruptions or negative impacts on speed

14

Use a VPN based on the Shadowsocks protocol.

15

The thing is, you have to understand fundamentals. A traditional VPN traffic can be easily detected by DPI so it will be blocked very easily. Your connection won’t be smooth. Either you have to frequently change the server or the download speed will be very slow. You have to choose a provider who provides vless, vmess configuration as these are stealth proxies, which work smoothly. You can easily setup it by yourself by searching tutorial on youtube, or you can just get from this one.

16

When I used Mullvad one year ago it kept disconnecting me. But now it’s confirmed working?

17

But for a few weeks, just use Let’s VPN. Unless you need to access a specific country

18

What plan of Proton VPN are you using?

Here it worked a few days, then it didn’t work for weeks, now reading your post I tried, and it works again.

19

£5 a month isn’t expensive for Mullvad. Astril is though but it’s more secure.

20

Thanks a lot!

Have you had hands-on experience with these VPNs? Reason I ask is that I’ve read about them, they are said to work, but I had that experience before and none worked when actually tried.