Best VPN for China: How to Judge One Yourself

• Most lists are affiliate rankings: the reader clicks through and buys, and the site that published the list earns a commission. The order often follows the commission more closely than any test.
• Few are tested from inside China: speed and stability measured in another country say little about how a service behaves there.
• Networks in China differ by city, carrier and date: the same service can give opposite results on China Unicom in the north and China Telecom in the south, or in an ordinary week and around certain dates.
• First-hand reports on Reddit and forums are more useful than rankings, but each is one person on one network at one moment. Read recent posts that name the city and the carrier, and treat them as leads to test.
• People searching for a China VPN mostly meet the big mainstream names, such as ExpressVPN, NordVPN, Surfshark and Astrill. This guide makes no claim about whether any of them works in China today; a separate guide covers that with sources: Do VPNs work in China?

• More than one protocol, with at least one that looks like ordinary HTTPS. Networks in mainland China identify and disrupt some protocols, and a service built on a single protocol stops entirely once that one is recognised. A service with several to switch between, including one that runs over TLS and looks like a visit to an ordinary HTTPS site, leaves you far more room. The differences are explained in VPN protocols compared.
• A way to test from inside China: a trial, or a pro-rata refund. A good result anywhere else proves nothing until you are on the local network. Read the conditions on a “30-day money-back guarantee”; a refund for unused time, available at any time, is the simplest to rely on.
• Support you can reach from inside China. When something breaks, your VPN is probably down, and a support page that only opens through a VPN is no support at all. Ask before you buy: how do I contact you with the VPN off?
• Mirror or alternate domains. A provider’s main website failing to open from China is common, so the service needs a second and third entry point, and clients that connect without the website.
• Router support. TVs, game consoles, e-readers and locked-down work devices cannot run a VPN app and depend on a router, which matters most on a long stay or a family trip. See Using a travel router in China.

1. Install before you leave and connect once at home, to confirm the account and the client work.
2. In China, test once on each network you will really use: hotel Wi‑Fi, mobile data, the office network.
3. Test again between 8 and 11 pm. That is the evening peak, and a good result at noon says little about the evening.
4. Switch through the protocols. A service where every one of them connects gives you a way out when one is interfered with.
5. With the VPN off, contact support with one specific question and see how long an answer takes.
6. If it does not suit you, leave within the trial or refund period. The order for troubleshooting is in VPN not working in China.

• Few servers, many users: a free service has a limited set of addresses shared by a crowd, and once an address is interfered with there is no other to move to. That is why a free VPN works for a few days and then stops completely.
• The money comes from somewhere: servers and bandwidth cost money, so a service that charges nothing relies on throttling, data caps, ads, or your data.
• An installer of unknown origin is a risk in itself, because all of your traffic passes through the app. Ten signals you can verify yourself are in How to recognise a risky VPN app.
• A paid service’s free trial is a different thing: it lets you test before deciding, and it is not funded by your data. The arithmetic of free versus paid is in Free or paid.

This section is about our own service. Read it as a statement from an interested party, and check it against the five criteria above.

• Several protocols: one account has six connection methods — router, OpenVPN, Cisco (AnyConnect), Hiddify, web proxy and private network (Tailscale) — switched at any time at no extra charge. Cisco runs over TLS and looks like a visit to an ordinary HTTPS site.
• Testable: a 24-hour free trial with no credit card, and after payment a pro-rata refund for unused time at any time, with no reason needed.
• Reachable from inside China: an AI assistant answers around the clock in the QQ, Telegram and Discord support groups, in any language. The QQ group opens inside China without a route, and there is a support email. Refunds and billing are handled by a person.
• Mirror domains: three domains with identical content. Route addresses rotate automatically, so a website that does not open never stops a client that is already set up.
• Router: a finished product that you log in to once for the whole household, bought pre-installed or flashed onto your own router.
• Every client comes from an official vendor or a well-known open-source organisation — Cisco, OpenVPN, Hiddify, Tailscale — so the service does not hang on one in-house app.
• We have run our own servers since 2007 and tune routes separately for the three Chinese carriers. More in Where we beat other VPNs.

• You want one in-house app with a single button: we use standard official and open-source clients, and the first time you enter an address or scan a code.
• You want the longest possible list of countries: we have fewer regions than the global brands and put the effort into each region being stable.
• You live in Europe or America and only want encryption on public Wi‑Fi: a global brand, with many servers and a polished app, is the better fit.
• Speed has a condition: what we promise is smooth YouTube playback, including at the evening peak, provided the local broadband is good; shared community broadband is the exception.
• On an iPhone, Hiddify and the private network (Tailscale) need an Apple ID outside the China region to download; the Cisco client is in the App Store in most regions.