What’s the Best VPN for China? We tested 59 to see which work

Do any free VPNs work in China?

As a general rule, you’ll want to avoid so-called free VPN services in China. The chances of a free VPN being able to bypass the Great Firewall of China are slim. Basic SSL VPN browser extensions get blocked frequently.

Even if they do work, free VPNs tend to be less reliable, impose data and bandwidth limits, and have a much smaller selection of servers than paid ones. Furthermore, free VPNs often make money by spying on your online activities and selling the collected data to third-parties, including advertisers.

Some free VPNs are actually made by Chinese companies, including Qihoo 360’s Turbo VPN. These are best avoided at all costs.

Why is my VPN slow in China?

VPNs will slow down your internet connection for a couple reasons. The first is that your data must travel further to get to its destination because it’s re-routed through the VPN server, adding an extra hop. The second reason is because VPNs are encrypted, so it takes time for your device’s hardware to encrypt and decrypt internet traffic on the fly.

Typically this should only reduce your download speeds by roughly 10 percent or so.

If you’re experiencing more severe slowdowns, it could be due to network congestion, VPN server congestion, bandwidth throttling by your ISP, or your device hardware is struggling to keep up with the encryption demands.

You can try switching VPN servers to improve connection speed and increase bandwidth. Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore are common options that are geographically near China.
If your VPN is blocked entirely, it might have been blacklisted by the Great Firewall.

We recommend contacting your VPN’s customer support for help with persistent issues.

Are VPNs legal in China?

Yes, using a VPN is still legal in China. Despite many VPNs being blocked in China there is no official ban on using VPNs.

We’ve seen a lot of poorly-worded headlines suggesting otherwise. In January 2017, a Chinese government ministry issued a notice announcing a campaign to crack down on VPN and special cable services throughout the country.

The notice does not say using a Virtual Private Network is a crime. I cannot stress this enough, because this important point has been repeatedly misinterpreted by western media.

What is the Great Firewall?

The Great Firewall is the unofficial nickname for China’s advanced internet censorship system. Officially called the Golden Shield project, state-owned internet service providers restrict all internet traffic to and from China to just a handful of access points.

This gives authorities the means to monitor and restrict access to content outside the country. The Great Firewall utilizes various methods to censor the web including IP blocking, DNS tampering, keyword filtering, deep packet inspection, URL filtering, and manual enforcement.

• IP blocking is a simple matter of blacklisting the IP address of a server hosting a website.
• DNS tampering involves modifying the entry of a DNS cache so that a URL–such as www.comparitech.com–is resolved into the wrong IP address.
• Keyword filtering mechanisms scan search queries, messages, and web page requests for sensitive words and phrases. ISPs can prevent unwanted communication by hijacking DNS requests containing sensitive keywords and injecting altered DNS replies.
• Deep packet inspection, or packet filtering, can scan internet traffic for sensitive keywords or determine if a packet has been encrypted using a VPN protocol.
• Manual enforcement involves using China’s 50,000-strong internet police force to find and block the real IP addresses and URLs.

To handle all of the internet traffic between the world’s most populous country to the outside world, complex intrusion detection systems (IDS) create copies of packets and pass them to filtering devices so that traffic flow isn’t interrupted.

Most of the VPNs we recommend above now use some sort of obfuscation to “scramble” the data and make it look like non-VPN traffic.

In response, a 2015 Princeton University study found the Great Firewall now goes directly to the VPN server rather than just inspecting traffic destined for it in a tactic called “active probing.” The report explains:

“The censor acts like a user by issuing its own connections to a suspected proxy server. […] If the server responds using a prohibited protocol, then the censor now takes some blocking action, such as adding its IP address to a blacklist.”

How do VPNs bypass the Great Firewall?

So how do Virtual Private Networks get around all those digital censorship mechanisms built into the Great Firewall?

They do so by hiding the contents and destination of your internet connection.

The actual data containing websites, streaming entertainment, chat messages, and everything else you send over the internet is all encrypted before it leaves your device. By scrambling the data until it reaches the VPN server in another country, the Great Firewall can’t determine what you’re looking at. Other bits of data that could trigger censors, such as DNS requests, should also be hidden, though not all VPNs do this.

The VPN server acts as a sort of middleman to hide the destination of internet traffic. If you were to try to directly load up Youtube, for example, the Great Firewall would immediately spot your connection to Youtube and block it. With a VPN, the censors can only see your encrypted data going to a server. Your data passes through that server and goes on to Youtube. Youtube sends back a video stream through the same server, and China only sees the data coming from that server, not Youtube.

That being said, China can block VPN servers just like it blocks Youtube, so be sure to get a VPN that’s one step ahead and hasn’t been blacklisted. Chances are your company’s corporate VPN won’t work, so it’s best to be prepared.

VPN providers who fared best in our tests all use additional encryption over and above what OpenVPN traditionally offers. More than one provider made use of the OpenVPN scramble extension that obfuscates packet headers to avoid detection by automated network defense systems.

Double VPNs, also called multi-hop VPNs or VPN server chaining, don’t provide any extra benefit when it comes to bypassing the Great Firewall unless the second server in the chain is blocked.

How does China block VPNs with the Great Firewall?

Every bit of internet traffic going in or out of China is wiretapped. Seven backbone connections serve the country, and each connection is being monitored, logged, checked, and double-checked by farms full of servers for snooping in the name of the Party. What China has built is a nationwide stateful firewall– a big, powerful tool for keeping track of each and every session created by each and every device across the entire country.

China’s first line of defense is, and always will be, blackholing sites and services via border gateway protocol. BGP was designed to allow routers to communicate efficiently and tell other routers which resources are and aren’t available.

A TLS handshake can’t be completed because the VPN server has been blackholed. China can and does restrict access to any server or website in the world by blackholing IP addresses and domains.

Changes made in China’s biggest state-run routers propagate automatically via BGP, which puts the Chinese internet authority in every ISP in the country. The state enforces their blacklist by using the technology exactly as intended, just with the worst possible motivation. Sites disappear across the entire country when China updates their routers.

Most VPN providers have some or all of their server networks blackholed. VPNArea, Keenow, CactusVPN, and many others who failed have all of their servers blackholed; you just can’t connect in China. Corporate VPNs are hit and miss.

Can I bypass the Great Firewall without a VPN?

VPNs are the tried-and-true best solution for bypassing the GFW, but there are a few other methods that work with limited success.

• Lantern, a free peer-to-peer internet censorship circumvention software, has grown quite popular. It uses a volunteer peer-to-peer tunneling network with exit points outside of China.
• Tor reportedly works with a bit of advanced configuration, however, it won’t work out of the box. Tor exit points are fairly easy for the Great Firewall to identify and block. You’ll need to set up bridges.
• Some SOCKS proxy applications such as Shadowsocks apparently work, but don’t expect the best speeds or privacy. There’s also Surge for iOS, but it’s built for developers so don’t expect a very intuitive UI.

ShadowSOCKS is a VPN-like service designed in China to circumvent the state’s control of the free internet. Some providers recommend using it instead of a VPN, because the government has not yet put resources into widespread detection and shutdown of ShadowSOCKS server networks. However, it might only be a matter of time before ShadowSOCKS is blocked as well.

How can I get a Chinese IP address?

If you are looking to access the internet in China, such as Chinese TV or streaming entertainment like Youku, CNTV, or Tudou from outside China, then you will need a VPN that can give you a Chinese IP address. Most VPNs don’t have server networks in China, but a few do. Others use virtual IP addresses, which means the IP address belongs to China but the server is actually located elsewhere.

We have a step-by-step guide on how to get a Chinese IP address.

If you’re outside China looking in and need a provider that can VPN into China, your options are pretty limited:

• Hotspot Shield is our top recommendation. It uses a virtual IP address to unblock China-only websites and apps.
• HideMyAss has four IP addresses in Beijing
• PureVPN has locations available in Beijing and Shanghai. Users inside of China report mixed results for tunneling past the GFW, though.
• EarthVPN has at least one location in China.
• FlyVPN has a few locations in China

For more information on how to VPN into China, check out our tutorial on how to watch Youku from outside China and how to get a Chinese IP address.

What sites and apps are blocked in China?

You can use our tool to test whether China blocks your favorite websites or not. Just enter the URL for the website you want to check, and the tool will test access from multiple cities across the country. You can find out instantly if China has censored a website.

This is not by any means an exhaustive list, but you can unblock the following websites and apps by using a VPN in China:

• All Google services (Gmail, Google Translate,Google Search, Google Drive, Google Docs, Play Store, etc)
• Facebook
• Youtube
• Twitter
• News media
• Instagram
• Tinder
• Snapchat
• Dropbox
• Github
• Vimeo
• Soundcloud
• Flickr
• Skype
• WhatsApp

Most websites blocked by the Great Firewall remain blocked permanently, but some are only blocked temporarily. Because it is implemented on all the major access points for online traffic in and out of the country, the Great Firewall can throttle international web traffic to a crawl. This often happens after a government scandal, during anti-government protests, and every year around June 4, the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Many VPN server networks are blocked at times like these, including corporate VPNs.

Websites that are blocked in one province might not be blocked in another province. This indicates digital censorship often begins at a lower level of government, and isn’t uniform nationwide. Tibet and Xinjiang, two western Chinese provinces known for insurrection and rebellion, have extremely limited internet access for only a few hours per day.

Will China block all VPNs?

In July 2017, a Bloomberg report citing anonymous sources said the Chinese government has ordered the country’s three major internet and mobile carriers–China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom–to block individual access to VPNs. If true and enforced, the crackdown would block all access to VPN services used to circumvent the Great Firewall.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology called the Bloomberg article “false,” and said it only blocks unauthorized VPNs used to conduct illegal business. Chinese telecom companies have confirmed that no such ban exists and they have not received any such notice from authorities. People in China continue to use VPNs safely and legally.

In truth, China already blacklists the IP addresses and domains of known VPN servers outside the country at infrequent intervals. In the past, these actions have caused multiple VPNs like Astrill to be almost completely shut down for users on the mainland. Most, however, only suffer temporary downtime until they’ve had a chance to update their VPN software and server addresses.

All of our recommended VPNs in this list have been operating in China for a long time. They have learned how to evade blocks and other obstacles thrown at them by the Great Firewall. We don’t see that coming to an end any time soon.

How can I access Google Play in China?

Google Play, like all other Google services, is blocked in China. That means you might not be able to access the Android version of your VPN provider’s app.
Instead of Google Play, Android users in China are forced to use third-party app stores. There are tons of them, but they probably don’t have the app you’re looking for, either. Recently, China ordered domestic app stores to remove VPN apps from their listings. But even before that, the chances of finding your VPN software were minimal.

If you have an Android device and plan on going to China, we strongly recommend you get your VPN app and subscription before your trip. If you’re already behind the firewall, check your provider’s website to see if they have an APK file available for direct download. An APK file is the installer for an Android app. You will need to allow apps from unknown sources in your device’s settings to be able to install using an APK. Also note that if you install an APK file, the app will not automatically update.

Be wary of APK files from third-party app stores and download sites that aren’t either Google Play or the VPN’s official website. APKs downloaded from third parties are often modified to carry malware and other nasty stuff.

If you’re in China and you have a VPN on your desktop computer or laptop but not your Android phone, you can try sideloading the app. There are many ways to do this, but the simplest is to download the APK file onto your computer, then move it into your Android device’s Downloads folder via USB cable. Then you can easily access the APK on your mobile phone and install it.

If you buy an Android phone in China, it will not come with Google Play or any other Google services.

How can I access the iOS App Store in China?

Unlike Google, Apple has been allowed to operate its own app store within China. But to do so, it must abide by Chinese laws and regulations. That means when Chinese authorities request for an app to be removed from the App Store, Apple must remove it if it wants to maintain a presence in the country.

In late July 2017, the realities of this arrangement hit home with VPN users. Apple removed several VPN apps from the Chinese version of the App Store, including ExpressVPN and VyprVPN, among others. This came on the heels of a regulatory notice earlier in the year announcing a crackdown on VPN services operating within China without a license.

Regrettably, Apple is now complicit in censorship of VPN apps that allow access to blocked online content in China. China has enlisted Apple in ensuring that users searching for VPN apps on the App Store will not be able to find them.

If you set up your iCloud and/or iTunes Connect in another country, you will still be able to find, download, and update VPN apps. They should continue to work even if you are inside China.

If you set up your iPhone or iPad from within China and connected it to the Chinese App Store, however, you will likely be unable to find or download the VPN you need.

The solution to this is to change the location of your Apple accounts. To do this, however, you will need a form of payment native to another country. If you don’t have this, you can try purchasing an iTunes gift card from another country and using that as a payment method.

How much does a China VPN cost?

VPN subscriptions cost the same amount no matter where you subscribe from. Depending on the provider and choice of plan, a one-month subscription typically costs between US$5 and $15. Most VPNs offer steep discounts if you sign up for a longer term, such as one-year subscription.

Many providers, including the ones we recommend above, also offer money-back guarantees. If you plan to visit China for a shorter period of time than the guarantee lasts, you can cancel your account after you’ve left at no cost.

Is my social media monitored in China?

Your internet connection isn’t the only thing being monitored and censored when online in China.

China employs extensive monitoring of its domestic social media platforms like WeChat, Weibo, QQ, and Douyin. Each person’s profiles, posts, shared files, and messages are filed away by entities working on behalf of authorities. This social data is then combined with shopping histories, biometric data, and video surveillance footage.

Authorities in China have made it increasingly difficult to be anonymous online. Real-name registration is required for all new social media accounts and phone numbers.

All of this allows for extensive surveillance of nearly every aspect of users’ lives.

Through both manual enforcement and automated systems, authorities can repress any behavior that strays from what is deemed acceptable.

WeChat is particularly popular in China, even among expats. But if you need to send private messages, be sure to connect to a VPN so you can use some other messaging platform. WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram are reasonably secure and private options, but they’re blocked in China.

Is the internet censored in Taiwan and Hong Kong?

China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau but the Great Firewall is not in effect in those places. You can access the unrestricted internet without a VPN, although you can still use one just to protect your internet privacy.

However, privacy in Hong Kong is increasingly threatened by Beijing’s proposed national security laws which have led to a reported surge in VPN use.

If you’re in mainland China and are searching for information online about Taiwan and Hong Kong, much of that information is likely to be censored.

What is the best VPN protocol to use in China?

Opt for a secure VPN protocol to use in China, such as:

• OpenVPN
• Wireguard
• IKEv2
• L2TP/IPSec
• SSTP

Any of these can work but might be blocked depending on your VPN provider and Chinese ISP. If one protocol is blocked, you might be able to bypass the Great Firewall by switching to a different protocol.

Some VPNs offer additional obfuscation methods to make encrypted VPN traffic appear as unencrypted normal internet traffic. These obfuscated options might be better at going undetected:

• VyprVPN’s Chameleon protocol
• NordVPN’s obfuscated servers
• IPVanish’s scramble feature
• PrivateVPN’s stealth mode

Which VPN country should I use when in China?

Connecting your VPN to any country outside of China should be enough to unblock censored apps, websites and services.

Geographically near servers typically offer better speeds. So from China, the fastest countries will probably be:

• Hong Kong
• Taiwan
• Singapore
• Japan
• South Korea

Bear in mind that if you want to unblock a specific streaming service or other region-locked content from China, such as Hulu in the USA or BBC iPlayer in the UK, you will have to connect to servers in those countries.

Can I play online video games through a VPN in China?

Yes!

If you game on a Mac or PC, it’s easy. Just download and install your VPN provider’s app—preferably before going to China—and connect to whatever region’s servers you want to play on. You can use this technique to play games like PUBG, Fortnite, Rocket League, PUBG, Minecraft, Among Us, or any other game with your friends abroad.

If you game on iOS or Android, the process is equally simple, but you would download your provider’s app from your device’s app store instead.

On consoles, things are a bit trickier. Consoles like PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch don’t support VPN apps or manual VPN configuration. Instead, you’ll need to set up a VPN on your home internet router. You can either buy a pre-configured router, like the ones sold by ExpressVPN, or configure it yourself on an open-source router firmware. The former is more expensive, and the latter requires a fair bit of tech savvy, so choose wisely. Learn more about router VPNs here.

Why is Netflix banned in China?

Netflix is available in more than 100 countries, but China is not one of them. Netflix likely avoided doing business in China because of its strict censorship policies. Instead, Netflix licenses much of its content through local Chinese video streaming sites.

China blocks direct connections to Netflix from the mainland. Netflix customers traveling abroad must use a VPN to bypass these blocks. All of the VPNs we recommend work with US Netflix, and some can access the Netflix libraries of other countries as well.

Can I leave my VPN on all the time in China?

Yes, and many people do. Most VPN apps have an option in their settings menu to automatically open the VPN app and connect as soon as your device is turned on. Many also have wi-fi protection that will automatically turn on your VPN when you connect to a new network.

Note that if you want to use domestic Chinese websites, apps, and services, you’ll need to turn the VPN off. If you try to shop on Taobao while the VPN is connected to another country, for example, you’ll only be able to access the international version of the site.

Is NordVPN owned by China?

No, NordVPN is not owned by China or any Chinese entity. The company is privately owned and incorporated in Panama, which has no laws requiring NordVPN to retain user data. Much of its staff are located in Europe.

Can I still use my apps if I'm traveling to China?

It depends on the app. Most western social networks, news media, chat apps, and entertainment will be censored while you’re in China, so you’ll need a VPN to access them. Finance, payment, and banking apps might also be blocked. Other apps, like utilities, translation apps, and, of course, your VPN app should still work.

As a tourist in Beijing, will my social media be monitored?

Western social media will be inaccessible to you while in China unless you’re using a VPN. If you are using a reputable VPN, then your internet traffic is encrypted, so you don’t have to worry about Chinese authorities intercepting your social media posts in real-time. Most VPN users will have nothing to worry about.

It’s possible that Chinese authorities could sneak a peek at whatever parts of your social media presence is public. If you’re a public figure, person of interest, or you’ve spouted a bunch of anti-China rhetoric on Twitter, then you should be wary of government surveillance, possibly resulting in detention or expulsion from the country. A VPN won’t protect you from the consequences of posting in public.

If you use Chinese social media like WeChat or Weibo, then you should act under the assumption that all of your activity is monitored. Even if you use a VPN, Chinese social networks are under the thumb of Chinese authorities and will comply with any requests for private user data and records.

How do I unblock Google in China with a VPN?

As long as you subscribe to a VPN that is able to get around China’s strict online restrictions, you will be able to access Google and all Google services from China. The important thing to remember is that not all VPNs work in China, so you must stick to one of our recommendations.

The VPNs recommended in this guide have all been tested to ensure they have the means to bypass the Great Firewall of China. As a result, you can use any of these VPNs to connect to a country where Google services are not censored.

To make the process easier, where possible, we recommend subscribing to a VPN service and installing the VPN app before you go to China. This will allow you to be prepared to continue accessing Google services like Google search, Gmail, and Google Drive while traveling there.

With the VPN installed, all you need to do is launch the VPN, ensure that any obfuscation features and the killswitch are enabled, and choose a server location that has access to Google. Our recommendations have plenty of server locations, which means you can pick a server closer to China to get better speeds.

What should I do if my VPN stops working in China?

If your VPN suddenly stops working, it is possible that the Chinese government has managed to block its service. The Chinese government makes every effort to block access to consumer VPNs. this is because it does not want netizens to be able to bypass government restrictions on services like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you are subscribed to a VPN that is not recommended on this page, it is possible that the VPN will no longer work in China. Very few VPNs have the technical knowledge and time to stay one step ahead of China’s VPN blocks. Remember that unless your VPN has obfuscation, it is unlikely to work within China due to the government’s stringent firewall.

Your best option is to cancel your current VPN subscription and get an account with one of the VPNs for China we have recommended in this guide. Our recommendations provide robust obfuscation, reliable encryption, and a kill-switch – to allow you to use the VPN in China risk-free and without restrictions.

If you are already subscribed to a VPN from this page but it stops working in China, we recommend that you check to see whether you have enabled the obfuscation feature. If this does not work, contact your VPN’s live chat support for more help. Our recommendations make every effort to remain available within China and should be able to help you quickly.

Can I use a China VPN for torrenting?

Despite China’s wide-ranging online restrictions, torrenting remains fairly straightforward. The only difference is that several high-profile torrent sites and trackers are blocked, sometimes by local ISPs and sometimes by the government itself. So why bother using a VPN at all?

Due to the nature of P2P sharing, your IP address is visible to anyone who cares to look. This is bad enough normally, but in places with extreme levels of surveillance (like China), a VPN is one of the only ways to browse and torrent anonymously.

Naturally, you’ll have to choose one of the few VPNs that still works reliably in China. However, once you get connected, you should be able to torrent without any issues.

Is it possible to download a VPN while I'm in China?

Yes, it is possible to download a VPN while in China. However, you may need to use a proxy server or other workaround to access the VPN website. To ensure you have VPN access while traveling in China, we’d recommend downloading the VPN app for your device before you arrive in the country.

Will these VPNs unblock streaming sites in China?

Yes, the best VPNs for China possess strong unblocking ability which means they’re compatible with many different streaming services. Of course, the streaming services each VPN can unblock varies somewhat but connecting to a server in, for example, the US from China may allow you to stream Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, and more. 

There’s no guarantee that a VPN will unblock a particular streaming site in China but if you do have trouble, switching servers (and thus changing your IP address) may well do the trick.