Phone only · sightseeing
Probably notAn eSIM whose plan states international routing sends traffic out of China before it reaches the internet. Maps, WhatsApp and Instagram work on that phone with nothing else installed.
Check eSIM routing first →Last verified Aug 11, 2026
What six providers commit to, and what travelers report
An eSIM whose plan states international routing sends traffic out of China before it reaches the internet. Maps, WhatsApp and Instagram work on that phone with nothing else installed.
Check eSIM routing first →An eSIM only routes the phone holding it. A laptop on hotel WiFi, or a phone running a Chinese SIM, goes through mainland infrastructure regardless.
The comparison is for you →If losing access costs a meeting or a deadline, one provider is a single point of failure. Individual servers and protocols go down at different times.
Read the refund column →| Compare on | Astrill | Mullvad | NordVPN | ExpressVPN | Proton VPN | Surfshark |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it suits | Most ways back on when one route is blocked | Privacy-first, shorter trial | Hard to assess — see terms | Long refund, no China signal | Long refund, least detail published | Families and multi-device trips |
| Reported reliabilityfrom traveler posts | Mostly positive reportsReddit reports, 2025-08 – 2026-08 | Mostly positive reportsReddit reports, 2025-08 – 2026-08 | Sample too smallBelow our 20-report floor — collection in progress | Sample too smallBelow our 20-report floor — collection in progress | Sample too smallBelow our 20-report floor — collection in progress | Sample too smallBelow our 20-report floor — collection in progress |
| Speed measured by othersthird-party test, not ours | ~92Mbps · Shenzhen, Apr 2026 | Not tested | Not tested | ~64Mbps · Shenzhen, Apr 2026 | Not tested | ~78Mbps · Shenzhen, Apr 2026 |
| What travelers said | Most Reddit reports from the past year describe it connecting reliably in mainland China; a handful describe recent failures. | Most Reddit reports describe it connecting, sometimes after adjusting server or protocol; a minority report failures. | Sample too small | Sample too small | Sample too small | Sample too small |
| Ways to reconnectwhen one route is blocked | 3 protocols, 2 obfuscatedStealthVPN, OpenWeb, WireGuard | 2 protocolsWireGuard, OpenVPN — no obfuscated mode published | Could not verifyNordWhisper referenced elsewhere, unconfirmed | 1 protocolLightway — no obfuscated mode named | Not publishedStealth referenced elsewhere, unconfirmed | 2 named modes + manual configNoBorders, Camouflage |
| Devices | "Household" — no figure given | Not published | Could not verify | 12 | 10 | Unlimited |
| Refund window | None“All sales on our web site are final and refunds are not possible once purchase is made.” | 14 days | Could not verify | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days |
| Terms publishedtransparency, not quality | 4 / 6no China page found in sitemap | 4 / 6no China page in a 1.8 MB sitemap | 0 / 6nordvpn.com returned HTTP 403 with a Cloudflare challenge to both curl and server-side fetch on 2026-08-11. None of these terms could be read. This is a statement about their bot protection, not about their service. | 4 / 6the former China page now returns HTTP 410 Gone, and no China entry appears among 509 country pages in the sitemap | 3 / 6 | 5 / 6China information is a blog post whose visible date reads two years older than its own structured metadata |
Speed measured by others: these are not our measurements. They come from a single third-party field test in Shenzhen, 10–15 April 2026 — iPhone 15 Pro and MacBook Air M2, China Mobile 5G in Futian and China Telecom 5G in OCT Loft, best of three Speedtest-CLI runs. The tester earns commission on Surfshark only and states it earns nothing on the others; the highest figure is one it earns nothing on. No non-VPN baseline was published, and the figures were not re-measured when that page was updated in June. Speed in China swings with city, ISP, time of day, and which server you land on — treat these as one data point from one week in one city, not a ranking. Source: Shenzhen Decoded
Three things the columns alone don’t tell you.
Astrill appears in more traveler reports than any other provider here — and it is the only one with no refund window. Its refund page states: All sales on our web site are final and refunds are not possible once purchase is made.
Its terms separately disclaim responsibility if the service is blocked by your ISP. Since the only test that counts happens after you land, no refund window means buying blind on other people’s reports.
UK FCDO — safety and security · checked 11 Aug 2026
We don’t name one. The table gives you the two things that decide it: what each provider commits to contractually, and what travelers reported with dates. Shortest path — check whether an eSIM removes the need, then choose on refund window, because that is what lets you test safely after landing.
Every entry is dated. Reliability inside mainland China changes continuously as connection methods are identified and blocked, so treat the traveler column as directional, not statistical — it is aggregated public discussion, not a YouChina test.
Plan as if you can’t. Provider websites are typically unreachable from inside mainland China, and Apple removed VPN apps from its China App Store in 2017. Travelers who land without one installed have very limited options.
Free tiers rarely include the obfuscation methods paid services rotate through to stay reachable. None of the six above offers a free tier our sources describe as working on the mainland.
Worth weighing if your trip depends on reliable access — work calls, remote logins, a long stay. Some travelers subscribe to two providers on the theory that if one is blocked entirely the other may still connect. For a short sightseeing trip, one tested provider is usually enough.
Travelers report it does, to varying degrees. One recent report describes a noticeable speed drop that was still workable for cloud file transfers on a China Telecom line. We have not measured this ourselves.
These are protocols you run yourself, not products you buy, so they aren’t in the table. Self-hosting comes up often among long-term residents who are comfortable with the setup; one traveler reported a self-hosted V2Ray relay in Hong Kong working for general browsing but specifically failing for gaming traffic, suggesting some filtering targets traffic type, not just protocol.
YouChina does not advise on the legality of VPN use in mainland China — see what governments say above, and check your own country’s advisory. What we can say factually is that setup has to happen before you fly.
From each provider’s own pages
Reddit, China-specific, dated
UK FCDO and German Federal Foreign Office