I plan to stay long-term in China and have a good amount of knowledge regarding self-hosting and networking. Would it be better to self-host my own VPN (trojan, xray, hysteria) protocol or to just subscribe to a Clash 机场 service? I’m looking to spend only $5-8 per month at most and my consumption isn’t that much (2-3 hrs worth of youtube and 2-4hrs of gaming per day).
I just use a 机场. It’s used by the vast majority of locals. It’s 0 hassle, I get 700 mbps, not expensive either. I keep it on 24/7 too as clash/shadowrocket have proxy rules, very important feature so that you don’t have to turn it on and off depending on what you’re trying to use. If they get shut down, you get another one. Just sub monthly. It takes like 5 min to sub to another 机场 if it happens, and it doesn’t happen often enough to be an issue. Maybe you have to swap a provider every year or two at worst, but theres like 50 of them, and most of them can be accessed without a vpn. I would avoid astrill like the plague.
I used to use Vultr as a backup, but Wannaflix and Fenghost are pretty easy to use
Not sure if this still works, but it used to be a good backup:
https://www.tipsforchina.com/how-to-setup-a-fast-shadowsocks-server-on-vultr-vps-the-easy-way.html
Save the headache, and just subscribe to a good VPN. If access is super important to you, like in my case, you have multiple ways to connect beyond the firewall.
Some of this is out of date. Kitsunebi instead of Shadowrocket for iPhone. V2ray client on Mac. I use cheesecake on Windows. You need to use VMess now instead of shadowsocks. Gigsgigscloud does cheap ish fast CN2 servers but their customer support isn’t great.
The easy life is LetsVPN/Mullvad for general web browsing (astrill maybe if you have $$) and UU router for gaming
For cheap servers, Vultr is still a good bet and you can ask a Chinese friend to pay in RMB with them
If I do self-host my vpn, what vps providers would you guys recommend? (Something that has CN2 GIA but only around $5-8/month in costs). Are the 机场 VPNs good as well and don’t get shutdowned?
Thanks for the recommendation! What apps did you use for having those proxy rules? I haven’t used those before yet. Is it also possible to set them up in a router?
Here do you sign up for 机场
Are the speeds and ping of vultr good enough? I also heard that most of their IPs are also already blocked.
Thanks, in your case, is 200gb -300gb per month usually enough? Do these 机场 VPN subscription not work after a year or two?
Thanks, I’ll take a good look at all of them. I heard LetsVPN and Mullvad aren’t as great as those 机场s though. I’ve seen many instances where people got banned from LetsVPN from “abnormal usage” even though all they’re doing is just downloading games or movies.
Not going to get a self-hosted VPN with CN2 for $5-8 a month. Cheapest reasonable one is a server in Singapore with Aliyun but with 200 gigs a month you’re going to be charged at least $15-20/month.
Azure has some server locations that are slightly cheaper on the setup cost but their speeds over the firewall are worse.
If you want to go super-premium, the best speeds I’ve found is by Tencent Cloud in HK, you can get very low ping to Asia gaming servers and 200 mb/sec+ speeds. But then you are looking at a bill of $40/month.
What apps did you use for having those proxy rules?
If you’re using clash (android, windows, mac), airports have the rules as part of their profile by default (i.e. you get them when you load the airport into the app) so you do literally nothing about it other than choose proxy mode: rule. If you’re on ios, you should get shadowrocket for 3$. It comes with a set of rules by default that works fine enough so you don’t have to do anything about it. I use this ruleset personally as it provides an adblocker on top of china/not china rules, so if you’re running a browser on an iphone that can’t adblock like chrome then this is pretty good. You can even enable https decryption in shadowrocket config to adblock the youtube app.
https://github.com/Johnshall/Shadowrocket-ADBlock-Rules-Forever?tab=readme-ov-file#懒人配置
I haven’t setup anything on a router yet, but if you are running clash on the router then it’ll work perfectly fine. Personally I just have clash/shadowrocket on every device. Sometimes it is worth turning off the vpn (i.e. downloading a game and you don’t want to use the limited data from a 机场), and being able to do that with 2 clicks instead of whatever bs you have to go through to mess with the router is very nice. Plus, you’ll need it on your phone regardless. The only downside I can think of is that some TVs and similar devices can’t have it installed. Although any android TV, including chinese made ones will allow for installing clash.
Having proxy rules is non negotiable imo. If you don’t you will have to turn off your vpn to call a taxi, use a map app to get to places, use wechat pay or do basically anything else in China. Absolutely do not use anything that doesn’t have this as a feature.
Currently I use the 40 rmb/400gb package from wd-gold.com. They have some of the best speeds on the market and they don’t block SMTP (i.e. can use gmail with email clients) like most other providers do.
Just pick one and go to their website. I use wd-gold.com
no clue. I haven’t used it in a few years.
My VPNs are flat rate and typically run 24/7, so I don’t know how much I use. I use Astrill on the router, Let’s VPN, and I have a HK mobile subscription as well. You probably don’t need all that, but I can’t work if I don’t have a good working connection. In your case, just get Let’s VPN. It’s cheap, it’s good, it’s enough for 98% of users.
I just use them for Reddit and general stuff. I don’t download movies as I have an internet half dodgy tv box and download games through UU. As they are cheap it doesn’t matter to me if there is an issue
I have my own servers but recently they have become very slow
Thanks for letting me know! $40/month is too expensive for me at the moment 
Thank you so much! I’m looking at all of them right now. Why didn’t you get a package from Nexitally, WgetCloud, or SSRDog? I see them recommended everywhere
Thanks for the recommendation! Do you think it’s possible to use Let’s VPN on my router or mini PC running pf sense?