Discuss VPNs here. Comments with affiliate links or any comment that advertises/self-promotes a VPN service will be deleted; spam-only accounts or promoters with zero history in the sub may be banned without notice.
NOTE FOR ANYONE VISITING CHINA SHORT-TERM:
If you’re roaming from a foreign number, YOU DO NOT NEED A VPN to use data. Your roaming service will circumvent the blocks. China isn’t interested in preventing visiting foreigners from accessing stuff like Google.
If you don’t have roaming, you can purchase an eSIM. Popular ones are Airalo and 3HK.
You’ll still need a VPN to use WiFi, though, or just use your data through tethering.
Another piece of advice: SORT OUT YOUR VPN SITUATION BEFORE YOU TRAVEL TO CHINA. Some apps might be difficult to set up once you’re in China, so better sort everything out before you go.
General note I want to point out for anyone considering a VPN :
You’ll see a lot of “I use ShittyUnknownVPN.com and it works fine.” If you need a VPN mid- or long-term, I’d caution against going that route. A LOT of new VPNs pop up, offer great prices, then get flagged by the GFW and shut down. That makes them little more than exit scams.
Better stick to well-known VPNs: Mullvad, Astrill, LetsVPN.
There’s a reason Astrill gets steadily recommended here: it’s expensive and it doesn’t always perform well, but it’s been going 10+ years without getting shut down, so it’s “old reliable” for a lot of expats.
Another benefit of Astrill is that you can set it up on your home router so all your devices can benefit from the VPN.
Mullvad works but it is slow at times!
I am going to China next week, does anyone knows which vpn really works in mainland China? I did some research, everyone says something different, but most people says astrill and mullvad and let’s vpn,so I don’t know which one would really worksfor me, I will be stay in Jiangxi.
Both LetsVPN and Mullvad work for me in both Shanghai and Nanjing, though I would lean towards using Mullvad as I can’t find any good information about where LetsVPN is really based and what their “proprietary protocol” is.
Neither ExpressVPN nor NordVPN work, as expected.
Airalo also works great as an eSIM (no VPN needed) option.
Hi! I’ve been in china for a week now and I’m using v1vpn and mulvad vpn. Occasionally they fall away but then I switch to the other vpn. I use them on my mac air and on my iphone.
Big pro for mulvad: it’s not a subscription! You just buy 1 month! And for the dutchiess here; you can pay with iDEAL!
Mother fucking astrill.
Regularly using Mullvad and LetsVPN, but Lets works better/faster 90% of the time. Have to switch it off and back on sometimes, but other than that no problems. Mullvad is often extremely slow for me, so I would only keep it as a backup VPN just in case.
How is v1vpn? Does it work right now?
I subscribed to mullvad. Working fine so far… Anything I should worry about or what server works best with it?
Mullvad vs V1VPN, anyone?
I have been using LetsVPN but it only allows 2 devices per account. So I’m considering other VPN options.
Astrill - Is anyone unable to login to netflix? Netflix blocks vpns, but other things like amazon prime and hbo say they do but I dont have an issue with them, sometimes just need to switch servers.
Netflix keeps telling me incorrect password even though I know for a 100% fact the password and email are correct. I searched around and apparently it is an issue where they throw an incorrect password error for separate issues and not an incorrect password.
Funny enough, Ive always been signed into netflix on my desktop since i brought it to China, so it worked while in China as I didn’t need to login. However I logged out and now can not access it through my desktop. I was never signed in on my laptop, and thus have never been able to sign in on it. Any experience with this and fixing it? I just want to watch breaking bad
Hii,
I’ve got a question. I’m going to china on monday and I wanted to know what vpns are good (which one is the best). I’ve heard about v1vpn, let’s vpn astrill vpn and mullvad vpn and I’m kinda looking forward to buy one or two vpns and i wanted to ask which one is the best? And are there also other vpns that are better than those? Thanks for your help!!
ExpressVPN, Astrill VPN or Mullvad?
Hi, everyone. I’m about to travel to China and want access to YouTube and Instagram when I’m there. Which one of these 3 VPNs should I choose to buy before I go?
I’ve read conflicting reports online about ExpressVPN. Personally, it worked fine for me from 2019 to late 2021. Don’t know what happened after that time but I’ve heard it’s gone really bad.
Yo guys, how’s the situation with mullvad recently?
letsvpn (regular version) has worked for me in wuhan and chengdu this past week!
can access vpn, canvas, zoom, email, youtube, like basically have not had an issue not being able to access something !
thanks to everyone before me for commenting letsvpn 
Had a layover in Beijing and I’m currently in Kunming, both Mullvad and Let’s VPN work wonderfully - Mullvad seems slightly quicker to connect at the moment.
Mullvad VPN holding up just fine
I use Astrill, the last few weeks I noticed a lot of the servers for China or in Asia aren’t working well, but European ones are fine (currently Czechia is my go to). I also tried the home router setup with Astrill, but the applet seems a bit unreliable and kept crashing and disappearing, so I ditched that (using an Asus Ax86u).
I bought a month to test, then a two year subscription, as it does seem here to stay and I will save a lot of money in the long run, but I hate there’s no trial period. Also the things I’ve heard about their support aren’t amazing, I’ve heard they can be a bit blunt and their technical advice can sometimes be very simple and not actually useful to fix the problem, but this is just what I heard on the grapevine.
I find Astrill to be very fast though, I can watch 1080p videos online and when I download torrents, the speed is extremely fast (make sure to use StealthVPN for this), one of my colleagues though complains he can’t do this and it’s very slow, maybe he just bought a bad ISP package.
That’s just my thoughts on Astrill for people interested in buying, is it a good technical service, I think yes. Is it customer friendly in price and service? I would be hesitant to say yes.