China has the strictest internet censorship in the world, a large number of popular foreign websites are blocked and inaccessible from within this country, the local authorities achieve the blocking by using a large filtering system nicknamed "Great Firewall" to block the traffic to those sites.
Great Firewall (don't be confused with the Great Wall) is considered the most sophisticated firewall in the world, it is consistently being upgraded to become more powerful, that's why only a handful of VPNs are available that can be used to bypass it.
Apart from blocking the traffic to those popular foreign websites like Google and Facebook, Great Firewall also blocks VPN traffic, as VPN is widely used in China to bypass the block, and the authorities know this for sure, from 2017 many VPNs have been cracked down by the country, now not all the VPNs can work in China. This page introduces a few VPN providers that survived several crack-downs and really work in China as of 2024.
What to Look For when Choosing a VPN:
Before choosing a VPN service, you might be wondering about what to look for when choosing a VPN. Below are a few important VPN features you should check when choosing the one that most suits your needs.
Or directly click here to jump to see the best VPNs for China.
1. Speed and Stability of the Connection
Speed is the most important factor to consider when choosing a VPN to access blocked websites. With a fast-speed VPN, you can stream videos on blocked sites in high definition, and with no interruptions. Pages on the websites will load faster, files can be uploaded or downloaded faster, and connection dropouts will be occurred less times.
Speed and stability has close relation with the number and range of available servers provided by the VPN provider, usually more servers the provider has, particularly the servers near China, will generally ensure faster and more stable connection.
2. Price
The VPN services provided by different providers have different prices, some of them need more than 10 dollars a month, while some only need less than 3 dollars a month. However, VPN services with higher prices tend to be offering better connection speed and customer service, while cheaper VPNs are not.
3. Anonymity and Security
As you may know, VPN is not just solely used for circumventing the internet censorship in China, it's also widely used for other purposes and activities. VPN can encrypt your online data when you surf the internet to protect your private information from being stolen or monitored by third parties, that's why more and more people enable VPN when they connect internet through public WiFi in hotels or coffee shops. VPN is also a must-have tool for people to download torrent files as it will hide their real IP addresses. Therefore, anonymity and security is also a primary consideration if accessing blocked sites is not your only purpose.
If your only purpose is to bypass the block in China, you still need to care about this, because many VPN providers may log users' online activities and private data. You need to choose the one that don't log user data.
4. Costumer Support and Money-back Guarantee
As Great Firewall of China is being upgraded consistently, connection downtime may possibly happen on your VPN when you are traveling in China, so you need to ask support team of the VPN provider to fix your problem, or you just have other questions in regard to the use of the VPN, that's why choosing one of the VPN providers that offer high quality customer support is important. And if you dislike the VPN you purchased, you can have your money back if they have money-back guarantee.
5. The Number of Devices allowed for Simultaneous Connection
After you signed up for a VPN service, you are not limited to use the service on a single device in the same time, you are allowed to use the VPN on multiple devices simultaneously. This is helpful if you need to use VPN on many different devices like laptop, cellphone, tablet in the same time, or share the VPN with your family members.
Best VPNs for China:
Below are some best VPNs that still work in China in 2024.
The details of the above mentioned VPN features are included in the introduction of each VPN provider.
Note: Although the VPNs introduced below work well in China, some of VPN websites are inaccessible from within China, so it is better to sign up for your favorite VPN prior to arrival in China.
1. Surfshark
Advantages: Fast speed; the service can be simultaneously run on an unlimited number of devices; very low price if choose long term subscription.
Speed: 5 Mb/s
Starting Price: $2.49/Month
Maximum number of devices for simultaneous connections: Unlimited
Surfshark is a British Virgin Islands-based VPN service provider, it's also owned by Nord Security. Launched in 2018, it's a relatively new provider on the VPN scene but is quickly growing and becoming very popular, overtook several other VPNs to become one of the most popular VPNs in China.
As of 2024, Surfshark has over 3200 servers in more than 100 countries, drastically increased from just 800 servers in 2018. The servers of Surfshark are not specialized in specific services, which means the users can connect to any one of the servers to do things they want like torrenting, streaming Netflix, bypassing internet censorship, etc., it's not necessary to connect to a dedicated server for specific purpose.
Surfshark has dedicated apps offered for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, for other platforms like Linux, users can manually install the service by following the guides that can be found on the website of Surfshark. The most outstanding advantage of this VPN service is its unlimited simultaneous connection, every user account is allowed to have the VPN service run simultaneously on any number of devices, so if you have a lot of family members, or you just want to share your VPN with your friends or workmates, this can be really helpful.
As a VPN provider operated in British Virgin Islands, Surfshark will never keep session logs of user activities. By default Surfshark uses the OpenVPN and IKEv2 protocols to encrypt its users' data, it also offers Shadowsocks protocol on its Windows apps.
For users who already arrived in China, Surfshark has a mirror site that can be accessed from within China (NordVPN has a mirror site, too, clicking the "Visit" buttons above will redirect you to the mirror site if you are in China. For Surfshark, you need to click the dedicated link for the mirror site), so if you forgot to subscribe a VPN service and download the app before arriving China, you still can do it on that mirror site.
Surfshark offers live 24/7 customer support and 30-day money-back guarantee. Read the full Review of Surfshark
2. NordVPN
Advantages: Fast speed; the service can be simultaneously run on up to 6 devices; Obfuscation technology used for hiding from the blocking.
Speed: 5 Mb/s
Starting Price: $3.5/Month
Maximum number of devices for simultaneous connections: 6
NordVPN is a VPN provider operated in Panama, it's owned by Nord Security, a Lithuanian company that creates cybersecurity software.
NordVPN has over 5,700 servers in 60 countries, including some China-optimized locations like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and the West Coast of the US, ensuring its fast and consistent speed for users in China. It also has many dedicated servers for specific purposes like torrenting. It can also be used to unblock geographically-limited streaming sites like Netflix, while many other VPN providers are blocked by these sites. However, users can't specify a particular city to connect, the servers can only be chosen on country level.
NordVPN's applications is available for Windows/macOS on desktop or laptop devices, and Android/iOS on mobile devices, but unfortunately their iOS app cannot bypass the block in China as of now. Every user account is allowed to run the VPN service simultaneously on 6 devices at most, this can be very useful if you are traveling with many of your family members or friends or need to use the service on both desktop and mobile devices in the same time.
For customers in China, NordVPN offers an obfuscation technology called obfsproxy to defeat the Great Firewall's VPN blocking, obfsproxy is a high level technology that is also being used by Tor to hide from the blocking of Great Firewall.
As to the security, privacy and anonymity, NordVPN doesn't keep session logs of user activity. By default NordVPN uses the OpenVPN and IKEv2/IPsec protocols to encrypt its users' data, users are not allowed to choose from L2TP and PPTP protocols, which it considers as dated protocols.
NordVPN offers 24/7 customer support and 30-day money-back guarantee for its users. Read the full Review of NordVPN
3. ExpressVPN
Advantages: Fast speed
Speed: 5 Mb/s
Starting Price: $8.5/Month
Maximum number of devices for simultaneous connections: 5
ExpressVPN is another VPN service operated in British Virgin Islands. It is one of the most renowned VPN brands in the world.
As to the market in China, ExpressVPN was once one of the top three most popular VPNs in China, and one of the fastest VPNs for China. ExpressVPN has a wide range of server locations, it has 3000 VPN servers in more than 160 cities in 94 countries or regions. ExpressVPN actively monitors the accessibility and connection stability of its network in China, making its service always effective to defeat the block of Great Firewall.
ExpressVPN allows 5 simultaneous connections with a single user account, users can run the VPN service on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and can also run on routers (in this case any device that connects to the router will automatically connect to the VPN), the use on all these different platforms is equipped with dedicated apps, the interface of its apps has been applauded by many medias, the nice interface makes the apps and the service very simple to use.
As a company operated in Virgin Islands, ExpressVPN is outside of the influence of copyright holders, torrenting is allowed through all of its servers. For watching the geographically-limited content on Netflix, users can choose from many dedicated servers for that.
ExpressVPN doesn't keep logs of users' private data and their online activities to ensure their anonymity and protect their private information, this had been proved to be true, as that in 2016 ExpressVPN was used by a person behind assassination of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey to anonymously delete the incriminating evidence in the assassin's Email, when Turkey authorities seized the related VPN server, they found nothing as no data logs was retained by ExpressVPN.
ExpressVPN offers 24 hours/7 days live chat support for all of its customers, as well as a 30-day money-back guarantee. Read the full Review of ExpressVPN
4. VyprVPN
Advantages: Reliable and safe connection; the proprietary protocol "Charmeleon" (only available in premium plan) makes it less likely to be blocked by Great Firewall.
Speed: 3~4 Mb/s (Basic plan), 5 Mb/s (Premium Plan)
Starting Price: $5/Month
Maximum number of devices for simultaneous connections: 3 (Basic plan), 5 (Premium Plan)
VyprVPN is operated by Golden Frog, a Switzerland-based company, they operates VPN service without third parties, which means they own and maintain their own servers for VPN instead of renting from other companies, this makes their VPN service consistent and safer, they have VPN servers in over 70 countries.
The number of device for simultaneous connection is 3 to 5 depending on the plan the user choose.
For users in China, VyprVPN specifically invented their own proprietary protocol called Chameleon to bypass Great Firewall, the protocol can efficiently masks its VPN traffic to evade from China's blocking on VPNs. The Chameleon protocol is only available for its premium plan.
For its strong technology and high performance, VyprVPN is recommended by some top medias like New York Times and Lifehacker.
Before 2019, one of VyprVPN's drawbacks is that the company will keep users' logging information for 30 days, the information include connection times, bytes of data used and source IP address, they keep these data only for uses of troubleshooting, billing issues and other similar issues. For this reason, many users who care about their online anonymity and often download torrent files would avoid using VyprVPN, as it would ban the user's account once it detects a user downloaded too much torrent files.
However, beginning in the early 2019, VyprVPN changed their logging policy, so that the company will no longer keep users' logging information, and started allowing torrent activities.
And be aware the basic plan doesn't contain the Chameleon protocol and hence may not work well in China, some users who use its basic plan in China reported their VPN is occasionally blocked or interrupted by the Great Firewall.
VyprVPN gives 3-day free trial, and offers its customers 24 hours/7 days live chat support.
Same as ExpressVPN, VyprVPN offers 30-day money-back guarantee for its users. Read the full Review of VyprVPN
Our readers can get 25% off the cost of its annual plans by using this link, or the button below.
5. Ivacy
Advantages: Low Price; Split tunneling feature.
Speed: 4 Mb/s
Starting Price: $2.25/Month
Maximum number of devices for simultaneous connections: 5
Ivacy is a VPN provider based in Singapore, it's maybe lesser known compared to other brands listed above in this page, but it does work to bypass the internet block in China, the speed is also on the fast side, and the service is cheaper compared to most other VPNs.
Ivacy currently has about 460 servers around the world, the number is much lower compared with Surfshark or NordVPN's 3000+ servers, but the servers of Ivacy are well distributed in 50 countries, this is not much less than that of NordVPN, and users can find servers in countries near China. Ivacy allows a single user account connect up to 5 devices at a time, and it has apps available for Windows, MacOS, Android, and iOS. Torrenting is allowed, and it can also unblock streaming sites like Netflix.
Ivacy VPN includes a split-tunneling feature, it lets users select which apps to send their traffic through VPN and which not to, this is particularly helpful for Chinese users, who frequently need to use some Chinese web apps, which will block their access if the visitor is detected to be from outside of China. The feature is also helpful for users who often play online games, which are usually not blocked in China, with split-tunneling users can disable VPN on games to get a faster experience. Only a few VPN providers offer split tunneling, two other notable VPNs that offer this feature are ExpressVPN and Surfshark.
Ivacy offers 30-day money-back guarantee and 24/7 customer support.
6. PureVPN
Advantages: Low price; medium speed; has servers in more than 140 countries, with China included.
Speed: 3 Mb/s
Starting Price: $2.9/Month
Maximum number of devices for simultaneous connections: 5
PureVPN is a VPN service provider based in Hong Kong.
One of its highlights is its low price, the price of its service starts at only $2.9 per month (3-year plan).
However, its speed is slower than that of other VPN providers on this page. PureVPN has about 500 servers in 141 countries, including locations near Mainland China like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan.
PureVPN users are allowed to use its VPN service simultaneously on 5 devices. Its applications can run on most kinds of devices that can connect to internet. Torrenting is allowed via connection to all of its servers, and users can use it to watch the US version Netflix from anywhere in the world.
Like most other VPN providers, PureVPN claims they don't log users' online activities and other user data, however this is not really true, there was a case in which a cyber stalker who uses PureVPN was tracked down by FBI, because PureVPN was asked to provide the user data for the investigation and did that.
It is worth to mention that PureVPN is one of a few VPN providers that have servers set in Mainland China, that means when you left China, you can still access Chinese websites, which are not accessible from outside of China, like Youku, the largest video streaming site in China. It's unclear how they got the permit to have servers set within Mainland China, in which such kind of business is strictly censored.
PureVPN offers 24/7 customer support, but only offers 7-day money-back guarantee for its users.