Best VPN for China 2023

VPN Forum
1

Hi all, will be back in China later this year after a few month hiatus, and I want some thoughts on a good VPN to use for now in 2023.

Express is known trash, as is Nord. Used both end of last year 2022 in China and reliability was trash.

PureVPN worked well enough then, but reliability was very imperfect and slow, so easily detected by GFW. A good backup at this point IMO.

What are some good options? Astrill I hear is good, but pricey. I don’t mind re-flashing my router with dd-wrt and configuring it that way, but seems like more trouble than it’s worth. Also open to some local Chinese options.

Deeper Network card? Shadowsocks? I’m looking for something GFW-bypassing solutions with a balance of minimal setup, maximum uptime, minimal throttling, and lowest price. Any suggestions?

Edit: the ideal solution would work equally well on both MacOS and iOS

2

100$ per year, where please?

it’s 180€ for me before tax, the final price at point of credit card entry was 230€ per year.

Paying 230€ for something that works 90% of the time while there are better alternatives is up to each individual.

Seems like these are now becoming ads for astrill, read old posts ffs, there are two per day now that China has opened.

3

Astrill works 99% of the time for me. I spend more in two days to satisfy my coffee habit than I spend on Astrill each month.

I also need it for work so the yearly fee is covered after two-three hours of work.

It is well-worth it.

4

Wouldn’t suggest VPN, just use some self built proxy server, they are the best, I used dlercloud.com, pretty good, on their website they have the software to use for everything platform.

5

I usually say Astrill but for the past week it’s been unreliable and not loading pages, for the first time ever.

6

Astril is ~$100 a year, its works perfectly. How much are you guys earning over here that it comes off as pricey? Do you need to move to China to be a barista at starbucks?

(not specifically you, i’ve just heard astril described as pricey a lot recently in this subreddit)

It’s the only one that works in China probably because OpenWeb has some backdoors.