Does Astrill work in China?

As of Sep 10, 2026, Astrill was last confirmed working in China on Aug 11, 2026, and we have not re-verified it since.

Status: working (unconfirmed since Aug 11, 2026)
Confidence: low
Last verified: Aug 11, 2026
Method: StealthVPN (TCP mode) required; install and sign up before arrival (website confirmed blocked in-country, OONI, daily through 2026-08-10); occasional server switching expected.

Astrill was last confirmed working in China on Aug 11, 2026. We have not re-verified it since. Get Astrill

What we're seeing

No evidence of StealthVPN breaking has appeared since the April 2026 firewall upgrade: a Q2 2026 technical report on the Great Firewall, fetched August 11, says plain OpenVPN and WireGuard are reliably blocked while disguised TLS traffic of the class StealthVPN uses still passes. OONI measurements show astrill.com blocked in China every day from July 1 through August 10 (0 OK, 25 anomalies), which confirms the sign-up-before-arrival note but says nothing about the tunnel. We could not reach any fresh in-country user report this pass (Reddit and Trustpilot were unavailable, V2EX has nothing newer than August 2025), so confidence drops from medium to low rather than coasting on silence.

Sources for the above:

user_report (Aug 11, 2026): OONI community measurements, China, country aggregate (volume too thin to pin an ASN). Bare host astrill.com: 0 OK, 25 anomalies across July 1 to Aug 10. Vendor website blocked daily and continuously. Caveat: a blocked vendor website does not prove the tunnel fails; here it only confirms the "sign up before arrival" method note. 2.
news (Aug 11, 2026): Q2 2026 GFW state-of-play. Plain OpenVPN and WireGuard "easily blocked"; disguise-capable TLS traffic still passing. Cites Sept 2025 source-code leak saying 9+ commercial VPNs were "dealt with", list unpublished; Astrill not named. Context for why an obfuscated-OpenVPN protocol like StealthVPN plausibly still passes, not direct evidence that it does. 4.
user_report (Aug 11, 2026): www host, June-Aug: 13 anomaly days, 1 OK (June 6), 0 confirmed. Same picture as bare host, no change in the block over the window (i.e., no new escalation visible at the website layer). 3.
forum (Aug 11, 2026): Chinese-language review, affiliate class, near-zero weight. Notably it does NOT confirm Astrill currently works; it criticizes price and refund policy and offers no test data, no protocol detail, no ISP detail. Recorded mainly because it is the only in-window Chinese-language item found.
reddit (Jul 21, 2026): Mid-July 2026 thread (snippet-observed): Astrill named a working long-time favorite; advice is to install two VPNs before arrival

Common questions

Is using a VPN legal in China?

Only government-licensed VPNs are legal. The 2017 rules ban unlicensed services, and authorities have penalized individual users. Enforcement against visitors is rare but not zero. We report availability, not legal advice.

Do VPNs still work in China after the 2026 firewall upgrade?

Mostly no. As of July 2026, Astrill with StealthVPN is the only VPN we verified working. NordVPN and Proton connect intermittently with obfuscation. Most others are blocked or unreliable.

Can I download a VPN from inside China?

Usually not. Vendor websites are blocked in-country and Western app stores are unreachable without a VPN. Install and sign up before you arrive, and carry a backup.