Pay for the trip, not the residency.
A 3-day free trial to prove the routing on your destination, then $9.99 for the week. No $30 minimum, no phone verification, no all-sales-final fine print.
Astrill is the VPN China expats pay $30 a month for. If you're taking a trip rather than moving there, you can get a private server and smarter routing for $9.99, with nothing to cancel.
A $9.99 Travel Pass covers 7 days on a private server that's yours alone, with routing that keeps WeChat, Alipay, Didi, and local maps fast while Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, and Gmail flow through the tunnel. No account, no auto-renew, nothing to cancel.
Astrill has a decade-long track record of staying up through censorship crackdowns, purpose-built stealth protocols, and premium CN2 routes. Long-term expats pay the $30/month because it has earned that trust.
Astrill is priced and built for people who live behind the firewall. For a one- or two-week trip, its $30 minimum with no refunds is hard to justify against a $9.99 pass, and its iPhone app routes everything through the tunnel while ours routes per app automatically.
Prices and features as of August 2026, from each product's own published pages.
| Traveler's VPN | Astrill | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost for a one-week trip | $9.99, one-time Travel Pass | $30 minimum (1-month plan), no refunds |
| Ongoing price | $14.99/month, cancel anytime | $30/month, or $15/month billed $180/year. VIP servers from $10/month extra |
| Refund policy | Free 3-day trial before paying; subscription cancels in Settings | "All sales are final and no refunds are possible" (Astrill FAQ) |
| Account required | None. No email, no signup | Email account; trial requires phone verification |
| Per-app smart routing on iPhone | Automatic. Local apps stay direct, home apps route home | Not available on iOS (desktop and Android only). Connected means everything tunnels |
| Your own server | Private server provisioned just for you | Shared servers; premium VIP routes metered from 100 GB/month |
| Data allowance | 1 TB per pass or per month | Unmetered on standard servers; VIP tiers metered (100 GB to 1 TB) |
| Bring your own server | $2.99 one-time unlock (Outline, WireGuard, Shadowsocks, Trojan) | Not supported |
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad, and native Mac app in one purchase, Family Sharing included | Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, routers; 5 simultaneous connections |
Astrill figures from astrill.com pricing and FAQ pages, August 2026. Astrill's Smart Mode on iOS routes by website region over its OpenWeb protocol; per-app filtering is desktop and Android only.
Astrill answers one question extremely well: "can I reach the blocked internet from inside China?" It has answered it reliably for over a decade, which is why expats keep paying for it.
But a traveler has a second question Astrill's iPhone app doesn't answer: "do the apps I need in China keep working while I'm connected?" On iOS, Astrill has no per-app filtering. When the tunnel is up, your Didi ride-hailing, Alipay payments, Meituan orders, and local maps ride through a foreign server too, which makes them slow or breaks them outright. So you toggle. All day.
Traveler's VPN was built around that second question. The routing engine decides per destination: WeChat, Alipay, Didi, and local maps stay direct and fast, while WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, X, Gmail, and everything else the firewall blocks goes through the tunnel. Automatically, on iPhone, up to ~10x faster on local apps because their traffic never crosses the planet twice.
There's also the server model. Astrill puts you on shared infrastructure, and its best China routes (the CN2 "VIP" servers) cost from $10/month extra with a 100 GB cap. Traveler's VPN provisions a private server that only you use, included in the pass or subscription, with 1 TB of data.
If that's what you need, Astrill is a fair choice. Most travelers don't need it; they need a week of their phone just working.
Yes, as of August 2026 Astrill's monthly plan is $30, with a 1-year plan at $15/month ($180 billed up front) and a 2-year plan at $12.50/month ($300 up front). The VIP add-on for its premium Asia routes starts at another $10/month. Astrill's FAQ states all sales are final with no refunds.
No. Astrill's per-app Application Filter is available on desktop and Android only. On iOS, Astrill offers Smart Mode (website-region routing over its OpenWeb protocol) and a manual website list, but every app's traffic goes through the tunnel when connected. Traveler's VPN routes per destination automatically on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
For long-term residents, Astrill has the strongest track record of any commercial VPN and we won't pretend otherwise. Traveler's VPN takes a different approach: instead of shared commercial endpoints that censors target, you get a private server on an IP address only you use, which has no public reputation to block. For a trip, that private-server model plus smart routing is the better fit; for multi-year residency, redundancy matters and many expats keep two options installed.
Yes. The app is free to download and the managed server starts with a 3-day free trial, no account and no payment up front. If the routing works for you, grab a $9.99 Travel Pass for the trip or keep the $14.99/month subscription. Astrill's 7-day trial requires an email account plus phone-number verification.
A 3-day free trial to prove the routing on your destination, then $9.99 for the week. No $30 minimum, no phone verification, no all-sales-final fine print.