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Registered in the Seychelles. Beneficial ownership is not published; the App Store listing is under a different company name (Veloxee Corp.).
Public-source facts, not yet checked against primary documents. How we verify.
Lab test pending: score uses public, checkable data only. How we verify.
Verdict
Astrill has the strongest reputation of any provider for actually connecting from inside China, built over fifteen years of expatriate word of mouth and purpose-built protocols. Everything else counts against it: ownership is undisclosed, there is no independent audit, there is no refund, the price is roughly three times the major providers, and its iOS app is the lowest-scoring of any we analyse. Use it as a China backup on a laptop if you can afford it. Do not use it for anything sensitive, and do not choose it anywhere else.
Best for
A second provider for China, on a laptop, for someone who can afford the premium and values connecting over everything else.
Not for
Privacy-motivated users, iPhone users, anyone outside a censored country, or anyone who wants a refund if it does not work.
No refund policy; a short free trial is offered outside China only.
iOS app quality
App Store review analysis
1,017 most recent reviews across 6 storefronts, 2012-12-04 to 2026-09-04. Listing rating 3.70★ from 640 ratings. Version 2.3.8, released 2025-09-09.
40
Billing complaints 16%No update in 362 daysCritical complaints 52.2%
China / censorship
35.7%
iOS integration
22.5%
Crashes & bugs
21.7%
Connection drops
14.2%
Customer support
12.8%
Billing & auto-renew
11.9%
Slow speeds
8.9%
Refund problems
6%
★☆☆☆☆ “Most Servers locations are not able to use or fake foreign locations.” App Store reviewer, 2026-09-02
★☆☆☆☆ “chatgpt and some source recommend that app.” App Store reviewer, 2026-08-29
★★☆☆☆ “It’s impossible to find a link that works.” App Store reviewer, 2026-08-19
★★★★★ “Even watching Netflix is fine without loss of resolution or frame drops (on an IPad).” App Store reviewer, 2026-08-30
★★★★★ “I can actually use it in china!!” App Store reviewer, 2026-08-18
Themes tagged by keyword rules; percentages are share of sampled reviews mentioning the theme. Full breakdown · Method.
Streaming and censorship status
Streaming
NetflixUnreliable
BBC iPlayerUnreliable
Disney+Unknown
HuluUnknown
Prime VideoUnknown
Restricted countries
ChinaWorks
United Arab EmiratesWorks
RussiaUnreliable
IranUnreliable
TürkiyeWorks
Basis: user reports and provider statements; our own checks pending.
The one thing it does
Astrill has been the expatriate community’s China VPN since around 2009. StealthVPN and OpenWeb were built to pass the Great Firewall’s inspection, Astrill maintains servers tuned for mainland routes, and when other providers go dark in a sensitive week, Astrill tends to be the one still connecting. That reputation is real, it is earned over fifteen years, and it is the entire reason Astrill appears on this site.
Everything else
Ownership is undisclosed: Astrill Systems Corp. in the Seychelles, with the App Store listing under a different company name, and no beneficial owner published anywhere. No independent audit of any kind. No transparency report. Closed-source apps. No refund policy — a short free trial outside China is the only way to test it. And the price: around $150 a year, roughly three times NordVPN or Surfshark, for a smaller network and fewer features.
On this site’s privacy dimension, an unknown owner and no audit score at the bottom, and Astrill sits on the not recommended list for that reason. It is on the China page because working there is a different question from being trustworthy.
Protocols, network and features
StealthVPN, OpenWeb, WireGuard and OpenVPN. Servers in around 58 countries with an emphasis on Asia-Pacific. Multi-hop, port forwarding, dedicated IPs, a router applet, split tunnelling, a kill switch, and ad blocking. Five devices. Live chat support, which is responsive.
What it costs
Plan
Price
Renewal
Notes
Monthly
~$30
~$30
1 year
~$150
~$150
$12.50/mo
No refund. The most expensive provider on the site by a wide margin.
Streaming and censorship
Streaming is not the point and is inconsistent in reports. In China it is the reference; in the UAE it works; in Russia and Iran intermittent.
The iPhone app
This month’s App Store analysis of 1,000 recent reviews makes Astrill’s the lowest-scoring iOS VPN app we track: over half of sampled reviews raise a critical problem, crashes and connection failures lead, the listing rating is 3.70 stars, and the app goes long stretches without updates. On an iPhone in China, ExpressVPN or Proton are the better bets. Full breakdown.
How to use it, if you do
As the second provider on a laptop, installed before travel, for the weeks when the first one is blocked. Not for banking, not for anything you would not want an unknown company to see, and not on an iPhone.
The alternatives, if the price stops you
Astrill’s premium is real: roughly $150 a year against $54 for Surfshark’s two-year plan. If that is too much, the China page on this site ranks ExpressVPN first among mainstream providers, and its record there is close to Astrill’s at half the cost with an actual audit behind it. NordVPN’s obfuscated servers and Proton’s Stealth protocol are the next options, and Proton’s free tier costs nothing to keep installed as a third fallback.
The argument for paying Astrill anyway is redundancy. Expatriates who depend on a connection for work tend to keep two providers, and Astrill is the one people keep when the first fails. Treated that way — a backup on a laptop, bought for a year, never used for anything sensitive — the price is easier to justify than it looks in a comparison table.
Assembled from public sources; confirm operating entity, jurisdiction and audit history against primary documents.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns Astrill?
Astrill Systems Corp., registered in the Seychelles. Beneficial ownership is not published, and the App Store listing is under a different name, Veloxee Corp. This site marks the owner as unknown, which is a disqualifying fact on the privacy list.
Is Astrill safe?
There is no independent audit, no published ownership, no transparency report, and closed-source apps. There is also no public incident on record. 'Safe' cannot be established either way, which for a privacy product is the same as no. It is a tool for getting past a firewall, not a privacy service.
How much does Astrill cost?
About $30 monthly or $150 a year ($12.50 a month), roughly three times NordVPN or Surfshark on any term. There is no money-back guarantee; a short free trial is offered outside China only.
Does Astrill work in China?
Yes, in expatriate reports more consistently than any other provider, using StealthVPN and OpenWeb and China-optimised servers. It degrades during sensitive weeks like everything else. Install before arrival; the website is blocked.
Does Astrill keep logs?
It says it keeps no activity logs and retains connection metadata for a short period. Nobody independent has checked.
Why is the iOS app rated so badly?
It is updated rarely, crashes and connection failures dominate its reviews, and over half of recent App Store reviews raise a critical problem — the highest rate of any app we track. Astrill's strength is on desktop.
