Back in China for a 3 week biz trip. My last time here was March, at that time Astrill was great. I had ditched Express, went for 2 year Astrill sub.
And now … totally unstable. What happened ??
Any tips for the best server to try?
My Android app is constantly kinda crashing. It appears ok but it fact it doesn’t respond and the connection is lost. I have to force stop it and restart.
Yep it’s been bad for a couple weeks now. Need to used stealth. Even then it’s still spotty for me
Unless you have specific countries selection requirements the best is still to use Chinese or Taiwanese VPN. They are much cheaper and must reliable thank any of these foreign VPN. The only issue is that you have limited selection of countries. Other than that they work so much better than Astrill.
When my friend gave me his Astrill account I thought I would ditch my Chinese vpn. Now I still use my Chinese VPN and only switch to Astrill when I need french server.
In Shenzhen atm and Openweb is completely fucked - I’ve had to use stealth and wireguard for the past few weeks on my PC at least. iPhone app still seems to work fine.
Pretty disappointed with Astrill lately. Been using them for 5-6 years and usually it’s been quite reliable from my experience. I’ve also tried ExpressVPN intermittently during this time and while some love it, I’ve had more problems with Express either not being able to connect at all to servers or having it drop consistently.
However, definitely gonna look at alternatives after my sub is up this time. With the price increasing every year, and a noticeable drop in both service and quality, not really worth the premium price imo.
Normally there would only be one incident a year where I would run into problems for about a week or so and then it would be fixed, but this year I’ve encountered this at least 3-4 times and for much longer than usual.
I was traveling in China few days ago, I used LetsVPN and it was very stable and the price much cheaper than Astrill
I’ve been using ostrich, it’s free, and only downside is chat gpt doesn’t work
Astril was always shit. I’ve only ever used ClashVPN, it has some issues, for example, I wasn’t able to download Android Studio with it for some reason, but otherwise it’s been good, and you can try it for 15 minutes free (resets every day) so you can see if it works well for you.
This is reality of living in China, sometimes VPN works, sometimes it does not.
Makes sure you have a few alternatives ready just in case, eSIM ChinaLink worked well for me as well, does not require VPN, it’s just a sim package for expats, but it does have GB per day limit.
Astrill is and always was a massive scam.
I’m using letsVPN and it’s been fine and a lot less than Astrill. I used Astrill before too then had problems. VPN.ac has also been reliable for me.
I don’t know why people still think Astrill is reliable 
. It’s too expensive for the service they provide (unreliable connection)
Dude I’m so glad to hear someone else say that (I mean, not glad, it absolutely sucks!). I thought this was just me and it’s driving me INSANE. You realise you’re not connected anymore, go to the app to flick it off and on, and it gets stuck when turning off. Into settings, force stop, restart, over and over, dozens of times a day.
I’m sort of tied to Astrill cos my TV box has it built in and needs an account to run, otherwise I’d be trying other options.
Yes, like that. I’m also on Android. Shows connected in phone status bar, but had actually lost the connection.
It’s connected as I type this reply, so it isn’t bad all the time. Just randomly drops and doesn’t reconnect.
I’ve switched to Stealth mode, “Taiwan Supercharged” server, and this seems MUCH better.
Fair comment, but I have an Astrill subscription with a year remaining, and it already loaded into my laptop, 2 phones and tablet. And it worked on previous trips without any issues.
That said, I’ve now changed from OpenWeb to Stealth, and using Taiwan server - and this combo seems to work.
Is there any disadvantage of Stealth, compared to OpenWeb? Now that I switched, it seems to be working better.
But you may just randomly get your service cut off by some AI.
Astrill employees out in full force downvoting everyone in this comments section 
You’re being downvoted but it’s totally true lmao. It’s very clearly a service catered to overcharge foreigners for a subpar service, I have no fucking idea why people are so hellbent on defending it. I pay ¥30 per month, get 300mbs+ speeds and it was never blocked by any amount of time, and all it takes to set up is click a button to import the clash setting
Having issues with lets the last couple of days, it’s very intermittent and cutting off regularly. Is the Party having some sort of conference, usually the internet gets spotty about the time they do?