Which apps work in China?

Of the 33 apps in this table, we expect 20 to be blocked on a Chinese SIM card or hotel Wi-Fi, and 11 to work with nothing extra. The pattern is easy to remember: most big American consumer apps are out, while most apps a Chinese company depends on are in.

Almost everything from Google is blocked, and so is everything from Meta: WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. X, Snapchat, TikTok, Telegram, Signal, Discord and Reddit sit behind the same filters. So do most streaming services, including YouTube, Netflix and Spotify.

“Banned” is the word people search for, but “blocked” is closer. The filter stops the connection. It does nothing to the app on your phone, so a blocked app opens normally and then quietly fails to send or load. People usually blame their signal first.

More than you might expect. iMessage and FaceTime carry on working between iPhones. Outlook and Microsoft Teams remain reachable, which is why many international offices in China run on them. Apple Maps and Amap both work and are better there than Google Maps in any case.

The Chinese apps you’ll use most, such as WeChat, Alipay, WeChat Pay, DiDi and Trip.com, were built for these networks, so they’re fast on anything. Foreign visitors can use them too, with a foreign phone number and card.

Each app has two answers, because the network decides more than the app does:

• Local SIM & Wi-Fi covers a Chinese SIM card, plus hotel, café and airport Wi-Fi. These connect inside China, where the filters are.
• Roaming eSIM covers a travel eSIM that carries your data abroad before it reaches the internet. Your home SIM’s roaming normally behaves the same way.

Last tested is where the date of a real test goes. It says “Not yet” for now because we haven’t run the tests, so every status here is what public reports lead you to expect. See how the tests will work.

Two kinds of app don’t fit the simple pattern. AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are blocked in China, and they may also fail on roaming eSIMs whose data exits in Hong Kong, because those services don’t serve Hong Kong. If you rely on them, the exit country of your eSIM matters.

Zoom isn’t blocked in the normal sense, but it has limited sign-ups and sales in the mainland since 2020, so joining may work where hosting doesn’t. Apple Pay has nothing to do with the network at all. Whether it works depends on the shop’s terminal and your card.

Hong Kong and Macau have their own internet rules, and these filters don’t apply there. If your trip starts in Hong Kong and crosses into Shenzhen or takes the train to Guangzhou, everything can stop at the border, so finish your setup before you cross. The internet guide has the options side by side.