Most travel VPN articles are really about China. A VPN is just as useful in Bangkok, Manila or Singapore, and we travel with one switched on. China is the least interesting reason.
Three moments it helps
Hotel Wi-Fi that asks you to agree to something first. A captive portal inspects your traffic to decide whether to let you through. Most of that is billing logic. But a hotel network is shared, run on a hospitality budget and patched on a hospitality schedule by staff whose job is not network security. Every other guest in the building is on it with you.
The airport, in the ninety minutes before a flight. People check in, move money and answer work messages on the most public network of the whole trip. Have the tunnel up by default here. The setting that does it is auto-connect on any network the app does not recognise.
Your bank. The banking app’s own encryption keeps it secure, and the VPN adds nothing to that. The VPN helps because banks watch where you log in from. A login from an unfamiliar network in an unfamiliar country is the pattern their fraud systems are built to stop, and a consistent exit point makes your behaviour look like your behaviour. Some banks treat VPN endpoints as suspicious, though. If yours does, use your own mobile data for banking and the tunnel for everything else.
What we do on the road
We use NordVPN on phones and Proton VPN where we want a separate provider on a second device. The habit matters more than the choice.
- Install it at home and use it for a week first. The common failure is landing, finding the network worse than expected, and trying to download a VPN client on that same network. Some networks block the app store entry for VPN apps. Have the app on the phone and signed in before you fly.
- Turn on always-on or auto-connect for untrusted networks. A tool you have to remember to switch on gets forgotten in the immigration queue.
- Keep your own mobile data as the fallback for anything that matters. Roaming or a local eSIM is a private connection in a way hotel Wi-Fi never is, and it costs less than the problem it avoids.
China
Mainland China is a different problem, and we would rather say so than sell you a solution. The legal position is ambiguous. China regulates VPN provision, and the services travellers use are not authorised ones. Enforcement has focused on providers and on residents rather than on visitors using a phone in a hotel room, but “rarely enforced against tourists” is not the same as “permitted”.
Most services that work everywhere else stop working there, and which ones survive changes month to month. If you need connectivity in mainland China for work, an international roaming plan on your home SIM routes through your home carrier and sidesteps the question. That is the boring answer and usually the right one.
Choosing between them
We have written up how NordVPN, Proton and 1Password overlap. All three now include password management, so check what you already pay for before adding another subscription. If you are not sure a tunnel changes anything for you, the free tier is the cheap way to find out before you commit to a year of anything.
Where this comes from
This is our own view, from using these tools on the road. No government page endorses a VPN, and an article claiming official backing for a product recommendation is wrong. Weigh this as experience.
NordVPN is what we travel on. Set it up at home, before you fly Currently 75% off plus 3 months extra through this link. Our full write-up. (affiliate link)
Proton VPN is the alternative to look at, especially if you also want off Google (affiliate link)