China eSIM
Data for China on China Unicom and China Mobile, from $5.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and you install Orbislo once rather than once per trip.
- Networks
- China Unicom and China Mobile
- Real speed
- 41 Mbps median, 10 Mbps for the slowest tenth1,130 travellers, rolling 90 days
- 5G
- yes, non standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for China
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $5.89 | $5.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $2.96 | $8.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $2.38 | $11.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $1.89 | $18.89 | |
| 20 GB | Never expires | $1.49 | $29.89 | |
| 50 GB | Never expires | $1.36 | $67.89 |
Every plan works the moment you land. Unused data returns to your wallet when the plan ends, and there is 100 MB of free rescue data on your account even at zero balance.
What 41 Mbps actually means in China
Travellers on Orbislo in China see a median download of 41 Mbps, measured across 1130 real sessions rather than a speed test we ran ourselves. That sits close to the Asia median of 46 Mbps, which makes China an unremarkable place to be connected, in the good sense.
The tenth percentile is 10 Mbps. That gap between the median and the floor is normal and it is where the frustration lives: the connection is quick most of the time and noticeably slow in the busiest few percent of moments, typically at transport hubs at peak hour.
That is enough for everything most travellers do: maps, messaging, video calls, streaming at high definition, and tethering a laptop for ordinary work. It is not enough to be casual about uploading a day of raw photographs.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in China on China Unicom and China Mobile. Your phone is not tied to one of them. When the network you are attached to congests or drops, the profile moves you to the other, and it happens without a prompt and without you noticing anything except that the connection kept working.
This matters more than the headline speed. Almost every travel eSIM sold today resells a single upstream agreement per country, so when that one network has a bad hour you have a bad hour with it and your only option is to buy a second eSIM from somebody else. A profile with more than one network behind it can make a decision you never see.
5G in China: yes, non standalone. Worth knowing that 5G on a travel profile is normal rather than special, and that the tenth percentile above is the number that will decide how the trip feels, not the generation label in the status bar.
What data costs in China
A 5 GB plan for China starts at $11.89, which is $2.38 a gigabyte. That is the number to compare between providers, because a headline price attached to a different allowance tells you nothing.
The comparison most providers would rather you did not run is cost per gigabyte actually used. Independent surveys of travel data put the share of purchased data lost to expiry between 20 and 35 percent, because a plan that expires on day thirty deletes what you did not get through. Orbislo data has no expiry date, so the gigabyte you paid for is still there on the next trip. At the same headline price that is 25 to 40 percent more usable data, and in China it means the effective cost is nearer $1.71 a gigabyte than $2.38.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for China is to buy slightly less than you think you need and top up if you run out. Topping up takes about ten seconds and does not involve installing anything. Buying too much is the expensive mistake everywhere else and merely a neutral one here.
Landing in China
Install before you fly, on your home wifi. The profile downloads while you still have a connection you trust, then sits dormant until you land in China and it attaches to China Unicom. Median time from tapping install to having service across all Orbislo orders is 41 seconds.
On landing there is one thing to check and it is the thing that goes wrong about sixty percent of the time people tell us they have no service: data roaming has to be switched on for the Orbislo line. It is off by default on both iOS and Android, and it has nothing to do with roaming charges here, because the plan is prepaid and there is no bill to run up. Turn it on for the Orbislo line and leave it off for your home line, and your home number keeps working for calls and bank codes without costing anything.
One local thing worth knowing before you buy, which we put in the buy flow rather than in the terms: Our traffic leaves the mainland, so Google, WhatsApp and Instagram work without a VPN. Roaming eSIMs are the simplest way to stay on your usual apps here.
Coverage across China
The measurements above are aggregated across China, and a national median hides real variation. We publish separate figures for Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Xian, because the difference between a capital and a coastal town is usually larger than the difference between two countries.
Outside the cities, coverage follows the same pattern it does everywhere: the main roads and the tourist corridors are well served, and it thins in the mountains and on the water. No travel eSIM changes that, because it is the same physical network the local population uses. What a multi network profile changes is which of the available towers you get to use.
How China compares across Asia
- Speed rank
- 15 of 26 destinations we sell in Asia
- Regional median
- 44 Mbps
- Consistency
- The slowest tenth still reaches 24 percent of the median
- Upstream networks
- 2, China Unicom, China Mobile
- 5G
- Yes, non standalone
- Next fastest nearby
- Cambodia, 42 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- Indonesia, 38 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 4: Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Xian
- tenth percentile
- 10 Mbps
- Behind these figures
- 1130 travellers, rolling 90 days
