Does Claude Work in China?

What happens when you open Claude in China

Claude doesn’t work in China on local mobile data and Wi-Fi. Two separate things stop it: China’s firewall, and Anthropic’s own block on users in China.

GreatFire keeps a test history for claude.ai. Asked whether claude.ai opens from mainland China, it answers “Sometimes” and calls access unreliable. Its last test was on October 18, 2026. Anthropic’s Chinese-language overview of Claude Code warns that on mainland China’s networks, claude.ai and the Anthropic API may not be directly reachable.

When a connection does get through, Anthropic blocks users in China itself. AFP reported in July 2026 that Anthropic blocks users and companies in China from its products, and SCMP reported in October 2026 that it continues to block users from mainland China. The Claude app isn’t in Apple’s China App Store either: Apple’s App Store lookup returns no result for it in China.

Is Claude available in mainland China?

No. Anthropic’s Supported Regions Policy lists every country and region where its products are available, and it leaves out mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. Taiwan is on the list. The policy covers Anthropic’s apps, including Claude.ai, Claude Code and Cowork, its API, and Claude models offered through cloud platforms and authorized resellers. Anthropic’s help center and API docs leave out the same three places.

We checked the policy page on October 19, 2026. It shows a version that takes effect on November 12, 2026, with the same list of countries as the version in force since May 12, 2026.

Anthropic says any region not on the list is unsupported, and spells out what that includes:

• Use by people while they’re physically in an unsupported region, including staff of companies in supported countries.
• Use by companies incorporated or headquartered in an unsupported region, wherever their staff are.
• Use by companies majority-owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by people or companies in unsupported regions.

Anthropic added the ownership rule in September 2025. It said companies “subject to control from authoritarian regions like China” face legal requirements that can compel them to share data or cooperate with intelligence services, and that companies from restricted regions had kept using its services through subsidiaries in other countries.

These limits are separate from China’s firewall. A service can be blocked on Chinese networks, unavailable to users in China by the company’s choice, or both, and Claude is both. Anthropic’s troubleshooting guide for Claude Code tells the two apart: an “App unavailable in region” error means Claude Code isn’t available in your country, while a timeout or “Could not resolve host” means your network is blocking the connection. In Hong Kong, the restriction comes from Anthropic: SCMP described it in October 2026 as Anthropic’s geographical restrictions, which users there had got around by connecting through VPNs to supported places such as Singapore. SCMP notes that OpenAI also keeps its services blocked in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau; our page on ChatGPT in China covers how that works.

Is Claude now officially available in China?

No. Anthropic’s list of supported regions, checked on October 19, 2026, still leaves out mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.

What changed in October 2026 is the language. SCMP confirmed on October 8 that Claude’s web interface now lets users pick simplified or traditional Chinese, and reported that China briefly appeared as a billing country option before disappearing from the settings. The same report said Anthropic continues to block users from mainland China. Poe Zhao, a China technology analyst, told SCMP that the changes aim to serve Chinese speakers in supported markets such as Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and North America. “Offering a product in Chinese and serving users in China are two different decisions,” he said.

Does Claude Code work in China?

Not officially, and by default not on Chinese networks. Claude Code’s setup guide lists Anthropic’s supported countries under its requirements, and its troubleshooting guide says the “App unavailable in region” error means Claude Code isn’t available in your country.

Anthropic’s Chinese-language overview of Claude Code adds a note for mainland China. In our translation, it says that by default Claude Code needs to reach endpoints such as claude.ai and the Anthropic API to install, log in and work normally, and that on mainland China’s networks these endpoints may not be directly reachable. GreatFire’s test history for api.anthropic.com also answers “Sometimes” for mainland China. Its last test was on October 11, 2026.

The Claude API falls under the same rules. Anthropic’s API docs keep their own list of supported regions, which also leaves out mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, and the Supported Regions Policy also covers Claude models offered through cloud platforms and resellers. SCMP reported in July 2026 that Claude Code is hugely popular in Chinese developer communities, although Anthropic has not made it officially available in China, including Hong Kong.

Is Claude banned in China?

Claude is blocked on Chinese networks, and Anthropic doesn’t allow its use in China. In July 2026, a Chinese government cybersecurity platform also warned users about some versions of Claude Code.

The warning came from the National Vulnerability Database (NVDB), a cybersecurity platform under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. According to Yicai, the NVDB said Claude Code had a built-in monitoring mechanism that could send users’ location, identity identifiers and other sensitive information to remote servers without their consent. It named versions 2.1.91 to 2.1.196 and told organizations and users to uninstall them or upgrade to the latest version with the code removed (our translation).

Anthropic’s response focused on who was using the tool. A spokesperson told SCMP that the company’s usage policy has always prohibited access by China-based users. Claude Code engineer Thariq Shihipar had written that the code was “an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation”, and that it would be rolled back, AFP reported. Distillation means using one AI model’s outputs to train another.

Alibaba banned its staff from using Claude Code from July 10, 2026, according to people familiar with the matter quoted by AFP and an insider quoted by Yicai Global. Yicai Global reported that Alibaba recommended its own coding platform, Qoder, instead.

Signing up for Claude

To create a Claude account, you need a phone number from a supported location that can receive texts, and Anthropic says there’s no way to skip this step. Numbers from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau don’t qualify, because none of them is a supported location. Anthropic’s help center also rules out VoIP numbers, Google Voice, numbers created with apps, and landlines. One number can verify at most three accounts, and you can’t change the number once it’s verified.

The help center adds that only users physically located in a supported location can create and use Claude accounts. Anthropic lists “account creation from an unsupported location” among the reasons it may ban an account.

With a VPN

A VPN can get you to Claude from China, but using Claude that way breaks Anthropic’s rules. Anthropic’s policy is about where you are, not where your connection appears to come from: use by people while physically in an unsupported region is unsupported. Its Usage Policy lists access that violates the Supported Regions Policy under “Do Not Abuse Our Platform”.

AFP reported in July 2026 that it’s still possible to use Anthropic’s products in China through a VPN or third-party proxy services. Users have also reported suspended accounts. Yicai Global reported in July 2026 that many Chinese users had found their Claude accounts suspended without warning since late June. On October 2, 2026, SCMP reported that Hong Kong users who had used Claude through VPNs for months found their accounts suddenly disabled. One wrote on Reddit that Anthropic’s safeguards team cited “suspicious signals” and would revoke the account for usage policy violations, after six months of use through NordVPN from Hong Kong. SCMP noted that Anthropic hadn’t announced a new VPN policy. Poe Zhao told SCMP that Anthropic relies on payment checks, IP detection and account reviews.

Compare the VPNs we track on our VPN page, and read Is using a VPN legal in China? before you go.

On a roaming eSIM

A travel eSIM or home roaming can get you past China’s firewall, but it doesn’t change Anthropic’s rule about where you are. Salil Kanhere, a cybersecurity expert at UNSW, told the Bega District News in July 2026 that certain travel eSIMs bypass mainland filtering by routing traffic through offshore gateways such as Hong Kong, Singapore or Australia. A local Chinese SIM or a China-specific eSIM, he said, typically remains subject to local filtering.

Where the eSIM’s data comes out matters for Anthropic’s block too. On Reddit, users warn that an eSIM whose data comes out in Hong Kong won’t work with Claude, because Anthropic doesn’t support Hong Kong. Our guide eSIM or VPN for China? explains how eSIM routing works.

Claude in China: what Reddit users report

Reddit reports from 2026 are mixed. They’re individual accounts, not tests.

• Travel eSIMs: In an October 2026 r/travelchina thread, one traveler said they used Claude, ChatGPT and DeepSeek on a Trip.com eSIM for all of September without issues. Another had used Claude on an eSIM without a VPN for a few weeks. A traveler in Chengdu said Claude didn’t work on a Trip.com eSIM while ChatGPT did. Two users said they had been banned, one after using Claude on an eSIM for under an hour during a layover.
• UK routing: In August 2026, a user on another r/travelchina thread said an eSIM whose data came out in the UK didn’t help, because Claude blocked the IP address.
• Claude Code: In a June 2026 r/China thread about Claude Code, users said Claude worked for them over a VPN. One called it hit or miss and said they sometimes had to switch servers during the day.
• Suspensions: In October 2026, a user based in China wrote on r/chinalife that Claude had suspended their account and that they had lost their data. They tried Kimi’s paid plan, and replies named Qwen, DeepSeek and Doubao.

Chinese alternatives

China has its own chatbots, and people in China use them without a VPN.

• DeepSeek: From the startup of the same name, which NPR names among China’s prominent AI startups. A Reddit user wrote in October 2026 that its free tier was fine and very fast for basic questions and translations during a week in Shanghai.
• Doubao: ByteDance’s chatbot. NPR calls it China’s most popular, and says it’s built into Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
• Qwen: Alibaba’s chatbot. NPR says it can order things for you and pay through Alipay. A user in China wrote on r/chinalife that Qwen does everything they need without a VPN.
• Kimi: Made by Moonshot AI, according to its App Store listing in China. NPR names Moonshot AI among China’s prominent AI startups.
• Qoder: Alibaba’s agentic coding platform, which Alibaba recommended to its staff in place of Claude Code, according to Yicai Global.

Our guide to AI tools in China covers which Chinese chatbots you can sign up for without a Chinese phone number.

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• AI tools in China
• eSIM or VPN for China?
• Corporate VPN in China
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