The Apps You Actually Need in China — and Why You Install Them Before You Fly

Almost every “apps for China” list hands you twenty apps and leaves you to it. You need four. The harder problem isn’t choosing them — it’s that you have to install them before you fly, because once you’re inside China you often can’t install anything at all.

This page covers the four that do 90% of the work, the second tier worth adding for specific trips, and the one trick that solves the biggest catch: the apps that demand a Chinese phone number usually have a version that doesn’t.

The 30-second answer

• Install everything at home, on Wi-Fi, before you fly. Android users can’t rely on the Google Play Store in China at all, and apps you can’t reach can’t be downloaded.
• Four apps cover almost everything: Alipay, WeChat, a map, and a translator.
• Alipay is the single most useful app in China — it pays, it opens metro gates, it hails cars, and it hosts the mini-programs that replace the apps you can’t register for.
• Start two weeks out, not the night before. Registering the official train app can take several working days of passport verification, and a new WeChat account may need a friend to vouch for you.
• You do not need a Chinese SIM for food delivery, rides or payments — the Alipay and WeChat versions of those apps work with a foreign number.

Why “install it before you fly” is not just advice

This is the part most guides skip, and it’s the part that decides whether your first afternoon in China goes smoothly.

Google Play doesn’t work in China. Google services have been blocked for years, and Chinese-market Android phones ship without them. If you’re on Android and you land without an app installed, you may simply not be able to get it. Reports differ on whether international roaming or an overseas eSIM gets you around this — the block targets the service rather than your connection, so don’t bet your trip on it working. Install first, and treat anything you install later as a bonus.

On iPhone the App Store works — but the region is decided by your Apple ID, not your location. Your App Store region is tied to your account’s billing country, so a home-country Apple ID keeps its home apps while you’re in China, and a VPN won’t change it. It also works the other way: apps pulled from the China-region store (including unapproved VPN apps) stay out of reach unless you have an account in another region.

Some apps verify your passport before they’ll sell you anything. China’s official train app is the clearest case: you can register with a foreign passport, but the passport check takes a few working days online — or about ten minutes in person at a station ticket window. Do that at home, not in a queue on your first morning.

Offline packs and VPNs can’t be fetched from inside. Google Translate’s offline language pack, your VPN, offline maps — download all of it while you still have an unfiltered connection. See the connectivity guide for the full picture on the Great Firewall.

The core four

Alipay — the one app that does the most

If you install only one app for China, make it this one. Alipay is a payment app that has quietly grown into an operating system for daily life: it pays in shops, opens metro and bus gates, hails rides, translates menus, books trains and hotels, and hosts thousands of mini-programs inside it.

Setting it up (do this at home):

1. Install Alipay from your app store.
2. Register with your home phone number — a Chinese number isn’t required.
3. Complete passport verification in the app.
4. Link an international card under Wallet → Cards. Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, Discover, Diners Club and overseas-issued UnionPay are all accepted.
5. Make one small test payment before you travel, so you find out about any bank block while you can still call your bank.

What it costs. Both Alipay and WeChat Pay use the same rule for foreign cards:

The 3% applies to the entire transaction, not just the part above ¥200 — so a ¥250 purchase costs ¥7.50, not ¥1.50. Add your own bank’s foreign-transaction fee (typically 1–3%), and a big purchase can carry 4–6% in total. Below ¥200 you pay nothing, which covers most noodles, coffees, metro rides and museum tickets.

What it can’t do. Card-linked Alipay is for paying merchants. Topping up a wallet balance, transferring money to another person, or paying a personal QR code generally isn’t available to foreign-card users — so don’t plan on splitting a bill by transfer.

Transaction limits change often and the figures you’ll find online disagree with each other. Treat the app’s own notice as the truth, and don’t plan a single purchase that sits near a limit.

WeChat — the app you can’t really avoid

You may not want another messaging app. You’ll end up with one anyway: hotels, tour operators, guides, ticket agents and the friend of a friend who’s helping you all communicate on WeChat. It’s the default way China exchanges a phone number.

• Payments work the same as Alipay — same ¥200 rule, same 3% above it.
• WeChat publishes official limits for foreign cards: ¥6,500 per transaction, ¥50,000 per month, ¥65,000 per year. That’s a real ceiling if you’re buying flights or paying hotel bills, which is one more reason to keep a physical card and some cash in reserve.
• New accounts often need an existing user to help verify you. If you know someone who already uses WeChat, line them up before you fly — it’s an awkward ask to make from an airport.
• Foreign users can’t send red packets (the cash gifts Chinese users exchange). No great loss for a short trip.
• Some mini-programs still ask for a Chinese number, even though WeChat itself doesn’t.

Install both Alipay and WeChat. They’re close to interchangeable, but each has its own risk rules and its own merchant coverage, and having a second option when one is blocked is worth ten minutes of setup.

A map that actually speaks English (this changed in 2026)

For years the advice was: use Apple Maps if you have an iPhone, because the Chinese map apps are Chinese-only. That’s no longer quite true.

• AMAP Global — Amap, China’s leading map company, now ships a separate English app (called AMAP Global, from AutoNavi) on both the App Store and Google Play. It has an English interface, English place names and turn-by-turn navigation, and since August 2026 it also does ride-hailing in English, so you can type a destination, call a car and see the fare without ever touching a Chinese-only screen. You can sign in with a phone number from dozens of countries, and you pay through Alipay or WeChat Pay. This is now the best default for Android users.
• Apple Maps (iPhone) — built in, English, and accurate in China because it’s powered by local map data. Still the easiest option if you carry an iPhone.
• Baidu Maps — accurate, but its English support extends to place labels in major cities only; menus and search stay Chinese.
• Google Maps — not for precision in mainland China. Beyond the blocking, Chinese maps use a deliberately offset coordinate system (GCJ-02), so your GPS position can appear a block or two from where you actually are.

Full detail, including offline maps and how to search in Chinese: how to use maps in China.

A translator that works behind the firewall

You’ll use this more than you expect — for menus, signs, hotel check-in forms and the occasional conversation.

• Google Translate’s online features don’t work in China. Its offline pack does, so download Simplified Chinese before you fly — but note that voice conversation mode still wants a connection.
• Baidu Translate runs on Chinese servers, needs no VPN, and has the best camera mode for menus and signs. Its English interface is partial, and it’s not a private channel — don’t type passport or card details into it.
• Microsoft Translator is the safest all-rounder: text, voice and camera all keep working offline once you’ve downloaded the language pack, and it isn’t blocked.
• Apple Translate is built into the iPhone and works offline with the downloaded pack.
• Alipay has a built-in camera translator — handy because it’s already open when you’re paying.

Pair whichever you pick with our survival phrases — a few words of Chinese, pointed at a screen, solves most situations faster than any app.

Second tier: add these if your trip needs them

For trains specifically, the trade-off is simple: 12306 is free and official but asks for patience and a passport check; Trip.com is effortless and charges a fee. Full comparison in the high-speed rail guide, and rides in the Didi guide.

The Chinese phone-number problem (and the way around it)

A handful of genuinely useful apps still assume a Chinese SIM. The workaround is the best tip on this page: the standalone app may demand a Chinese number while the version inside Alipay or WeChat doesn’t.

Food delivery is the big one: the menu is in Chinese, the app expects a Chinese address and a Chinese number — but opened as a mini-program inside Alipay, with your hotel’s address copied in Chinese and a translator for the dish names, it works. Ask your hotel to type out its address in Chinese; that single string solves delivery, taxis and map searches at once.

Do you need a Chinese SIM at all? Not for payments, rides, trains or delivery. It helps for two things: Wi-Fi logins that send an SMS code, and any app that insists on a local number. It’s cheap and easy to buy with a passport at the airport. The trade-off is that a Chinese SIM puts you behind the Great Firewall — see the connectivity guide.

What’s new: China is trying to make this easier

Worth knowing, because it’s changing quickly and most guides haven’t caught up:

• A national push. In February 2026, eleven Chinese government departments issued a joint plan to make digital services friendlier for inbound visitors — more English and multi-language apps, easier payment with foreign cards, and simpler hotel check-in.
• Nihao China, an app from UnionPay (China’s card network), lets you bind an overseas card and pay by QR code without a Chinese bank account or phone number.
• Alipay’s Travel Wallet lets you top up without binding a card at all, and Beijing’s GO BEIJING service sits inside the international version of Alipay with dozens of services in sixteen languages.
• AMAP Global’s English ride-hailing, above, arrived in August 2026.

None of this removes the need to prepare — but it does mean the situation for foreign visitors is improving year on year, and that anything you read from 2023 or 2024 is worth double-checking.

What you can skip

• Uber. It doesn’t operate in mainland China. DiDi is the equivalent.
• Google Maps, for navigation. Fine for a rough sense of the city, useless for the last 200 metres.
• Douyin (Chinese TikTok). A separate ecosystem, in Chinese — tourists don’t need it.
• Standalone food-delivery apps. Use the mini-program inside Alipay instead.
• Shopping apps like Taobao or JD. They generally want a Chinese number, and delivery assumes a local address.
• A VPN — only if you specifically need blocked services. Read the connectivity guide first, including the legal grey area.

The order to do it in

The sequence matters, because a couple of steps have waiting built in.

Two weeks before

• If you’ll take trains, register on 12306 and submit your passport for verification
• Ask a friend who uses WeChat to be ready to help verify your new account

A week before

• Install Alipay and WeChat; link a card and complete passport verification
• Make a small test payment in each to confirm your bank allows it
• Tell your bank you’re travelling to China
• Install AMAP Global (or check Apple Maps) and download offline maps
• Install a translator and download the offline Chinese pack
• Install anything from the second tier you’ll use — DiDi, Trip.com, RedNote
• Save your hotel’s name and address in Chinese characters

A few days before

• Set up your data plan — roaming, eSIM or a local SIM on arrival (see the connectivity guide)
• Download anything blocked you’ll want: offline maps, offline translation, your VPN
• Save your bookings and tickets offline, plus a screenshot of your hotel on a map

On arrival

• Withdraw a little cash as a backup — see the payment guide
• Test Alipay at a convenience store, and try one metro QR code (see the metro guide)
• Paste your hotel’s Chinese address somewhere you can find it in a hurry

Common mistakes to avoid

• Leaving the setup until the airport or until you land — the whole point is that installing later is unreliable, and some verifications take days.
• Assuming roaming fixes Google Play. It may, it may not; don’t find out on arrival.
• Installing the wrong DiDi app — there’s a mainland-China app and a separate international one, and they don’t substitute for each other.
• Skipping WeChat because you have Alipay. One of them will occasionally fail you, and it’s usually the one you don’t have set up.
• Buying a Chinese SIM to solve food delivery. The mini-program version works with a foreign number, and you’d be giving up access to Google, WhatsApp and the rest.
• Trusting Google Maps for the last few hundred metres.
• Planning around a fee that changed last month. Check the fee and limit notices inside Alipay and WeChat before a large purchase.

Keeping this page accurate

App features, fees, card support and phone-number rules for foreign visitors change several times a year — 2026 alone brought English ride-hailing from Amap, new government measures and new payment options. We keep this page up to date: the date below shows when it was last checked, and we refresh it whenever something changes. If you spot something out of date, contact us.

One honest caveat: the exact fee thresholds and transaction limits are the least stable numbers in this guide, and published sources contradict each other. The rules we describe were correct when we checked, but the app’s own notice is always the final word.

Image credits

Cover photo via Pexels (used under the Pexels License — attribution appreciated but not required): a traveller paying a street food vendor by QR code — Matthew Jesús. Second photo via Pexels, same licence: a street food stall’s menu in Chinese characters — natalia duque.