Nine free tools · no sign-up · checked September 2026
China Travel Toolkit 2026: Nine Tools, and When to Use Each
Every tool on this page runs in your browser and costs nothing to use. The part most collections leave out is the part that actually helps: which one to open, and at what point in the trip.
The 60-second answer
Nine tools, four moments. Before you book: the Destination Quiz and the City Decision Matrix narrow down which cities deserve a slot in your itinerary, and the Train vs Flight Calculator settles how you move between them. Before you commit money: the Cost Calculator prices a private trip line by line, the Purchasing Power Index shows what your budget actually buys once you land, and the Visa-Free Calculator tells you whether you need a visa at all for the routing you have chosen. Before you land: the Apps Checker builds a phone checklist around your specific handset. While you are in China: the Travel Pulse index and the SOS Hub are the two worth keeping open.
None of them books anything, and none of them replaces the visa office, your airline or your insurer. The tools answer questions. The decisions, and the bookings, stay with you.
Or stay on this page and work through the tools yourself — that is what they are for.
Start here
What these nine tools actually do
Most “China travel tool” pages are link farms: a logo, a one-line pitch, no indication of what happens after you click. This page is built the other way round. For each tool you get the question it answers, the point in the trip where it is worth opening, and — just as usefully — the thing it will not do for you.
Four of the nine are calculators that produce a number. Two produce a shortlist or a comparison. One produces a checklist. Two are reference panels you keep open while you travel. They were built at different times for different problems, and they do not share a design or a data source, so treat each one on its own terms.
It is not a booking engine, and nothing here is affiliate-driven — no tool on this page earns a commission from what you book. It is also not a substitute for official sources: entry rules, visa categories and permit requirements are set by the Chinese government and by your own country’s immigration authority, and both can change faster than any page updates. The tools summarise and calculate. The rulebook belongs to the authorities, and this page links to them rather than paraphrasing them at length.
Open the Cost Calculator first if you already know roughly where you want to go — it forces you to decide traveller numbers, hotel class and vehicle size, which are the three inputs that move a China trip budget more than anything else. If you do not yet know where you are going, open the Destination Quiz instead. Everything else on this page is refinement.
The index
The nine tools at a glance
Same nine tools, ordered by the moment they earn their keep. All nine are free, none require an account, and all nine run in your browser rather than as an installed app.
| Tool | The question it answers | Best moment |
|---|---|---|
| Destination Quiz | Which cities actually suit the way I like to travel? | Before you book |
| City Decision Matrix | How do my three shortlisted cities compare on the things I care about? | Before you book |
| Train vs Flight Calculator | Train or plane between these two cities, measured door to door? | Before you book |
| Cost Calculator | What would a private trip like mine cost, line by line? | Before you commit money |
| Purchasing Power Index | What does my budget actually buy once I am on the ground? | Before you commit money |
| Visa-Free Calculator | Do I need a visa for the routing I have chosen? | Before you commit money |
| Apps Checker | Which apps must be on my phone before I fly? | Before you land |
| Travel Pulse | What is the situation on the ground right now? | While you are in China |
| SOS Hub | What do I show someone when I cannot say it out loud? | While you are in China |
Scroll the table sideways for the full comparison.
Roughly a third of the traffic to this collection arrives looking for one specific tool rather than a directory. If that is you, the filter below jumps straight to it.
Before you book: deciding the shape of the trip
These three settle where you go and how you move. Use them before you talk to anyone about booking, because every price you are quoted downstream depends on the answers.
Destination Quiz
Open →Seven questions about pace, budget, crowds, walking tolerance and season, producing a ranked shortlist of cities with a suggested number of nights for each.
City Decision Matrix
Open →Compares cities across the country on what a first-time visitor actually has to weigh up: a jet-lag index measured from your home city, a safety score, how widely English is spoken, whether international cards are accepted, and how strong the transport and payment infrastructure is.
Train vs Flight Calculator
Open →Compares high-speed rail against flying door to door: getting to the station or airport, security, boarding, baggage collection, and the transfer into the city centre at the far end. Pre-loaded routes include Beijing–Shanghai, Beijing–Xi’an and Guangzhou–Kunming.
Run the quiz first if you are starting from nothing: it collapses a continent into a shortlist. Take that shortlist into the matrix to rank it. Then, and only then, run every pair of survivors through the train-versus-flight calculator — because a route that costs two travel days is a worse route even if both cities score highly on their own.
Before you commit money: cost and entry rules
Once the route is roughly set, these three answer the questions people actually lose sleep over: what will it cost, is my budget reasonable, and am I even allowed in on this routing.
Cost Calculator
Open →Enter cities, days, traveller numbers, rooms, hotel class and vehicle size, and it returns a cost range broken into five lines: vehicle, guide, hotels, intercity transport, and tickets with meals. A separate table shows which single change moves the total most.
Purchasing Power Index
Open →Put in an amount and your home currency and it translates the sum into things you recognise — metro rides, coffees, gigabytes of data, hotpot dinners, boutique nights, airport taxi runs. Twelve currencies are supported.
Visa-Free Calculator
Open →Checks a specific routing against the 240-hour (10-day) transit visa-free scheme: which of the 65 open ports accept entry, which provinces 57 nationalities may move within, and whether your onward booking satisfies the “to a third country” condition.
Transit visa-free requires a confirmed onward ticket to a third country or region — flying in from Japan and back out to Japan does not qualify, however short the stay. And for unilateral 30-day entry the clock starts at midnight on the day after you arrive, so a 30-day allowance is not the same as 30 nights. On top of that, the unilateral scheme is currently legislated only to 31 December 2026, so if your trip falls in 2027, check whether it has been renewed before you build a plan around it.
Before you land: getting your phone ready
The single most common way a well-planned China trip goes wrong in the first hour is a phone that cannot pay for anything. This is a one-tool moment because there is one tool for it.
Apps Checker
Open →Pick your handset — iOS or Android — and what you need to do in China: pay, navigate, book rail tickets, reach the open internet, order food, translate, or call a car. It returns a checklist of the specific apps that work for that combination, in the order you should install them.
One tool is not a thin section, it is a scoped one. There is no second opinion to offer here and no comparison to draw: the checklist is either complete for your handset or it is not, and you find that out by opening it.
While you are in China: the two you keep open
Different job from the other seven. These do not plan anything; they answer a question in the moment, so they are worth bookmarking to your home screen rather than reading once.
Travel Pulse
Open →A rolling index of how smoothly travel in China is running right now, alongside booking alerts and a status report you can copy. Think of it as a weather report for the logistics of your trip rather than for the sky.
SOS Hub
Open →Show-and-say cards for the moments where language breaks down completely: a payment that will not go through, a medical problem, a lost phone. Each card carries the Chinese characters and an English gloss, an audio button so the phone can speak the phrase aloud, and a reply panel the other person can tap.
Skip ahead
Filter the toolkit by what you need
Nine cards is a two-minute read, but if you arrived knowing what you are after, filter them down to that. The filter works on the cards above rather than on a duplicate list, so nothing on this page says the same thing twice.
Showing all 9 tools.
Worked examples
Three trips, and the tools that carry each one
The right order matters more than the individual tools. Here are three realistic trips and the sequence that answers them, using nothing but the nine tools above.
A first trip to China: ten days, two travellers
Start with the Destination Quiz — not because the shortlist is gospel, but because ten days will hold three cities comfortably and the quiz forces that choice early. Take the top four names into the City Decision Matrix and cut to three using the crowd and arrival-difficulty columns rather than enthusiasm. Then run every surviving pair through the Train vs Flight Calculator: this is the step people skip, and it is where a four-city plan quietly becomes a two-city plan because two of the hops are 1,500 km apart.
With the route settled, the Cost Calculator turns it into a range, and the Purchasing Power Index tells you whether that range feels generous once you are standing in a restaurant. If either passport might qualify for visa-free entry, check the Visa-Free Calculator before you pay for a visa. In the final week, the Apps Checker handles the phone, and the SOS Hub gets saved to a lock screen.
Seven tools, in this order: quiz, matrix, train-or-flight, cost, purchasing power, apps, SOS.
A business week: four days, Beijing and Shanghai
No quiz and no matrix here — the cities are decided for you, and there is no budget conversation to have. The whole value of the collection for this trip is one tool: the Train vs Flight Calculator. Beijing to Shanghai is the route where the intuitive answer and the measured answer most often disagree, because door-to-door timing includes getting to a station on the eastern ring road versus an airport 30 km out, and the margins flip depending on where your meetings are.
Add the Apps Checker if you have not travelled to China recently — payment norms change year to year — and keep Travel Pulse bookmarked for the morning of each travel day. The SOS Hub is worth having ready for the one situation business travellers hit most: a card that will not authorise and nobody at the counter able to explain why.
Four tools: train-or-flight, apps, travel pulse, SOS.
A transit stop: US passport, four days in Shanghai on the way to Bangkok
This trip lives or dies on paperwork, so the Visa-Free Calculator comes first and everything else waits. The conditions to verify are specific: a US passport is on the 57-nationality transit list, entry must be through one of the 65 open ports, and the onward ticket has to be to a third country — Bangkok qualifies, a return to the United States would not. This is also the case where the unilateral 30-day scheme does not apply, because the United States is not on that list, so transit is the only visa-free route available.
Once entry is confirmed, the Apps Checker matters more on a four-day trip than a fourteen-day one, because you have no slack to solve a payment problem on day two. The SOS Hub rounds it out. Skip the plan-heavy tools entirely — with four days in one city there is nothing to plan.
Three tools: visa-free, apps, SOS.
Planning tools first, money tools second, phone tool last, and the reference panels throughout. Trips that get planned in the reverse order — phone first, then cost, then discover the route does not work — are the ones that end up rebooking internal transport at short notice, which is the single most expensive line in a China itinerary.
Diagnose it
Not sure where to start? Answer two questions
If you would rather not read all nine cards, answer these two and the page will point you at the one or two tools that answer your actual question.
1. Where are you in the trip?
2. What do you actually need to sort out?
Start here
Questions
Common questions about the toolkit
Yes. Every tool on this page runs in your browser at no cost, and none of them require an account, an email address or a download. There is no paid tier and no upsell inside any of them. They were built for our own trip planning, and there was never a reason to keep them behind a login.
Yes — they are web pages rather than offline apps, so you need a connection each time you open one. That is the reason two of them can print. The Cost Calculator prints a budget sheet and the SOS Hub prints or saves its cards, so the parts you need when you have no signal are available on paper or on your lock screen.
If you do not yet know where you are going, start with the Destination Quiz. If you do know, start with the Cost Calculator, because it forces the three decisions that move a China budget more than anything else: how many travellers, what class of hotel, and how large a vehicle. If neither fits the question you actually have, use the two-question picker above.
No. It produces a cost range and nothing else — there is no booking step inside it. The figure it gives you is a planning number rather than a quotation, because a real price depends on your specific dates, the specific hotels and how far ahead you are booking. Treat the range as the answer to “is this trip within reach”, not “what will I pay”.
No, and this is the most important limitation on this page. It covers the 240-hour transit scheme only: 57 nationalities, 65 open ports, entering on an onward ticket to a third country or region. China separately runs a unilateral 30-day visa-free entry for 50 nationalities, which is a different list with different conditions. If your passport is on the second list — a UK, Canadian or Australian passport, for instance — transit rules may not be your concern at all. The United States appears on the transit list but not on the unilateral one, so which category you fall into changes the whole plan.
No, and it does not claim to be. It is an index we maintain by aggregating signals about how smoothly travel is running, not a government feed. For anything that affects your right to enter or stay in China, the National Immigration Administration’s own notices are the source that counts, and the page links to them instead of paraphrasing them. Use ours for a sense of the moment, theirs for the rules.
A set of cards you show to another person: the Chinese characters, the pinyin, and an audio button that speaks the phrase aloud so you do not have to attempt the tones yourself. It also generates a lock-screen wallpaper, so the cards you are most likely to need are reachable without unlocking your phone. It covers a fixed set of situations — payment failures, medical problems, technical breakdowns — and is built for being understood quickly rather than for holding a conversation.
Yes, and ideally about a week before. Payment apps require identity verification that can take a day or two to clear, and a foreign card needs to be tested with a real, small transaction to prove your bank will authorise it. Discovering at the till on arrival that your card will not go through is the single most common way the first hour of a China trip goes wrong.
Because comparing flight time with train time is not comparing the journeys. Door-to-door timing includes the urban transfer to a station or airport at both ends, security, boarding and baggage collection. On some routes that buffer is longer than the time the flight actually saves, which is why the calculator’s verdicts sometimes contradict the widely repeated rule of thumb that flying wins above a certain distance.
No. The calculations run inside your browser and your inputs are never sent anywhere or saved between visits. Refreshing the page clears them. That is also why none of the nine tools ask you to create an account — there is nothing on the server to attach an account to.
Sources
Sources, and what this page does not claim
Entry policy numbers quoted on this page were checked on 24 September 2026 against the following official notices. China updates visa-free arrangements frequently — several changes took effect during 2026 alone — so treat any figure older than a few months as needing a fresh check.
National Immigration Administration — transit visa-free policy, including the 57-nationality list and the 65 open ports: nia.gov.cn
National Immigration Administration — unilateral visa-free entry list, 50 nationalities, updated 17 February 2026: s.nia.gov.cn
The State Council — announcement of the extension of 240-hour transit visa-free to 57 nationalities, effective 20 August 2026: gov.cn
It does not claim that any tool on it produces a binding price, a visa decision, or a guarantee of entry. The Cost Calculator returns a range for planning; the Visa-Free Calculator explains a scheme rather than ruling on your specific case; the Travel Pulse index is ours, not an official measure. It also does not claim to cover every route into China — regional arrangements, bilateral agreements and special administrative region rules are outside its scope. Where a decision has legal consequences for you, the authority that decides is the one to ask, and this page links to it rather than standing in for it.
This page is maintained alongside the tools it links to. When a tool changes its inputs or a policy changes its numbers, the affected section here is rewritten rather than left to age.
Tools get you a plan. Someone still has to book it.
The nine tools on this page will tell you where to go, how to move, what it costs and whether your phone will work. What they will not do is hold the reservations, meet you at the airport, or know that the restaurant you wanted closes on Tuesdays. If you would rather hand the logistics to people who are on the ground, that is the part we do.
No obligation, and no cost to use everything above.