The four filings, explained
Almost every team arrives believing ICP filing is the finish line. It is the first of four registrations, each with its own number, its own deadline and its own place where that number has to be displayed.
The four, side by side
| Filing | Timing | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ICP filingWebsite and app content | 7–20 business days | Filed through the hosting provider. Needs the entity, a mainland-hosted site and a compliant privacy policy. |
| Public security filingPSB registration | Within 30 days of ICP | A separate registration with the local public security bureau. Easy to do, easy to forget, and expensive to forget. |
| App filingMIIT, per app | Follows ICP | The app itself files separately from the website. Stores will not open a submission slot without it. |
| Mini Program filingOnly if you ship one | Follows ICP | WeChat Mini Programs file separately again. Some categories need a qualification certificate first. |
01 · ICP filing
The one everybody knows. It is filed by the entity, through whoever hosts the site in mainland China, and it is what makes the domain legally serveable to mainland users. Seven to twenty business days is normal once the paperwork is clean.
Three things reliably cause a bounce:
- The site is not compliant yet. The reviewer opens it. It needs to be live, in Chinese, with a published privacy policy and no placeholder pages.
- The entity details do not match. Name, address and legal representative have to line up exactly with the licence.
- The hosting is not in China. ICP filing attaches to mainland-hosted infrastructure. You cannot file for a site hosted abroad.
02 · Public security filing
Due within 30 days of ICP approval, registered with the local public security bureau. It is small, it is administrative, and it is the most common self-inflicted delay in the whole sequence — because teams treat ICP approval as the end of the paperwork and move on to submission, where the missing registration then blocks them.
03 · App filing
The app itself is a separate subject from the website and files separately with the ministry. This is the one that surprises Android teams most: you can have a perfectly filed website and still not be able to submit an app anywhere, because the app filing is its own record.
04 · Mini Program filing
If you ship a Mini Program, it files again. A handful of categories additionally require a qualification certificate — publishing, medical, financial, education-adjacent services — and the filing will not be accepted until that certificate exists. If you are in one of those categories, this is the item that decides your launch date, not the code.
Displaying the numbers
Each registration comes with its own number, and each has a place it is expected to appear — the website footer, the app’s about screen, the Mini Program profile. Getting them in the right place with the right suffixes is a small piece of work that reviewers do check.
If you remember one thing
Sequence them in this order — entity, software copyright, ICP, public security, then app filing — and start software copyright on the same day as the entity paperwork. Everything else can overlap; that one cannot be shortened, and it is the item that quietly sets your launch date.
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