What 1 GB of Mobile Data Really Costs Across Asia
A gigabyte of prepaid eSIM data costs 7.3 times more in Mongolia ($6.63) than in Turkey ($0.91). Across 27 Asian destinations, the median sits at $1.77.
Key findings
All figures from the frozen July 2026 edition of the Asia eSIM Price Index: 11-reseller panel, USD at the exchange rate frozen on publication (1.1415).
One region, two price worlds
Asia is not one data market. At the bottom of the table, Turkey sells a gigabyte for $0.91 on average across the reseller panel. At the top, Mongolia charges $6.63 for the same gigabyte: a 7.3x gap inside a single region. The pattern is consistent: South Asian markets deliver the cheapest data in the world, while East Asian markets pair higher prices with stronger networks.
Cheap data is only a bargain if coverage holds. Our mobile speed index, built on Ookla median download speeds, shows the flip side of the ranking: several of the cheapest markets score well below the regional average, while the priciest pair their premium with near-universal 5G.
Prices are stable to slightly down this summer: the regional median moved from $1.81 to $1.73 between May 24, 2026 and July 27, 2026 (-4.4%), based on 10 weekly readings.
The July 2026 extremes
| # | Cheapest markets | Avg / GB |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Turkey | $0.91 |
| 2 | Thailand | $1.02 |
| 3 | Singapore | $1.18 |
| 4 | Hong Kong | $1.28 |
| 5 | Indonesia | $1.28 |
| # | Most expensive | Avg / GB |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mongolia | $6.63 |
| 2 | Nepal | $3.82 |
| 3 | Jordan | $3.64 |
| 4 | India | $3.57 |
| 5 | UAE | $3.42 |
Charts (free to reuse with credit)
Reusable figures (CC BY 4.0)
Quote freely with attribution to Drift Asia and a link to this study:
- 1 GB of prepaid eSIM data costs a median of $1.77 across 27 Asian destinations (July 2026).
- The most expensive Asian market tracked (Mongolia, $6.63/GB) costs 7.3 times more than the cheapest (Turkey, $0.91/GB).
- The Asian median price per GB moved -4.4% between May 24, 2026 and July 27, 2026.
Full dataset (CSV) · Weekly series (JSON) · Press one-pager (PDF)
Methodology
Prices were collected in July 2026 across a fixed panel of 11 international eSIM resellers (Airalo, Nomad, Saily, Ubigi, Yesim and others). Each destination figure is the average price per gigabyte across the panel, converted from EUR to USD at the ECB reference rate frozen on publication (1.1415). The study covers the 27 Asia destinations that Drift Asia sells and that the panel prices. Weekly trend data comes from our price history, recorded every Monday since May 24, 2026. This is a one-shot study: figures are frozen as published and will not be revised.
The median is computed over all 27 priced destinations. For the cheapest and most expensive tables, we exclude only prices that rest on a thin panel: a market is dropped from the ranking when fewer than 3 resellers price it and its price sits above the regional median. This is the marker of a data artefact (a single niche reseller in a micro-market), not of a genuinely expensive destination, so legitimately costly markets with a full panel are kept. No market was excluded this month.
Transparency
Drift Asia sells travel eSIMs. The panel behind this study includes our competitors, the raw data is published under CC BY 4.0, and every figure above can be recomputed from the CSV. Data questions and interview requests: via driftasia.com.