What an Asian travel eSIM costs, and what that address changesTen destinations, the prices one seller publishes

Most Asia eSIM comparisons name a winner per country. We are not going to, because we have not bought these plans and a ranking we cannot back is worth nothing. What we can do is read the prices off the sellers' own pages, write down the date, and be honest that the currency you see at checkout depends on where you are sitting.

Then we spend the rest of the page on the half that actually goes wrong. Whichever profile you install, you are browsing from a local address, and a surprising number of the services you rely on decide what to show you from exactly that. That part we can measure, because we count provider locations every day and we test speed by hand.

• 10GB for a week runs from US$9 in Thailand to US$14 in Indonesia and the Philippines
• Unlimited for a week is flatter — US$19 to US$25 across all ten
• Three destinations had no unlimited 30-day tier on the page when we looked
• A local address fixes local services and makes the ones at home suspicious
• Mainland China is the exception: 3 of our 7 providers publish a location there

What the plans actually cost, in one table

Four tiers cover almost every business trip: a data bucket for a week, the same bucket for a month, and the unlimited versions of both. Sorted by the cheapest week, because that is the tier most people buy.

Prices Ubigi publishes on its own plan pages, read by VPN LIFE on 2026-10-26 and shown in US dollars. We have not bought these plans. Sellers change both the currency and the amount depending on where the buyer is, so your checkout screen may differ. Blank cells mean the tier was not on the page when we looked.

Two things in that table are worth more than the ranking. First, the data buckets vary by more than half again across the region while the unlimited tiers barely move — so the cheaper your destination, the more a bucket is worth buying. Second, three destinations had no unlimited 30-day tier at all when we looked. That is not us failing to find it; it was not offered.

We are showing one seller rather than a league table because comparing sellers properly means buying from each of them, and we have not. A page that ranks ten sellers it has never installed is guessing with a confident voice.

What the price does not tell you

Every option here hands you the same underlying thing: a local mobile address. That is the point of buying it, and it is also the part nobody follows through.

In one direction it is exactly what you wanted. Local transport apps, ticketing, food delivery and regional streaming stop treating you as a foreign visitor, because as far as the network is concerned you are not one. In Korea and Taiwan this is the difference between an app working and an app refusing to register.

In the other direction it is a nuisance you did not plan for. Your bank sees a login from a country you have never logged in from. Subscriptions you pay for at home show a different catalogue or decline outright. Several government and tax portals simply refuse foreign addresses. None of that is a fault in the eSIM. It is the address doing its job in the direction you did not want.

Where our providers actually have locations

If you intend to point your traffic back home — or at a third country — the question stops being about the eSIM and starts being about whether anyone has a server where you need one. We count that every day from each provider's own published list.

Counted by VPN LIFE every day from each provider's own published server list. A published location is not a promise that it connects right now.

For nine of these ten destinations the answer is boring in a good way: six or seven of the seven publish a location, so the choice is decided by refund window and price rather than by availability. Mainland China is the exception and it has its own section below.

One profile, several devices — the limit moves

An eSIM serves the phone it is installed on. If you are travelling with a laptop that matters, or with colleagues, the sharing question arrives twice: once for the connection and once for whatever you run over it.

Taken from each provider's own published terms, re-read daily. "Unlimited" is the provider's word, not a measurement of ours. CyberGhost's 45 days applies to its six-month and two-year plans only; the shorter plans carry a 14-day window.

The refund column is the cheapest way to settle this before a trade fair rather than during one. The windows run from seven to thirty days in our set, which is longer than most trips — install two before you fly and keep the one that behaves.

Going on to mainland China

This is the destination that breaks the pattern, and it deserves its own paragraph rather than a footnote.

A roaming eSIM bought outside China often keeps working there, because the traffic leaves the country before it reaches the open internet. That is why travellers report a foreign eSIM behaving normally in Shanghai while a local SIM does not. It is a side effect of how roaming is routed, not a product promise, and it is not something a seller will guarantee to you in writing.

The second half is ours to measure. Of the seven providers we track, three publish a location in mainland China, each a single one. The rest publish none. So the idea of connecting to a Chinese server is thin to begin with — and the useful destinations from inside China are Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore, where every provider we track has something.

Install and sign in before you arrive. We have never read an account of this failing that did not begin with somebody trying to download the software after landing.

What we measured, and what it does not cover

The speed table below is ours. We run paired tests by hand — the same line, the same session, with and without a tunnel — rather than repeating a provider's claim. Our Asian coverage is thin and we would rather say so than pad it: Tokyo has five paired runs per service, Bangkok has a single measurement with no baseline to compare it against.

What that does not tell you is how fast your eSIM will be. We measured fixed lines, not mobile networks, and a profile sharing a tower at a trade fair behaves nothing like either. Treat the figures as the cost of the tunnel, not the speed of the trip.

The honest summary is that for mail, messaging, maps and video calls the connection is almost never the limiting factor. What limits people is the address, which is the half this page is actually about.

Buying it without the usual mistakes

These are the failures that get described, rather than the ones the product pages warn about.

• The profile that cannot be installed. Bought, then the phone turns out to be locked or too old. Check both before paying, not at the arrival gate.
• The wrong tier for the destination. In the cheaper countries a data bucket is much better value than unlimited; in the dearer ones the gap closes. The table above is sorted so you can see which you are in.
• Assuming a 30-day unlimited tier exists. For three of these ten it did not.
• The tunnel left on by accident. Local services then see a foreign address again, which is the exact problem the eSIM was bought to solve.
• Software installed too late. Still the most common single failure we see described, and the one most easily avoided.

How much speed actually survives the tunnel

Every VPN site says a tunnel costs you speed. Almost none of them say how much. We measured it by hand rather than repeating a claim: 14 cities, 46 paired runs, comparing NordVPN and Surfshark against the same raw line in the same session. In the 11 cities where we also measured the bare line, the share that survived the tunnel ranged from 40% to 90%.

Measured by VPN LIFE. Raw-line figures are rounded to the nearest 10 Mbps. Percentages are the share of the raw line that survived.

• 14 cities, 46 paired runs, measured by hand
• 11 of those cities also have the bare line measured
• 40% to 90% of the raw line survived
• We only name a winner in 4 cities — the rest have too few runs

The spread between cities is larger than the spread between providers. In London roughly nine tenths of the line survived on both services; in Tokyo it was closer to half. That is worth knowing before you blame the provider: "this VPN is slow" is usually "this route is slow".

We only call a winner in a city when we have five or more paired runs there and the gap is at least 10%. That threshold is met in 4 of the 14 cities — Tokyo and Los Angeles, where NordVPN averaged ahead, and London and New York, where the two were level. In the remaining ten cities we publish the numbers and say the sample is too small, rather than ranking on one run.

The apps behind our measurements

The providers we track, and what each publishes for Singapore

We rank on what we can check. Each of the five below publishes a location in this use; the tables are our own counts and the providers' own published terms, not a summary of their marketing.

ExpressVPN: the widest spread of cities

ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN publishes more multi-city countries than anyone else in our set — 11 countries where you can pick between two or more locations, including 56 in the United States, 7 in the United Kingdom, 6 in Australia and 4 in Japan. If your problem is a blocked address rather than a missing country, that spread is the thing that gets you out of it. It is the most expensive option here, and it is the one we would pick for streaming.

Go to ExpressVPN

NordVPN: the largest country list, and the one we measured

NordVPN

NordVPN covers more countries than anything else we track. It is also one of the two services we measured ourselves, so the retention figures above are its actual numbers rather than a claim. It operates from Panama, has been audited by Deloitte, allows 10 simultaneous connections, and lists obfuscated servers and a kill switch among its features — the two things that matter where VPN traffic is filtered.

Go to NordVPN

Surfshark: unlimited devices, and level with NordVPN in half our tests

Surfshark

Surfshark is the other service in our own measurements. In London and New York it was level with NordVPN; in Tokyo and Los Angeles it trailed by 11% and 17%. It places no limit on simultaneous connections, which makes it the sensible choice for a household rather than a person. Audited by Deloitte, operating from the Netherlands, with Camouflage Mode for networks that filter VPN traffic.

Go to Surfshark

CyberGhost: the longest money-back window, with a catch

CyberGhost

CyberGhost's 45-day money-back guarantee is the longest here, and it is the reason it appears on most lists. Read the condition: 45 days applies to the six-month and two-year plans, and the monthly plan gets 14 days. It publishes 10 multi-city countries, with 11 locations in the United States, but only a single city in Japan — so it is a weaker choice if Japanese services are your target.

Go to CyberGhost

Private Internet Access: unlimited connections, US jurisdiction

Private Internet Access

PIA places no limit on devices and publishes an Advanced Kill Switch, obfuscation, multi-hop and port forwarding. Its no-logs claim has been audited by Deloitte Audit Romania. The trade-off is jurisdiction: it operates from the United States, which some readers will rule out on principle. We list it because the rest of the record is strong and because it is one of only four providers with two or more cities in Japan.

Go to Private Internet Access

Frequently asked questions

Which eSIM is cheapest for Asia?

On the prices we read, a 10GB week was cheapest in Thailand at US$9 and dearest in Indonesia and the Philippines at US$14. We are not naming a cheapest seller, because we have not bought from enough of them to compare honestly.

Will the price I see match the table?

Possibly not. Sellers change both the currency and the amount depending on where the buyer is. The table shows the US dollar display, read on the date in the caption.

Does a travel eSIM work in mainland China?

Often, because a roaming profile routes your traffic out of the country before it reaches the open internet. It is a side effect of how roaming works rather than something sellers guarantee, so do not build a trip around it without a fallback.

Do I still need a VPN if I have an eSIM?

They solve different halves. The eSIM gets you online with a local address; a VPN changes which country your traffic appears to come from. You need the second only for services that expect to see you at home.

Can several people share one eSIM?

Not really — it serves the phone it is installed on, and tethering depends on the plan. For a group, a rented router is still the simpler answer.

Where should I connect from inside Asia?

For nine of the ten destinations here, six or seven of the seven providers we track publish a location, so it is rarely the constraint. From inside mainland China the useful choices are Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore.

Conclusion

The price table is the part people arrive for and the smallest part of the decision. Ten destinations, one seller, four tiers, and a spread of five dollars on the week that most people buy. Pick the tier that matches the country rather than the one that sounds generous.

The address is the part worth planning. It will fix the local services you came for and unsettle the ones you left at home, and the only preparation that reliably helps is installing whatever you intend to use before you get on the plane.

Every figure on this page comes from our own daily collection or our own measurements. The files are published as open data under CC BY 4.0, and the method — including what the numbers do not prove — is on how we test.