Cheap SIM cards and eSIMs for Indonesia

The local SIM is genuinely hard to beat here

Indonesia is one of the few countries where the honest recommendation is to walk past the eSIM. A prepaid SIM costs about $5 at Bali or Jakarta airport, Telkomsel is sold in every Indomaret and Alfamart in the country, and the only requirement is a passport. There is no waiting period and no hunting for a carrier store.

Set that against the eSIM market below, where the cheapest verified rate is $0.98 a gigabyte and the entry-level plans cost as much as the entire local SIM. The eSIM still wins on two counts — it works before you clear immigration, and it saves you the counter queue at Ngurah Rai, which can be long at peak arrival times. If neither of those matters much to you, buy locally.

What the eSIMs cost

Airalo's Indonesian prices below were read from its own site on 13 August 2026, and Saily's from its own site on 16 August 2026. Nomad's were read from its own site on 17 August 2026. The Holafly figures are indicative — numbers our data holds, not confirmed at the seller. eSIMCard's rows have been withdrawn: we read its own pages on 18 August 2026, found the figures we held were wrong, and could not store the real ones. See our eSIMCard page. The eSIM Go figures cannot be confirmed anywhere: eSIM Go sells wholesale to resellers and publishes no consumer price — checked on esim-go.com on 18 August 2026, where there is no basket, no checkout and no per-country page — so its rows cannot be bought or ever verified. See our eSIM Go page.

Two numbers are worth pulling out. Nomad's 50 GB over 45 days at $41 is $0.82 a gigabyte, the cheapest verified rate in the country, and Airalo's 50 GB month at $49 is $0.98. An earlier version of this page gave the floor as Nomad's 20 GB at 95 cents; that price had never been checked and it was wrong.

The spread between providers here is unusually wide, and it runs upward as well as down. Saily's verified prices are the highest we hold at every size from 3 GB — $8.99, $13.99, $21.99 and $35.99 — so the 10 GB month that costs $19 from Nomad costs $21.99 from Saily. Where a gap between two sellers is large, it is worth opening both product pages before you buy rather than taking any table's word for it, including ours. Our eSIM Go row at $13 is lower still and is not an option at all, for the reason above.

Holafly sells unlimited only, from an indicative $11.90 for 3 days to $73.90 for thirty, with a 90-day option at $139.90 — the longest plan anyone in our data offers for Indonesia, and a genuine fit for a long stay in Bali. Holafly sells six windows and no others — 3, 5, 7, 10, 15 and 30 days — so the 1-day plan this page used to list does not exist. Airalo's verified unlimited is $11 for three days and $69 for thirty.

Telkomsel is the whole coverage argument

Indonesia is 17,000-plus islands, and the carriers are not close to each other in reach. Telkomsel has far the widest geographic coverage and is the network to have if you are going anywhere beyond Bali and Java. XL Axiata is competitive in Bali and Java and thinner elsewhere.

Which providers can actually put you on Telkomsel is the part that has been misreported. Airalo, Saily and eSIMCard publish no host network for Indonesia at all, and eSIM Go has no consumer page on which it could — Saily's pages, read directly, promise only a reliable connection from Indonesia's best networks and name nobody. Airalo's local product is sold as Indotel, which is a package name rather than a carrier, so a page that names a specific Indonesian network for it is inventing the detail. Holafly lists nothing on its own product pages. This page used to give it Telkomsel, which came from our own data; Holafly publishes no host carrier for any country — we read its prices for 28 of them off esim.holafly.com on 18 August 2026 and not one names an operator. That is Holafly's own listing; nobody has verified it, so it is a lead and not a reason to pay more. Nomad publishes no host network here — an earlier version of this page said it listed Telkomsel on some plans, and that claim has been withdrawn.

The practical rule for island hopping: if your trip depends on signal in eastern Indonesia, buy a Telkomsel SIM in person. That is the only way to know which network you are on.

Even Telkomsel runs out. Most of the outer islands have no coverage at all, and you should expect nothing at the remote Raja Ampat dive sites, in the Flores interior, across most of Papua, in interior Kalimantan, or in the remote Sumatran highlands. Download maps and boat schedules while you are still in a city.

What to actually buy

Bali and Java for a week or two: an eSIM, on price. Nomad's verified 5 GB at $12 or its 10 GB at $19 both cover a normal fortnight of maps, messaging and photos.

A month or more, or anything east of Lombok: pay the $5 at the airport, show your passport, and get Telkomsel by name. Full plan tables and coverage notes are on the Indonesia hub.