Nepal's cheapest verified eSIM rate is $1.75 a gigabyte, and only the 20 GB plan gets anywhere near it

One seller, seventeen prices, one date

Airalo is the only eSIM provider we hold prices for in Nepal. Seventeen plans, all seventeen verified — read off airalo.com on 17 August 2026. That is our entire Nepal coverage: a record of one seller, not a survey of the market. Saily, Holafly, Nomad, eSIMCard and eSIM Go all sell travel eSIMs and we have not priced any of them here, so no figure for them appears on this page.

Airalo lists its Nepali plans as Patancell. That is Airalo's own retail product name and not a mobile operator. Airalo publishes no host network for Nepal, as it publishes none for any country, so which Nepali network your phone attaches to is unknown to us.

The metered ladder

Eleven metered plans and six unlimited ones. The ladder stops at 20 GB — there is no 50 GB plan in Nepal — and the two 20 GB rows are the only ones on the table under $2 a gigabyte. Everything else costs between $2.20 and $5.00.

That ceiling is most of the explanation for the price. Markets where Airalo sells 50 GB tend to floor around a dollar: Cambodia and Bangladesh, both in this region, both reach $0.98 on a 50 GB plan. Markets that stop at 10 GB are far worse — Kenya at $4.60, Fiji and Nigeria at $4.70 are the dearest on the site. Nepal's 20 GB ceiling puts it between the two, and $1.75 is about where you would expect to land. It is not an iron rule — Sri Lanka also stops at 20 GB and still reaches $0.90 — but it holds here.

The 5 GB tier is where the pricing gets strange

Most countries charge a token amount for a longer window. Nepal does not, at one size. The same 5 GB is $13.00 for 7 days, $15.00 for 15 days and $17.00 for 30 — four dollars, or 31% more, for the extra calendar. At 10 GB the step is a flat dollar each time ($22.00, $23.00, $24.00), and at 20 GB it is a single dollar ($35.00 to $36.00).

The effect is worth spelling out, because it inverts the usual advice. 5 GB over 30 days works out at $3.40 a gigabyte, which is a worse rate than 3 GB over 3 days at $3.33. Buying a longer window at 5 GB cancels out the discount you got for buying more data. If you want a month of coverage, step up a size rather than stretching a small plan: 10 GB over 30 days is $24.00 and $2.40 a gigabyte.

What a step up buys

• 5 GB to 10 GB, both over 7 days: $13.00 becomes $22.00. Five more gigabytes for $9, or $1.80 each.
• 10 GB over 7 days to 20 GB over 15: $22.00 becomes $35.00. Ten more gigabytes for $13, and twice the window.

That second step is the best purchase on the page. It is also the last one — nothing metered exists above 20 GB, so $1.75 a gigabyte is the floor and there is no way to buy past it.

Unlimited is reasonable to ten days, then falls off a cliff

Six unlimited plans, priced by time: $17 for 3 days, $26 for 5, $35 for 7, $43 for 10, $79 for 15 and $99 for 30.

The first four track the metered plans closely enough to be worth considering. Three days of unlimited is $17 against $10.00 for 3 GB over the same three days, which is a real premium but not an absurd one. Seven days of unlimited is $35 — exactly what 20 GB over 15 days costs, which makes that a clean choice between no limit for a week and a generous allowance for a fortnight.

Then the ladder breaks. Ten days is $43; fifteen days is $79. That is $36 for five extra days, and it makes the 15-day unlimited plan more than twice the price of the 20 GB plan covering the same fifteen days. Thirty days is $99. Unless you are certain you will exceed 20 GB, the metered plan is the better buy at every duration beyond ten days.

Which tier to buy

• A few days in Kathmandu. 3 GB over 3 days at $10.00. If you want a week, jump to 5 GB over 7 days at $13.00 rather than stretching the 3 GB plan.
• A week to ten days. 10 GB over 7 days at $22.00, or $23.00 for 15 days.
• A trek, or two to four weeks. 20 GB over 15 days at $35.00, or $36.00 for 30 days. This is the only rate under $2 we hold for Nepal.
• More than 20 GB. No metered plan goes higher, so unlimited is the only route, and above ten days it is expensive.

What we cannot tell you

Coverage, which for Nepal is the question people most want answered. If you are heading up the Annapurna or Everest trails, the useful thing to know is which network the eSIM roams onto — and Airalo does not publish it. We hold nothing on the host network, so we cannot say how the plans behave away from the valleys, and we will not guess.

Local SIMs, likewise: no counter prices, no shop names, no registration rules, no operator list. Nobody here has researched it.

And the other five sellers. If one of them beats $1.75 a gigabyte here, we would not know it — and neither would a page listing all six with numbers nobody read. That is how we test. Our Airalo page covers the seller across every market we hold, and the cheapest eSIM plans puts Nepal's $1.75 next to the other 93 countries on the site.