Airalo in the Philippines: the widest range, no longer the cheapest

More plans than anyone else, and all of them checked

Airalo's Philippines catalogue is eighteen plans deep, spanning 1GB to 50GB plus a full unlimited ladder. Every price below was read off Airalo's own site on 13 August 2026.

There is also 1GB for 3 days at $4.00 and 3GB for 3 days at $7.50, which exist for airport transits and little else.

The column spread is the thing to notice. Going from a week to a month costs a dollar on 5GB and a dollar on 10GB. Buy the 30-day version of whatever size you want; the short ones save you nothing worth having.

The 50GB plan is no longer unmatched

This page used to call Airalo's 50GB month at $48.00 untouchable on cost per gigabyte, because no other provider in our Philippines data sold anything that large. That was true only because Nomad's Philippine prices had never been read. They were read on 17 August 2026, and Nomad sells 50GB for $45.

The Saily figures were read off Saily's own site on 18 August 2026; eSIMCard's rows have been withdrawn: we read its own pages on 18 August 2026, found the figures we held were wrong, and could not store the real ones.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 two 50GB rows are both checked, and $3 separates them.

For a month of remote work in Siargao or Cebu, 50GB is still the right size, and Nomad's is the cheaper of the two plans that offer it. Airalo's argument at that size is now the rest of its range rather than the rate. For a ten-day island-hop, 50GB is far more data than you will use either way.

Unlimited, where the Philippines inverts the usual order

Airalo's unlimited plans, all verified: $11.50 for 3 days, $18.50 for 5, $27.00 for 7, $34.50 for 10, $48.00 for 15 and $71.00 for 30.

Holafly is normally the cheap unlimited option. Here it is not. Our indicative Holafly figures start at $20.90 for 5 days and $29.90 for 7, against Airalo's verified $18.50 and $27.00 — Airalo is ahead at both, and by $3.90 at a month ($71.00 against $74.90). Whether that survives a proper check of Holafly's prices we cannot say, but on what we hold, the usual assumption is backwards in the Philippines.

The $11.50 three-day unlimited has no equivalent anywhere on the board. If you land for a long weekend and want to stop thinking about it, that is the plan.

Airalo will not tell you which network you get

Airalo does not publish the host carrier for its Philippines eSIM, and it does not publish one for any other country either. Our data holds nothing here. An earlier version of this page named a carrier; that was never verified and it has been removed.

This matters more in the Philippines than in a compact country. Coverage is strong across Manila, Cebu City, Boracay and the main resort areas, and it falls away fast: Batanes, the Camiguin hinterlands, the lesser-visited Visayas islands, the interior jungle of Palawan and Mindanao, and the open water between island-hopping stops — Big Lagoon and Kayangan Lake among them — are places where the network you happen to be attached to decides whether you have a signal at all.

Since nobody will name that network, the honest advice is not to plan around it. If staying reachable on a remote island is genuinely important, buy a local prepaid SIM from a carrier you have chosen yourself.

Against a local SIM

A local prepaid SIM runs about $5 at the airport, cheaper than Airalo's cheapest plan, but it needs your passport and ID at registration. Globe, Smart Communications and DITO all sell to visitors. If you are staying for weeks and want a Philippine number, that is the better buy.

Airalo's case is the opposite one: no paperwork, working data before you leave the aircraft, and hotspot tethering supported on all its plans according to its own listing. There are no calls or SMS — the plans are data only, which in a country where everything is arranged over Messenger and Viber is less of a loss than it sounds.

Verdict

Airalo has the widest and best-documented Philippines range: eighteen plans, every price checked, three validity windows at most sizes, and unlimited that currently undercuts Holafly's.

What it no longer has is the price. Nomad's verified ladder is cheaper at 5GB, 10GB and 50GB, and this page overstated Airalo's position at the top of the market for as long as Nomad's figures went unread. Airalo's other weak spot is the small end, where Saily's verified $3.99 for 1GB beats its $4.00, and the undisclosed network, which rules it out for anyone whose trip depends on remote-island coverage. Compare every provider side by side on the Philippines hub.