In the Philippines, the local SIM is the cheap one

The honest answer is that the local SIM is very cheap

Most countries on this site are a straight eSIM recommendation. The Philippines is not, because the local option is genuinely inexpensive: SIM cards run ₱40–100, and tourist packages with data are around ₱500–800 for 30 days at airport counters. Our data has a typical airport tourist package at about $5. They are sold at every NAIA terminal, at Cebu airport, in SM Malls, 7-Eleven, Robinson's and carrier stores.

The catch is registration. A passport or ID is required, so it is a staffed counter and a form rather than something you grab off a shelf. And we do not hold a verified data allowance for those ₱500–800 packages, so we cannot give you a price per gigabyte to compare against the table below. What we can say is that the entry cost is a fraction of any eSIM's, and if you are staying a month it is very likely the cheaper route.

eSIM prices, and where the floor is

For anyone who wants data working on landing, the cheapest rate is $0.90 a gigabyte: Nomad's 50 GB for 30 days at $45, read from Nomad's checkout on 17 August 2026. Airalo's Alpas Mobile 50 GB at $48 is next, at $0.96. The Philippine market does not stop at 20 GB, and in both ranges the 50 GB is a third cheaper per gigabyte than the 20 GB below it.

The Airalo rows were read from its checkout on 13 August 2026, the Nomad rows from its own on 17 August and the Saily rows from Saily's own on 18 August 2026; eSIMCard's rows have been withdrawn: we read its own pages on 18 August 2026, found the figures we held were wrong, and could not store the real ones.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. Alpas Mobile is Airalo's product name for its Philippine plans, not a carrier. An earlier version of this table carried a Nomad 15 GB plan at $27 and a 10 GB at $18; neither price was ever read off Nomad's site, and there is no 15 GB Philippine plan. For a two-week island trip, 10 GB at $17 to $19 is the plan most people actually want — the 50 GB is only worth it if you are working remotely.

Unlimited

Airalo's Alpas Mobile unlimited is $18.50 for 5 days, $27 for 7 and $71 for 30, all verified. Holafly's verified equivalents are dearer at each of the three — $20.50, $27.50 and $73.90 —.

At $0.90 a gigabyte, $27 buys 30 GB of metered data. Very few travellers get near that in a week here, partly because resort WiFi does the heavy lifting. Unlimited is a convenience buy.

Coverage decides your carrier, not your speed

Philippine mobile speeds are modest — the national average in our data is 30 Mbps, with 4G downloads typically 23–36 Mbps. Nobody is choosing a network for throughput. They are choosing it for whether the signal reaches the island.

Smart Communications has the widest 5G footprint and strong signal across Boracay, Palawan and Siargao, plus the best inter-island coverage. Globe Telecom is strong in urban Metro Manila and Cebu, and DITO Telecommunity is the newest and most urban of the three.

Known dead ground: remote islands such as Batanes, the Camiguin hinterlands and the lesser-visited Visayas; the open water between island-hopping stops, including Big Lagoon and Kayangan Lake; and the interior jungles of Palawan and Mindanao. Emergency calls work on any Philippine network without an active plan.

What network your eSIM uses, honestly

Airalo does not publish a host network for the Philippines — not for Alpas Mobile, not for anything. Any page telling you its Philippine plans sit on Smart or Globe made that up, and this one used to.

Only eSIMCard offers a lead rather than a fact. It names Smart and Globe on its two smallest Philippine plans, unchecked against either operator, and leaves the field blank on the larger ones. Saily, Nomad and Holafly publish nothing at all — earlier versions of this page credited Saily and Holafly with Smart and Globe, and Nomad with Globe on its smaller plans, and not one of those came from the seller.

So if your itinerary is Siargao, El Nido or the smaller Visayas, the network is the thing that decides whether your phone works — and the only way to control it is to buy a local Smart SIM at a counter and ask for it by name. Bring your passport.

WiFi covers a fair amount of the rest: good in Manila, Cebu and the major tourist areas, and hotel and restaurant WiFi is normal on Boracay and in El Nido. Remote islands have limited or none.

Full plan pricing is on the Philippines hub.