Buying a SIM card in the Philippines: counters, registration and what it costs

The counters, airport by airport

Smart and Globe both sell in arrivals at the three airports most visitors use. The difference is how long you stand there.

Manila's twenty minutes is not the till being slow. It is the registration step, described below, multiplied by an arrivals hall full of people doing it at once. If you land at NAIA late and tired, this is the part of the process to have opinions about in advance.

Registration is mandatory, and it needs a selfie

Philippine law requires SIM and eSIM registration with local carriers. In practice that means presenting your passport and having a photograph taken at the point of sale. It is not optional, it is not negotiable at the counter, and it is why a ₱40 purchase takes as long as it does.

International travel eSIM providers — Airalo, Holafly, Nomad and Saily among them — sit outside the local registration requirement. For a short trip, that is the strongest single argument for buying before you fly.

Prices, in pesos

The SIM itself

₱40–100

Tourist data package

roughly ₱500–800 for 30 days

Our typical airport figure for the country: about $5.

Travel eSIM: from $2.90 for 1GB over three days, installed before departure.

Those numbers make the Philippines one of the cheaper countries in the world to get connected in, whichever route you take. For anything over two weeks, the local package is very hard to beat on money alone. For a week in Palawan, the $2.90 eSIM that is already working when the plane doors open is usually the better trade.

Away from the airport

You are never far from a SIM here. Every NAIA terminal sells them, so does Cebu airport, and in town they are stocked by SM Malls, 7-Eleven, Robinson's and the carrier stores themselves. Prices in town are the same as at the airport, so there is no penalty for waiting until you have slept.

Go to a carrier store rather than a convenience store if you want a specific network. Smart is the one to ask for if your itinerary includes Boracay, Palawan or Siargao — it has the widest 5G footprint and the better inter-island coverage. Globe is strongest in Metro Manila and Cebu.

WiFi will get you as far as the taxi

WiFi is good in Manila, Cebu and the major tourist areas, and the resort islands — Boracay, El Nido — have it in hotels and restaurants. Remote islands have limited WiFi or none. That is enough to message an accommodation or book a ride from arrivals while you decide whether to queue, but it is not a substitute for a plan once you are moving between islands, where the water between stops has no coverage of any kind.

Full provider prices and plan tables for the country are on the Philippines hub; if you are not sure your handset supports eSIM, check eSIM compatible phones before you rely on one.