Comparing Vietnam SIMs — the host network matters more than the price

Ask which network before you ask the price

Most country comparisons come down to money. Vietnam does not. Viettel holds 54.2% of the market, has the widest rural and remote coverage and the strongest 5G footprint in the country, and it is the only carrier that works reliably in the Sapa highlands, on Ha Long Bay cruises and along the Ha Giang Loop. Those three places are why a large share of visitors come.

So the first question is not "which is cheapest" but "does this thing run on Viettel". Our network data records it like this:

eSIM provider	Host network in our data
Saily	Not disclosed
Nomad	Not disclosed
Holafly	Not published
Airalo	Not disclosed

The Saily row used to read Viettel and Vinaphone. Reading Saily's own Vietnam pages on 16 August 2026 established that it names no carrier at all — the wording is a reliable connection from Vietnam's best networks — so the claim has been withdrawn. No seller in our Vietnam data claims Viettel any more.

Airalo is the other awkward row. It does not publish which Vietnamese network its plans roam onto — the name you see in its app is Airalo's own product branding, not a carrier — and we hold no verified host network for it. That is not an accusation, it is simply a gap: we cannot tell you whether an Airalo eSIM will work in Sapa, and neither can Airalo's own listing.

If your itinerary is Ho Chi Minh City, Hoi An and Hanoi, any of them will do — national average speeds run around 95 Mbps and Mobifone averages 90 to 102 Mbps on 4G. If you are going north into the mountains or onto the water, eSIMCard is a known risk and Airalo, Saily, Nomad and Holafly are unknown ones — Holafly used to sit in the first group on a Vinaphone listing it does not make, and it publishes no host carrier for any country — and no amount of unlimited data compensates for a network that is not there.

The prices we verified

Airalo's Vietnam package is sold under the product name Xin Chao. We read these off Airalo's own site on 13 August 2026.

Vietnam is not a cheap eSIM market. The best verified rate here is 98 cents a gigabyte, and that is only if you buy 50GB. For comparison, the same provider's 50GB month in Thailand is $27.50.

Saily's prices, also verified

Saily's five Vietnam plans were read from Saily's own site on 16 August 2026: 1GB over seven days at $3.99, then 30-day plans at $7.99 for 3GB, $10.99 for 5GB, $17.99 for 10GB and $28.99 for 20GB. There is no unlimited tier and nothing above 20GB.

Against the Airalo table that is a cent under at 5GB, 10GB and 20GB. There is one genuine win as well: Saily's $7.99 buys a month of 3GB where Airalo's $8.00 buys a week of it. Both checks also moved our own numbers — we had been publishing $11.99 for that 5GB month, a dollar too high, and a 2GB plan that turns out not to exist.

What we hold on everyone else, unverified

Nomad's Vietnam prices were read off its own site on 17 August 2026 and are verified too: $8 for 3GB, $10 for 5GB, $17 for 10GB and $39 for 50GB, all over thirty days, plus unlimited at $18 for five days and $33 for ten. The $39 is the cheapest verified gigabyte in the country at $0.78, and an earlier version of this page listed a $4 Nomad 1GB plan that does not exist. Holafly's were read off esim.holafly.com on 18 August 2026 and are verified: unlimited at $11.90 for three days, $20.50 for five, $27.50 for seven, $36.50 for ten, $50.50 for fifteen and $73.90 for thirty. 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.

There are also reported fair-use rules worth knowing about, which we have not verified: Airalo is said to throttle at 1GB a day on its unlimited plans, and Nomad at 2GB a day. On an unlimited plan that daily ceiling is the number that actually governs your day, not the word "unlimited".

What a local SIM costs, honestly

SIMs are sold at every major international airport — Noi Bai, Tan Son Nhat, Da Nang, Cam Ranh and Phu Quoc — and in city stores everywhere. A passport is required for registration; that is national regulation.

The price picture is messier than we would like. Our country data records a typical airport price of about $7. Retail quotes we hold are higher: 250,000 to 350,000 VND in city stores, roughly $10 to $14, and 350,000 to 400,000 VND at airport kiosks, roughly $14 to $16. What we can say plainly is that the spread is wide, that the airport charges more than town, and that we do not hold verified data allowances for those packs — so we cannot give you a per-gigabyte figure to compare against the eSIM table above. Read the board at the counter.

What we would buy

A week in the cities. Any eSIM. Saily's verified 3GB for 30 days at $7.99 covers maps, messaging and photos, and is a penny under Airalo's 3GB week at $8. Cheaper unverified options exist and are probably fine, but the money at stake is a few dollars.

Sapa, Ha Giang or a Ha Long cruise. Get on Viettel. A local Viettel SIM bought with your passport is the only way to be certain of it, and after this round of checks it is the only way at all: no eSIM in our data is confirmed on Viettel and none advertises it. Airalo and Saily, the two whose prices we can vouch for, are also the two that will not say whose towers you are using. Even then, expect dead ground on the trekking routes, deep in the Ha Long karst channels and along the rural Mekong Delta waterways — no carrier fixes those, Viettel just fails least.

Two weeks or more. The local SIM is the better instinct in Vietnam, because eSIM per-gigabyte rates here are poor and Viettel's own retail packs are cheap. The catch is the passport step and the uncertainty in the pack pricing above.

Tethering. Holafly does not allow hotspot use. If you are working, that rules it out before the coverage argument even starts.

Carrier detail, coverage notes and the full plan list live on the Vietnam hub.