Vietnam eSIM and SIM cards: the network you want, and who can actually sell it to you

The cheapest data in Vietnam is not on the network you want

Vietnam has the lowest per-gigabyte price of any Asian country we track. Nomad's 50 GB monthly plan works out at $0.78 per gigabyte — better than Singapore, better than Korea, better than the Philippines, and comparable to western Europe. That $39 was read off Nomad's own site on 17 August 2026 and is verified. An earlier version of this page called it indicative and warned you off relying on it; that caveat is withdrawn.

Nomad does not name a host network in Vietnam. An earlier version of this page said its listing put the Vietnamese service on Mobifone and Vinaphone; that was wrong, and Nomad publishes no host carrier in any of the 47 countries it sells in. What it certainly does not offer is Viettel — the carrier our coverage data credits with the Sapa highlands, Ha Long Bay cruises and the Ha Giang Loop, three of the most-travelled non-city itineraries in the country.

That looks like a straight trade-off between price and coverage, and an earlier version of this page sold it as one: pay about ten dollars more, get the mountain network. It was wrong, and the correction is the most useful thing on this page. No eSIM seller in our data can be shown to run on Viettel, and none of them claims to. Two of the five name a different carrier; the other three publish nothing at all. There is no ten-dollar upgrade to buy.

Viettel is the network that matters once you leave the cities

The travel point underneath all this is sound and worth keeping. Viettel leads nationally with over 30,000 5G base stations and 90% outdoor coverage across all 34 provincial capitals, and our coverage data names it as the only reliable carrier in three specific places:

The Ha Giang Loop. Three to four days on a motorbike through limestone karst on the Chinese border, with long stretches between settlements. This is the trip where a dead phone stops being an inconvenience — no maps, no way to call a homestay, no way to reach anyone if the bike goes down.

Sapa and the northern highlands. Terraced valleys and ridge villages. The town itself is fine on most things; the trekking routes down into the valleys are where the difference shows.

Ha Long Bay cruises. Overnight boats move away from shore-based cells. Our data is unusually specific in naming this as a Viettel-only situation, and it is the one people are least likely to anticipate — a two-day cruise sounds like a coastal activity, not a remote one.

In the cities none of this matters. Average 4G downloads across Vietnamese networks run 90 to 102 Mbps, with a national average around 95 Mbps. Vietnam's urban mobile internet is better than a lot of Europe's, whoever you buy from.

What each seller actually claims

Every network cell in our Vietnam data is the seller's own listing, and every one of them is unconfirmed — nobody has put a handset on the ground and checked. Read this table as what a company says about itself, not as a tested fact.

Seller	Host network in our data	Status
Saily	none published	names no carrier on its Vietnam pages
Nomad	none published	publishes no host carrier in any country
Holafly	none published	publishes no host carrier in any country
Airalo	none published	publishes no host carrier in any country

Three rows are corrections. The Nomad row previously read Mobifone / Vinaphone; Nomad names no Vietnamese carrier, and the claim has gone. The Holafly row previously read GPC Vinaphone (VNPT), described as the seller's own listing. It was not: we read Holafly's Vietnamese prices off esim.holafly.com on 18 August 2026 and it names no carrier for Vietnam, or for any of the 28 countries we checked, so that has gone too. The Saily row is the other. Older data on this site had Saily down as Viettel and Vinaphone, and this page said so. Reading Saily's own Vietnam pages on 16 August 2026 established that it names no carrier anywhere on them — the phrase it uses is a reliable connection from Vietnam's best networks, which tells you nothing. The Viettel claim is withdrawn, and with it the last reason anyone had to buy an eSIM here for the network.

Saily, Airalo and Nomad are the three sellers whose Vietnamese prices we have actually read — Saily's on 16 August 2026, Airalo's at its checkout on 13 August, Nomad's on 18 August — and they are also the three that tell you least about the network, since not one of them names a carrier. Airalo publishes no host carrier anywhere in the world; its Vietnamese plans are sold as Xin Chao, which is Airalo's own retail name for the product rather than the name of a network.

An earlier version of this page told you to check that the product page named Viettel before paying. That was unfollowable advice, and we now know it was unfollowable in the strongest sense: no seller's page names Viettel. Most do not print a host network at all, so there is nothing on the page to check — and where one is printed, it is a marketing claim you have no way to test until you are standing on the mountain.

The only certain Viettel is a Viettel SIM

If your itinerary genuinely depends on rural coverage — the Ha Giang Loop above all — the reliable move is to buy a Viettel SIM in Vietnam, from a Viettel store or an official airport counter, so you know exactly whose network you are on. A Vietnamese tourist SIM runs around $7 in our data.

The catch is registration. A passport is required, and Vietnamese SIM registration is enforced rather than nominal. That means a staffed counter, a document check and a wait — at Tan Son Nhat or Noi Bai after a long-haul arrival, potentially a substantial one. It also means you cannot buy one at a kiosk in ninety seconds the way you can in Singapore or Korea.

We also cannot tell you what data allowance $7 buys, because our data does not record it. Without that number, we will not claim the local SIM is better value than an eSIM, only that it is cheaper at the counter and that it is the one purchase where you know the carrier.

For a mountain trip the sensible answer is usually both: a cheap eSIM that works the moment you land and covers the cities, and a Viettel SIM bought in Hanoi before you head north. That is ten to twenty dollars of eSIM plus a $7 SIM, and it removes the guessing entirely.

What the plans cost

Airalo's Vietnamese prices were read from its checkout on 13 August 2026, Saily's from its own site on 16 August, and Nomad's and Holafly's from theirs on 18 August. All four sets are verified. 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.

Airalo, by allowance and validity:

Saily sells one window — 30 days — on everything above its 1 GB plan:

Nomad sells six Vietnamese plans, four metered and two unlimited:

Read across the first two and they are the same product at the same price, with one exception worth acting on: Saily's 3 GB costs $7.99 for a month where Airalo's costs $8.00 for a week. If 3 GB is your size, that is the plan.

The rest is noise — a cent between Airalo and Saily at 5 GB, 10 GB and 20 GB. Nomad slips under both across the middle: $10 for 5 GB and $17 for 10 GB over 30 days, where Saily wants $10.99 and $17.99 and Airalo $11 and $18.

The top of the ladder is where the difference stops being small, and where this page was wrong. It used to say that Airalo was the only seller we had verified above the 20 GB mark. It also said Airalo's 50 GB month at $49 — $0.98 a gigabyte — was the cheapest verified rate in the country. Nomad's 50 GB is $39, or $0.78 a gigabyte, and it is now checked: ten dollars less for the same allowance, and the cheapest verified rate in Vietnam. On price there is very little to choose between any of them below that, which is another reason the network question is not worth paying a premium to guess at.

Unlimited, and why Vietnam sells so much of it

Vietnam has more unlimited plans in our data than any other country here — four sellers offering them, from Airalo's verified three-day plan at $11.50 up to Holafly's 30-day at a verified $73.90.

Mostly they are poor value. Airalo's verified 30-day unlimited is $69 against $49 for 50 GB; you would need to burn more than 70 GB in a month before it paid. Holafly's verified $73.90 is worse still, and it is the dearest plan of any kind in our Vietnam data.

The exception is short and intense. Airalo's verified 3-day unlimited at $11.50 and 5-day at $18.50 make sense for someone arriving with no idea what they will use, tethering a laptop, or working. Nomad now undercuts it on both windows it sells: a verified $18 for five days and $33 for ten, against Airalo's $18.50 and $34.50. And there is a real Vietnamese use case for that: the country has a large and growing population of remote workers on 30 to 90-day stays, for whom a $60 to $70 monthly unlimited is simply a utility bill rather than a holiday extravagance.

Everyone on a two-week holiday should take a metered plan and stop thinking about it.

The verdict

Cities and coast, one to two weeks: 10 GB over 30 days — a verified $17 from Nomad, $17.99 from Saily, $18 from Airalo. Nomad's is now the cheapest and the figure is checked; an earlier version of this page had it at $18 and called it indicative. There is a dollar in it, and Vietnamese urban data is quick whoever carries it.

Anything including Sapa, Ha Giang or Ha Long Bay: buy a Viettel SIM in Vietnam, with your passport, from a Viettel store or an official airport counter. That is the only way to know you are on the carrier our coverage data credits with those three routes. If you want an eSIM as well — and you probably should, for the taxi from the airport — buy it on price alone, because none of them will put you on Viettel and none of them claims it will. Download offline maps before you go north regardless of what you are carrying.

A month or more, working: 50 GB at a verified $39 from Nomad, ten dollars under Airalo's verified $49 for the same allowance — we previously sent you to Airalo here because Nomad's figure was unchecked, and it no longer is. Or the local prepaid route, if you are prepared to spend an hour in a city shop with your passport. Beyond a fortnight, local prepaid tariffs are genuinely good value in Vietnam.

Under a week, light use: 5 GB at a verified $10 to $11 — Airalo's $10 if a week is enough, Saily's $10.99 if you would rather have the month. Or, if you are travelling light on data, Saily's verified 3 GB month at $7.99. Do not buy 1 GB: Airalo's verified $4 for three days is the worst value on the board and Saily's verified $3.99 only stretches it to seven, and a single evening of maps and messaging will eat either.

Beyond the three named routes, the Mekong Delta around Can Tho, the central highlands and Phu Quoc's less developed side are all places to download offline maps before you leave the last city, whatever is in your phone.

Before you buy anything, confirm your handset takes an eSIM — see eSIM-compatible phones. If you want to see how Vietnam's $0.78 per gigabyte compares globally, our cheapest eSIM rankings put it in context.