International eSIM or a Thai tourist SIM?
Two products answer the same question. An international eSIM from Airalo, Holafly, Nomad, Saily, Ubigi, Jetpac and Yesim is bought at home, installed on Wi-Fi the night before the flight and starts working when the plane stops; it rides on the Thai networks anyway — True, AIS, dtac and TrueMove appear in the network column — but it is data only, with no Thai number, and the seller rather than the operator sets the fair-use rules. A tourist package from AIS and True (True/dtac) is the operator's own product: unlimited data at full speed, a Thai number that receives SMS codes, free calls, and a passport registration at the counter or an eSIM bought from the operator's online shop.
The price gap depends on how much data is needed. For a modest allowance the eSIM sellers win clearly: Nomad 10 GB for 30 days at $10 is the cheapest 10 GB plan that lasts a fortnight or more, and even the dearest 10 GB plan in the table, Yesim 10 GB for 30 days at $13.20, costs less than the cheapest 8-day local package (449 THB, ≈ $13.61). For unlimited use the order flips: the cheapest international unlimited plan for a week or more is Nomad unlimited for 10 days at $16, against 449 THB (≈ $13.61) for Happy Tourist Infinite SIM 8 days (dtac) with calls and a Thai number included, and True (True/dtac) unlimited for 10 days at 349 THB (≈ $10.58) is the cheapest unlimited option of any kind in the catalogue — with the caveat that outgoing calls and SMS are disabled on that package. For a month, Nomad unlimited for 30 days at $33 is the cheapest unlimited eSIM and 1,199 THB (≈ $36.35) buys the AIS TOURIST SIM 30 days.
The decision usually comes down to three things that are not on a price tag. A Thai number matters if a bank, a delivery app or a villa agent will send codes by SMS, or if the phone must ring for a driver; the eSIM sellers are data-only (Jetpac sells voice minutes as an add-on), the operators include calls. Arrival matters if the flight lands late and the counter queue is long: an eSIM is already working at the gate. And the passport matters in the other direction — a physical tourist SIM is registered to it under the NBTC rules, the operator's eSIM channel asks for the same document online, while an international eSIM asks for nothing.
How to read the comparison table
Every row is a list price read from the provider's own plan page on 5. Sept. 2026, in the currency the page showed: Airalo priced its Thailand packages in baht when read from Thailand, Ubigi lists its smallest plan in euro, the rest quote dollars. The dollar column converts at 32.98 THB per US dollar, the ECB reference rate of 3. Sept. 2026, and it moves when the weekly rate refresh lands, which is why the list price is kept beside it. Dollars per gigabyte is the honest way to compare capped plans: Jetpac 40 GB for 30 days at $29.99 is the best value in the catalogue at $0.75/GB, while the cheapest starter plan, Saily 1 GB for 7 days at $2.99, costs $2.99/GB — small plans are for people who will live on hotel Wi-Fi and only need maps and messages on the road.
"Unlimited" is a marketing word and the fair-use column is where the plan actually is. Holafly (hotspot 1 GB/day; possible one-day speed reduction at peak), Nomad (daily high-speed allowance (not printed), then 512 kbps until the 24-hour reset), Saily (5 GB/day at full speed, then 1 Mbps), Ubigi (60 GB at full speed, then 2 Mbps) and Jetpac (3 GB/day at full speed, then up to 1 Mbps) all state a threshold after which speed drops. Airalo did not print a threshold on the plan page on the retrieval date, which is not the same as not having one. A daily cap of 3–5 GB is more than a phone uses on a normal holiday day and less than a laptop tethered for a video call; the throttled speed after it — 512 kbps to 2 Mbps in the table — still carries maps and messaging but not video. The local packages promise unlimited data at maximum speed and do not publish a daily cap on the tourist pages; the operators' general terms still allow network management.
Hotspot is listed as the provider states it: Holafly, Nomad, Ubigi, Jetpac, AIS and True (True/dtac) allow tethering; Airalo, Saily and Yesim do not state it on the plan page, so the column says so rather than guessing. Holafly caps sharing at 1 GB a day even on its unlimited plans. Nothing in the table is an average, and a plan whose price could not be read on the day is simply absent — Maya Mobile, for one, blocks automated reading of its plan pages and has no row.
How much data a Phuket trip needs
The island is not a data-heavy place unless video is. Maps between Bang Tao and Rawai, Grab bookings, messaging, translating a menu and uploading the day's photos use around 300–700 MB a day on most phones; over a week that is 2–5 GB, and a Jetpac 5 GB at $7 plan covers it with room to spare. Streaming an hour of video a day, taking video calls home, or navigating with the screen on for a scooter day adds 1–2 GB per day, which is where the 10 GB fortnight plans and the daily-capped unlimited plans meet. A laptop on a hotspot for work is the only case where a real allowance matters: a day of calls and cloud sync can pass 3 GB before lunch, and that is exactly the threshold at which Jetpac throttle. For that traveller the operators' packages, which do not publish a daily cap, or a large capped plan such as Jetpac 30 GB for 30 days at $23.99 are the better buy.
Three scenarios, priced from the table: a week of beach and a couple of tours — Saily 1 GB for 7 days at $2.99 if hotel Wi-Fi does the heavy lifting, or Jetpac 5 GB for 30 days at $7 to be comfortable; two weeks with daily driving and social media — Nomad 10 GB for 30 days at $10 or the AIS TOURIST SIM 15 days at 699 THB (≈ $21.19) if a Thai number is wanted; a month with remote work — Nomad unlimited for 30 days at $33 with its daily cap in mind, or the AIS TOURIST SIM 30 days at 1,199 THB (≈ $36.35). Hotel Wi-Fi in Phuket is generally usable for calls in the 4- and 5-star bands and unreliable in guesthouses, so the plan should assume the phone carries the trip.
Buying a SIM at Phuket airport (HKT)
The three operator brands keep counters in the international arrivals hall of Phuket International Airport, after immigration and customs and before the exit doors, and the guides that walk the hall place them as in the table above: AIS international arrivals hall, after customs, near exits 1–2; dtac (True) international arrivals hall exits 1–2; baggage claim belts 2 and 6; True international arrivals hall next to exit 3 (true shop), baggage claim belt 4, domestic arrivals hall. The arrivals counters are reported as open around the clock, the True Shop inside the terminal keeps shop hours. Staff speak English, take cash and cards, register the SIM to the passport on the spot and put it in the phone; the whole thing takes five minutes when there is no queue and twenty when two wide-body flights have landed together, which at HKT is the late evening.
What the counters charge is the part that moves. The official tiers on the operators' pages are 499 THB for 8 days (449 THB for the dtac-branded Happy Tourist Infinite SIM 8 days), 699 THB for 15 days and 1,199 THB for 30 days; the dated guides in the table report 299–499 THB for an 8-day package and 599–699 THB for 15 days, the lower figures being older data-capped dtac cards (15–50 GB) that were still on sale in Juni 2026. Ask which package is being sold, not just the price. The counters are official and do not add a mark-up; the resellers outside the doors and some tour desks do. 7-Eleven shops across the island also sell tourist SIMs at list price and can top up any of them, which matters for anyone landing on a domestic flight, where the counters are fewer.
The domestic arrivals hall, where flights from Bangkok land, has a True counter and fewer options; a traveller connecting through Suvarnabhumi or Don Mueang can buy the same packages there, since the operators' tourist tiers are national. Whatever is bought, the SIM needs the phone unlocked — a carrier-locked handset from a two-year contract at home will show the network and refuse to register — and a dual-SIM phone can keep the home line for banking codes while the Thai SIM carries data.
How to activate an eSIM for Thailand
Check the phone first: eSIM works on iPhone XS and newer, Google Pixel 3 and newer, Samsung Galaxy S20 and newer and most flagships since 2020, but many mid-range Android phones sold in Indien, China and South-East Asia still ship without it, and phones bought in mainland China often have the feature disabled even when the hardware is there. The seller's page has a compatibility list; the phone's own settings — "Add eSIM" or "Add mobile plan" under cellular or SIM settings — settle it faster. The handset must also be carrier-unlocked.
Buy and install before the flight, on Wi-Fi: the seller emails a QR code or the app installs the profile directly. Give the line a name ("Thailand"), set it as the data line, keep the home SIM as the default for calls and SMS so bank codes still arrive, and switch data roaming on for the new line — an eSIM is technically roaming on the Thai network and will not connect with it off. Leave the line switched off until landing where the seller says so; Holafly, Saily, Ubigi and Jetpac start the clock on first connection, Nomad (within 60 days) and Yesim (within 180 days) require activation within a window of purchase. On the runway, switch the Thai line on, wait for the operator name to appear, and open a page.
The operators' own eSIMs work the same way but carry the registration step: AIS sells its 5- to 30-day tourist packages as eSIM through its online shop with a QR code by email and asks for the passport, while the 60-day package remains a physical card; True lists a tourist eSIM channel beside the physical SIM on the same tourist page. Either way the Thai eSIM comes with a Thai number, which an international eSIM never does. If an eSIM refuses to connect after landing, the fix in most cases is one of four: data roaming off on that line, the wrong line selected for data, an APN left over from a previous profile, or airplane mode toggled once to force a fresh network search.
Calls, a Thai number and the apps that need one
Most of a holiday runs on data: WhatsApp, LINE, Telegram and Grab all work on an international eSIM, and the hotel, the tour agent and the villa manager will message rather than call. A Thai number becomes useful in a narrow set of cases — a food-delivery app that verifies by SMS, a Thai bank account for a long stay, a scooter shop that wants a local number for the deposit, a driver who calls when the meeting point is wrong. True's thailand tourist sim 10 days (data-only) at 349 THB sits between the two worlds: it has a number and receives calls and SMS but cannot dial out. The INFINITE and AIS packages include local calls and a small international credit, which is enough for a taxi and an airline, not for calling home; that is what the messaging apps are for.
For a stay beyond the package, the Thai SIM keeps its number and takes ordinary prepaid packages from the operator's app or a 7-Eleven top-up; AIS's ais tourist sim 60 days at 1,599 THB is the longest tourist tier in the catalogue, and under the NBTC rules a tourist SIM used beyond 60 days needs the identity re-confirmed — AIS takes the passport number by SMS or at a shop. International eSIMs simply expire; buying the next one is a tap in the app, and the number question does not arise.
Before you land: TDAC and the arrival card
Since 2025 every foreign visitor fills in the Thailand Digital Arrival Card online within three days before arrival, and the immigration officer at Phuket checks it against the passport; the airline may ask for it at check-in. It is free, takes ten minutes and needs a working connection at the moment of filling it, which is one more reason to have the eSIM installed before the flight rather than counting on airport Wi-Fi after landing. Visa rules changed on 15 September 2026 as well — the visa-free stay for most nationalities is now 30 days per entry — and the site's visa guide, linked below, keeps the by-country table with dates. None of that has anything to do with the SIM, except that the queue at immigration is where a phone with no data is most missed.
Coverage on the island
Phuket is one of the best-covered provinces in Thailand: AIS and True both run 5G along the whole west coast from Nai Yang to Rawai, through Phuket Town and Chalong and along the airport road, and 4G fills the rest. The international eSIMs attach to those same networks — the network column shows which — so coverage is not a reason to choose one seller over another; speed on a given afternoon depends on the cell, not the brand on the QR code. The places signal genuinely drops are predictable: the boat to Phi Phi, Racha or the Similans loses the network a few kilometres offshore and finds it again near the islands; the beaches under the headlands at Freedom, Nui and Banana Beach can be a bar or none; the interior roads over the hills between Patong and Kathu and around the Big Buddha dip in and out. A hotel room at the back of a concrete building may be worse than the beach in front of it, and that is what hotel Wi-Fi is for.
What the catalogue covers and what it does not
This revision (September 2026, read 5. Sept. 2026) lists 58 plans from 9 providers: 7 international eSIM sellers and the two Thai operators. Every plan carries the URL of the page it was read from and the date, and the whole set is published as JSON under CC BY 4.0 below. Saily's plan page refuses automated reading, so its rows come from a dated catalogue listing and are marked as such; Maya Mobile blocks reading altogether and is absent; Yesim's unlimited plans showed two different 30-day prices on the retrieval date and were left out rather than guessed. Airport counter prices are as reported by dated guides that walk the hall, not observed by the publisher, and the official tiers are the ones in the operators' table. Prices are replaced only when a page is re-read, never inflated forward; the month in the heading is the month of the last reading.
From your country
Indien
Indian roaming packs for Thailand are priced by the day and add up quickly over a fortnight, which is why most Indian visitors buy a Thai SIM at the counter or an eSIM before the flight. The catch is the handset: many popular Indian Android models below the flagship tier have no eSIM, so check the settings before paying for one. UPI does not work in Thailand; a Thai number is useful for Grab and for the SMS codes that some card payments trigger. Phuket from Indien.
Russland
Russian roaming in Thailand is expensive enough that almost nobody uses it, and cards issued by Russian banks do not work with the international eSIM sellers' checkouts, which are foreign merchants — so the practical route is a tourist SIM or the operator's eSIM bought at the airport or a shop with cash or a foreign card. Russian is spoken at the counters in Bang Tao, Karon and Rawai shops but not at the airport; the True and AIS tourist pages are available in Russian. Phuket from Russland.
China
The reason to buy a Thai SIM or an international eSIM is not price but access: Google Maps, WhatsApp, Instagram and the rest are open on a Thai network and closed on a mainland roaming package. Phones bought in mainland China often have eSIM disabled in software even on models that support it elsewhere, so a physical tourist SIM at the counter is the safer plan; True's dtac-branded package includes free minutes to China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Phuket from China.
Australien
Australian carriers sell daily roaming passes that are convenient for a long weekend and poor value for a fortnight, and the phone keeps the home number for banking codes. A Thai SIM or eSIM for data plus the home SIM for SMS in a dual-SIM phone is the usual setup; most phones sold in Australien since 2019 have eSIM. Sunburn arrives on day one; a dead battery from a hot phone on the beach arrives on day two, so a power bank matters more than the plan. Phuket from Australien.
Vereinigtes Königreich
UK tariffs mostly treat Thailand as a rest-of-world zone with daily roaming charges or no data at all, so an eSIM bought before the flight is the default for British visitors, with the home SIM kept active for bank apps that verify by SMS. Nearly every phone sold in the UK since 2019 supports eSIM; the operator counters at the airport are the alternative for anyone who wants a Thai number for the villa agent or the scooter deposit. Phuket from Vereinigtes Königreich.
Deutschland
German contracts include EU roaming and almost never Thailand, and the per-day passes that exist are priced for business travellers. An eSIM installed at home on Wi-Fi is the simple answer; Ubigi prices its smallest Thailand plan in euro, the rest of the sellers bill in dollars and the card issuer converts. Anyone staying a month or more in Bang Tao or Rawai does better with the operator's package, which brings a Thai number and prepaid top-ups at any 7-Eleven. Phuket from Deutschland.