2026 · 6 providers · 44 plans · 3 networks
Best eSIM for Vietnam
Picked by your route, not by hype. Starting with the question none of these companies answers on the buy button: which Vietnamese network are you actually buying?
Do you need an eSIM in Vietnam? six honest cases
AT&T and Verizon day passes are about $12 a day and Vietnam is a two-week country. Ten days of roaming costs more than a 50GB plan. Airalo 10GB at $18 ends that arithmetic on the taxi ride out of the airport.
Grab is how you move around Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and the driver calls you. Without data you are standing on a corner watching a motorbike circle the block. Any plan on this page fixes that for the price of two coffees.
Some T-Mobile plans include Vietnam data at throttled speed. That is enough for Zalo messages and not enough for a map redrawing while a taxi is moving. Land, test it, keep a $2.99 GigSky 1GB in the phone as the fallback.
The northern mountains are the one route where a travel eSIM is the wrong answer. Every brand that publishes a Vietnamese partner names VNPT. Up there you want Viettel, bought direct, which earns us nothing.
Hotspotting a laptop runs 2 to 3GB a day and cafe wifi in Vietnam is fast until 19:00 and then it is not. Take unlimited with a published cap: Airalo prints 3GB a day, and most of the others print nothing.
An all-inclusive with real wifi, one boat trip a day and no scooter needs almost nothing. GigSky gives away 100MB for seven days with no card, which covers the airport and the ride to the hotel.
Your trip three taps, one answer
Answer three questions and we name the plan, with the reason written out. Already know what you want? Jump to the picks.
How long are you going for?
How will you use it? Pick everything that applies.
Where are you going?
The picks in short
Airalo
Best for most trips, and the only one that names its network $18.00 10GB / 30 days- Its own store page lists VNPT as the Vietnamese partner, so you can read a real coverage map before paying
- Unlimited option with a printed 3GB/day then 1 Mbps cap, not a vague fair-use paragraph
- 50GB for $49 is 98 cents a gigabyte, the best big-bundle price in this comparison
Watch out: Not the cheapest at any size under 20GB. GigSky is $1.21 less for the same 10GB.
Trustpilot 4.1/5 · 41,863 reviews
See Airalo's Vietnam plansGigSky
Cheapest at the sizes most people actually buy $16.79 10GB / 30 days- Cheapest 3GB, 5GB and 10GB plans here, and 5GB for $10.29 covers a normal two-week trip
- Free 100MB for 7 days, no card, so you can test the signal at your hotel before spending anything
- Sells 3.5GB-per-day packs that state the cap in the plan name instead of calling it unlimited
Watch out: Will not say which Vietnamese network it uses, which is the one thing this site cares about most.
Trustpilot 4.3/5 · 6,208 reviews
See GigSky's Vietnam plansSaily
Best support record, and the one to hotspot from $17.99 10GB / 30 days- Trustpilot 4.7 from 30,537 reviews, the best record of anyone here by a distance
- Tethering is allowed with no separate hotspot ceiling, unlike Holafly’s 1GB a day
- 20GB for $28.99 is the cheapest big fixed bundle short of Airalo’s 50GB
Watch out: Publishes nothing about its Vietnamese network, and its "unlimited" is 5GB a day and then a throttle it does not name.
Trustpilot 4.7/5 · 30,537 reviews
See Saily's Vietnam plansYesim is the fourth linkable option and the cheapest brand in this comparison at 1GB ($2.91) and 20GB ($25.58). It is also the one whose Trustpilot score is suspended rather than merely low: the platform removed a batch of fake reviews and switched the rating off. We still list its prices, because they are real, and we flag it every single time. The full Yesim review explains when the saving is worth it.
Compare every Vietnam plan side by side
| Provider | Best for | Price anchor | Vietnamese network | Unlimited cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airalo | Most trips; the only named network | $18.00 / 10GB | VNPT (published) | 3GB/day, then 1 Mbps |
| GigSky | Cheapest 3, 5 and 10GB | $16.79 / 10GB | not published | 3.5GB/day packs instead |
| Saily | Best support record, hotspot | $17.99 / 10GB | not published | 5GB/day, then throttled |
| Yesim ¹ | Lowest price at 1GB and 20GB | $18.60 / 10GB | not published | no cap published |
| Holafly | Truly uncapped phone data | $36.50 / 10 days | GPC Vinaphone (VNPT) (published) | no daily cap; hotspot 1GB/day |
| Viettel (bought direct) | The mountains and the Mekong backroads | ≈$5 / 5GB per day | Viettel | n/a, prepaid packs |
Prices in USD, checked September 4, 2026, before any promo code. Holafly and Viettel are listed unlinked because we earn nothing from either; they are here because leaving them out would make the table a lie. ¹ Hover the marker for the Yesim caveat.
The cheapest Vietnam eSIM at each size one row, one winner
| You need | Cheapest | Price | Runner-up |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1GB | Yesim | $2.91 / 30 days | GigSky $2.99 / 7 days |
| 3GB | GigSky | $7.49 / 15 days | Saily $7.99 / 30 days |
| 5GB | GigSky | $10.29 / 30 days | Saily $10.99 / 30 days |
| 10GB | GigSky | $16.79 / 30 days | Saily $17.99 / 30 days |
| 20GB | Yesim | $25.58 / 30 days | Saily $28.99 / 30 days |
| 50GB | Airalo | $49.00 / 30 days | Yesim 30GB $32.56 / 30 days |
Read the validity column, not just the price. GigSky's 3GB is 40 cents cheaper than Saily's and expires fifteen days sooner, which matters on a three-week trip and not at all on a long weekend. Yesim wins both ends of the table and carries a suspended Trustpilot score, so the cheapest column and the recommended column are deliberately not the same column. Checked September 4, 2026.
Two ways to act on that table. Take GigSky and pay the least at the size most people buy, or pay $1.21 more for the only brand that will tell you which network you are riding.
See GigSky plans See Airalo plans Work out your size firstWho each provider is actually for plain answers
You want to know which network you are buying, and above 20GB you want the best price per gigabyte anywhere in this comparison.
Full review →You are buying 3, 5 or 10GB, which is most people, and you would rather test a free 100MB at the hotel before committing a cent.
Full review →You are hotspotting a laptop, or the support record matters to you more than a dollar. The 4.7 from 30,537 reviews is earned.
Full review →The budget is the constraint, you want 1GB or 20GB specifically, and you accept a brand whose review record was cleaned out from under it.
Full review →You genuinely will not count gigabytes and you accept a 1GB/day hotspot ceiling at $73.90 a month. We earn nothing from this one.
Full review →Vietnam has three networks and your eSIM probably gets one of them the Viettel problem
This is the part that decides whether your trip works, and almost nobody writes it down. Vietnam has three national operators. Every travel eSIM that publishes a Vietnamese partner names the same one. It is not the one that covers the mountains.
Viettel
Widest coverage · not sold by any travel eSIM we can linkThe army-owned incumbent and the largest carrier in the country at about 54% of the market, with 4G reaching 98.6% of the population and 5G 91.2%. It is the network that holds a signal on the Ha Giang loop, over the Ma Pi Leng pass, in the Sapa valleys and down the Mekong side channels. Not one of the four travel eSIMs on this page publishes a Viettel agreement.
Vinaphone (VNPT)
What your travel eSIM almost certainly isThe state-owned number two, roughly matching Viettel for speed in cities and thinner outside them. Airalo's store page names VNPT. Holafly's page names GPC Vinaphone, which is the same operator. This is a genuinely good network for Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Hoi An, Hue, Nha Trang and the coast road that links them.
MobiFone
Strong in cities · drops off fast outside themThe third operator, fine in urban Vietnam and the first to thin out on a provincial road. Travel blogs routinely assert that Saily rides MobiFone and that Airalo rides Viettel. Saily publishes nothing, and Airalo's own page says VNPT. We are not going to repeat a blog as if it were a network agreement.
So the practical rule for Vietnam: a travel eSIM is the right buy for Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Hoi An, Hue, Nha Trang, Da Lat, Phu Quoc and every road between them, which is most people's entire trip. For the Ha Giang loop, Sapa, Cao Bang, the Dong Van plateau and the deep Mekong Delta, add a Viettel eSIM bought direct. Two profiles on one phone, about five dollars extra, and the map keeps working where it matters most.
Sources & freshness: Market share, 4G population coverage (98.6%) and 5G coverage (91.2%) for Viettel from Vietnamese operator reporting summarised in 2026 carrier comparisons. Network partners taken from each brand's own Vietnam product page on September 4, 2026: Airalo lists VNPT, Holafly lists GPC Vinaphone (VNPT), and Saily, GigSky and Yesim publish nothing at all. Where a brand does not publish a partner we say so rather than repeating a third-party claim.
What "unlimited" really means in Vietnam the caps in one table
| "Unlimited" plan | Real daily high-speed cap | After the cap |
|---|---|---|
| Airalo Unlimited (30 days, $69.00) | 3GB/day | Speed drops to 1 Mbps for the rest of that day and resets at midnight. Both numbers are printed on the product page, which makes Airalo the only brand here you can plan around. |
| Saily Unlimited (30 days, $71.99) | 5GB/day | The highest daily allowance on this table. Saily does not print the throttled speed in the plan name, and third-party listings quote a figure low enough to count as off rather than slow. |
| Holafly Unlimited (30 days, $73.90) | none published | No daily figure anywhere. The fair-use text lets the local operator throttle for up to one day at a time. Hotspot is separately capped at 1GB per day, which is the real limit for anyone with a laptop. |
| Yesim Unlimited (30 days, $66.28) | none published | Yesim mentions a fair usage policy and never gives the number. Cheapest of the four, and the only one where you cannot know what you bought. |
| GigSky 3.5GB/day (15 days, $44.99) | 3.5GB/day | Not sold as unlimited at all, which is the honest version of the same product. The cap is in the plan name. |
Every figure above comes from the brand's own published terms on September 4, 2026, not from a test. If a cell says "none published" it is because the brand would not give the number. The full unlimited breakdown works out the price per real gigabyte, and for most trips a 20GB fixed plan wins on both.
If you want unlimited you can plan around, the published cap is the whole point. Airalo prints 3GB a day and 1 Mbps after it. Two of the four alternatives print nothing at all.
See Airalo Unlimited Compare the capsHow much data a Vietnam trip actually uses real numbers
| Trip style | 5 days | 10 days | 14 days | 30 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maps, Zalo, WhatsApp, booking Grabs | 1GB | 2GB | 3GB | 6GB |
| Plus photos, stories, some video | 3.5GB | 7GB | 10GB | 20GB |
| Plus laptop hotspot and calls | 8GB | 16GB | 22GB | 48GB |
| Sizes that fit | GigSky 5GB | GigSky 10GB | Saily 20GB | Airalo 50GB |
Assumes wifi at your accommodation most nights, offline maps downloaded before you leave a city, and no video streaming over cellular. Vietnam pushes the top row lower than most destinations because wifi is genuinely everywhere and genuinely free, and pushes the middle row up because Grab reloads the map every time the driver turns. The full calculator breaks it down per app.
Where a travel eSIM works and where it does not place by place
Nobody can promise you a bar of signal at a specific homestay. What we can do is name the network each place leans on, so you know when a VNPT-based travel eSIM is enough and when you want a Viettel profile alongside it.
| Where you are going | Network to prefer | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Cities and the coast road | ||
| Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City | Any | 5G on all three operators across the central districts. Every plan on this page is fine here, and this is where most trips spend most days. |
| Da Nang, Hoi An, Hue | VNPT or Viettel | Dense coverage the length of the coast. Da Nang in particular is the one place where working from a cafe on cellular is genuinely comfortable. |
| Nha Trang and Mui Ne | VNPT | Strong in town and along Highway 1. It thins on the inland roads toward the Central Highlands, not on the beach strip. |
| Da Lat | VNPT or Viettel | The town is well served. The pine-forest roads and waterfall stops outside it are where a second network starts earning its keep. |
| The north | ||
| Ha Long and Cat Ba | Viettel | Fine on land and on the Cat Ba ferry. Out among the karsts on an overnight cruise the signal comes and goes on everything, Viettel least. |
| Sapa and Lao Cai | Viettel | Sapa town is covered. The trekking valleys below it, Lao Chai and Ta Van, are Viettel or nothing, which is exactly the gap a VNPT eSIM leaves. |
| Ha Giang loop and Dong Van | Viettel | The single strongest reason to buy a Viettel profile. Over the Ma Pi Leng pass, Viettel holds a usable signal in places where the other two show no bars at all. |
| Cao Bang and Ban Gioc | Viettel | Remote, mountainous and close to the Chinese border, where handsets also like to latch onto a Chinese network. Manual network selection is worth knowing here. |
| The south and the islands | ||
| Mekong Delta towns | Any | Can Tho, Ben Tre and Chau Doc are well covered. The boat channels between them are not, on any network, for stretches of twenty minutes at a time. |
| Phu Quoc | VNPT | Good along the developed west coast and the airport road. The north of the island and the national park are patchier than the resort brochures suggest. |
| Con Dao | Viettel | One small island, thin infrastructure and a lot of travelers reporting that whichever network their eSIM landed on was the wrong one. Do not plan on working from here. |
| Phong Nha and the caves | Viettel | The village has service. Inside the karst and on the road to Paradise Cave there is nothing, which is a geology problem, not a network one. |
Compiled from the operators' published coverage maps, Vietnamese carrier coverage reporting for 2026, and traveler reports through September 2026. We have not ridden every pass on this list and we are not going to pretend otherwise. How we test.
The airport counters are open, and the law wants your passport Noi Bai and Tan Son Nhat
Unlike some destinations, the arrival story here works. Viettel, MobiFone and Vinaphone all keep 24-hour counters in the arrivals hall after immigration at Noi Bai in Hanoi and Tan Son Nhat in Ho Chi Minh City. You will get a working SIM in ten minutes.
You will also pay for it. Airport tourist packages run roughly 30 to 50 percent above the same plan in a city phone shop, and the counter staff will steer you to the largest bundle on the board. A Viettel data pack that costs about 135,000 VND (≈$5) in town is a different number at the airport.
The alternative is the one this whole site is about: install a travel eSIM at home, land already connected, and decide about a local line later once you know whether your route needs one. The local SIM guide covers the shop route in detail, and the Viettel page covers buying that eSIM online before you fly.
Setting it up takes about four minutes before you fly
- Check the phone. Dial *#06#. If an EID appears, the phone takes an eSIM. If it is carrier-locked, sort that out first, because no eSIM works on a locked handset.
- Buy and install on home wifi. Install the profile before you fly. Do not try to scan a QR code at the gate; the plan does not start counting until it connects in Vietnam, so waiting saves you nothing and costs you a working phone on arrival.
- Land, then switch. Turn the eSIM line on for data, leave your home line on for calls with data roaming off. That one toggle is what stops the $12-a-day charge.
- If it will not connect, set network selection to manual and pick Vinaphone, then Viettel, then MobiFone. In the far north it may be Viettel or nothing, and that is the coverage gap rather than a broken eSIM. Full setup and fixes.
Vietnam eSIM questions answered straight
Which eSIM is best for Vietnam tourists?
Airalo, for most people: 10GB for $18.00 over 30 days, and it is the only brand here whose own store page names its Vietnamese network, VNPT. GigSky is $1.21 cheaper at the same size but publishes nothing about its network. Saily has by far the best support record, 4.7 from 30,537 Trustpilot reviews, and also names no network.
Should I get an eSIM for Vietnam?
Yes, unless your carrier already includes Vietnam. US roaming day passes are around $12 a day, so a ten-day trip costs more in roaming than a 50GB eSIM. The exception is the far north: for the Ha Giang loop and the Sapa valleys, buy a Viettel eSIM instead, or as well.
Which network does my Vietnam eSIM use?
If it is Airalo or Holafly, VNPT, which both brands publish. If it is Saily, GigSky or Yesim, they do not say, and we are not going to guess on their behalf. That matters because VNPT is excellent on the coast and in the cities and thins out in the mountains, where Viettel is the only reliable network.
What is the cheapest eSIM for Vietnam?
It depends on the size. Yesim is cheapest at 1GB ($2.91) and 20GB ($25.58); GigSky is cheapest at 3GB ($7.49), 5GB ($10.29) and 10GB ($16.79). Airalo's 50GB at $49.00 works out at 98 cents a gigabyte, the lowest per-gigabyte price on this page. GigSky also gives away 100MB for seven days with no card.
Can I buy a SIM card at Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City airport?
Yes. Viettel, MobiFone and Vinaphone all run 24-hour counters in the arrivals hall past immigration at Noi Bai and Tan Son Nhat, and they will register the SIM to your passport on the spot. Expect to pay roughly 30 to 50 percent more than the same plan in a city shop.
Does a Vietnam eSIM come with a phone number?
Not the ones on this page. All four travel eSIMs we link are data-only, which mostly does not matter because Vietnam runs on Zalo and WhatsApp, including with hotels and tour operators. If you want an actual +84 number, that is a local carrier line or a local reseller. The phone number page compares the three routes.
Will one eSIM cover Vietnam and Cambodia?
A Vietnam-only plan stops at the border, and the Moc Bai and Bavet crossings are exactly where you do not want to arrive offline. Airalo's Asialink regional plan covers Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos on one profile. We price the regional plan against the local one here.
Do I need to register a Vietnam eSIM with my passport?
Not a travel eSIM. Decree 49/2017/ND-CP requires every Vietnamese SIM to be registered to a passport or ID, so a local SIM or a local eSIM means handing over your passport in a shop. A travel eSIM roams onto a Vietnamese network under a foreign agreement, so there is nothing to register.
Buy the one that names its network
Airalo publishes VNPT as its Vietnamese partner, prints a 3GB/day cap and a 1 Mbps throttle on its unlimited plan, and sells 10GB for $18.00 over 30 days. It also pays us 12%, the lowest rate of the four brands we can link. Both of those things are true.
See Airalo Vietnam plansSources & freshness: Plan prices pulled from esimdb.com and each brand's Vietnam product page on September 4, 2026, in USD, before promo codes. Network partners taken from the brands' own product pages; where a brand publishes nothing we say so rather than repeating a third-party claim. Coverage notes from the operators' published maps, Vietnamese carrier coverage reporting for 2026 and traveler reports through September 2026. Trustpilot scores checked September 4, 2026. SIM registration requirement: Decree 49/2017/ND-CP. Prices move; we re-check monthly and date-stamp every table.