Pricele #102: Mobile data (1 GB) in Lebanon 🇱🇧
The puzzle for 10 October 2026 asked what a gigabyte of mobile data costs in Lebanon. Here is the answer and the context behind it.
The answer
Mobile data (1 GB) · Lebanon
$1.91
About 36 minutes of the average local wage buys a gigabyte of mobile data.
More expensive than 75% of the 49 countries in the game.
Source: Cable.co.uk worldwide mobile data pricing, 2023.
About mobile data
The only price in the game that has collapsed rather than risen: the world average fell from $8.18 a gigabyte in 2019 to $2.61 four years later. Countries that built dense 4G networks early and then let operators fight over them are pennies a gigabyte; countries running data over satellite or through a single incumbent are still tens of dollars. Rich and cheap are almost unrelated here, which is what makes it hard to guess.
Where Lebanon sits
Of the 49 countries priced for mobile data, Lebanon ranks #13 from the top at $1.91, 3.0× the median of $0.63.
Lebanon's currency collapsed after 2019, and for several years official and market exchange rates diverged so far that dollar conversions were close to meaningless. Prices have since re-anchored around the US dollar in practice. Several items are missing here, because the crowd-sourced surveys that cover them do not have reliable Lebanese samples. VAT is 11% on paper, but in an economy that dollarised informally after a banking collapse, the published rate tells you much less about a real transaction than it would anywhere else in this table. Lebanon is included for completeness and should be read as the least reliable column here.
| Nearby on the mobile data table | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Africa | $1.81 | — | 24 min |
| Costa Rica | $1.86 | — | 18 min |
| Lebanon | $1.91 | — | 36 min |
| Mexico | $2.03 | — | 30 min |
| Germany | $2.14 | — | 6 min |
What else costs what in Lebanon
| Item | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | $5.36 | 480,000 LBP | 1.7 h |
| Coca-Cola (330ml can) | $0.50 | 45,000 LBP | 9 min |
| Diesel (1 litre) | $1.21 | 118,750 LBP | 23 min |
| Cigarettes (20-pack) | $0.76 | 68,250 LBP | 14 min |
| Beer (330ml) | $1.09 | 98,000 LBP | 20 min |
| Spirits (750ml bottle) | $16.91 | 1,513,000 LBP | 5.3 h |
| Vape e-liquid (1 ml) | $1.21 | 108,280.8 LBP | 23 min |
| A day's healthy diet | $4.55 | 407,250.16 LBP | 85 min |
Go deeper
See the full table for mobile data in every country or everything priced in Lebanon.