Mobile data (1 GB) prices by country
Mobile data (1 GB) costs from $0.02 in Israel to $7.29 in Switzerland, across 49 countries priced in US dollars.
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.
The numbers
| Country | USD | Work time |
|---|---|---|
| Israel | $0.02 | <1 min |
| Italy | $0.09 | <1 min |
| Pakistan | $0.12 | 14 min |
| India | $0.16 | 4 min |
| Colombia | $0.20 | 5 min |
| France | $0.20 | <1 min |
| Bangladesh | $0.23 | 22 min |
| Indonesia | $0.28 | 8 min |
| Malaysia | $0.28 | 4 min |
| Uruguay | $0.28 | 2 min |
| Vietnam | $0.29 | 6 min |
| Poland | $0.37 | 3 min |
| China | $0.38 | 4 min |
| Nigeria | $0.39 | 63 min |
| Brazil | $0.40 | 5 min |
| Ghana | $0.40 | 20 min |
| Thailand | $0.41 | 7 min |
| Australia | $0.44 | 1 min |
| Turkey | $0.44 | 7 min |
| Peru | $0.45 | 8 min |
| Spain | $0.48 | 2 min |
| Romania | $0.54 | 4 min |
| Philippines | $0.59 | 18 min |
| United Kingdom | $0.62 | 2 min |
| Singapore | $0.63 | 2 min |
| Chile | $0.64 | 6 min |
| Egypt | hidden, in play right now | |
| Tanzania | $0.84 | 47 min |
| Argentina | $1.11 | 19 min |
| Saudi Arabia | $1.49 | 7 min |
| Ireland | $1.50 | 5 min |
| Netherlands | $1.61 | 5 min |
| Hungary | $1.71 | 12 min |
| Portugal | $1.79 | 12 min |
| 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 |
| Sweden | $2.33 | 7 min |
| Czechia | $3.12 | 17 min |
| Japan | $3.48 | 13 min |
| Norway | $4.07 | 8 min |
| United Arab Emirates | $4.61 | 18 min |
| South Korea | $5.01 | 21 min |
| Canada | $5.37 | 15 min |
| New Zealand | $5.89 | 16 min |
| United States | $6.00 | 14 min |
| Switzerland | $7.29 | 13 min |
Source: Cable.co.uk's worldwide mobile data pricing league table, which averages over 5,600 prepaid and postpaid plans across 237 countries. Published in US dollars only, so these rows carry no local-currency figure, and it is the oldest edition in the game: read the year printed next to the price. Full methodology.
What the spread shows
The cheapest mobile data in the game is in Israel at $0.02; the most expensive is in Switzerland at $7.29. That is a 364.5× difference for the same thing, against a median of $0.63 across all 49 countries.
Ranking by earnings instead of dollars rearranges the table. Nigeria has the longest wait, about 63 minutes of the average local wage, while in Israel it is roughly under a minute. A country can look cheap in dollars and expensive in hours at the same time, and for most people the hours are what actually matter.