Saudi Arabia & UAE eSIM: two plans, priced by total data

Most of our destinations are sold the same way: you pick a number of days and a daily allowance, and the allowance resets each morning. Our Middle East plans do not work like that, and the difference is not cosmetic — it changes what happens when you run out, and it changes who these plans are for.

Two things are worth saying before any numbers. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are two separate plans, not one regional product; there is no Middle East bundle on our shelf. And both are sold by total data for the whole trip rather than per day, which means the gigabytes you buy are the gigabytes you get until the plan ends.

Two countries, two separate plans

Straight from the two product pages:

	Saudi Arabia	UAE
Local network	Mobily	DU
Network type	4G / 5G	4G / 5G
Plan type	Data only	Data only
APN	CMHK/CMLink	CMHK/CMLink
ID verification	Not required	Not required
Delivery	Email, 5–10 minutes	Email, 5–10 minutes
Activate within	30 days of purchase	30 days of purchase
Shortest plan	5 days	5 days

No identity verification on either one, which is worth knowing: buying a local SIM in Saudi Arabia involves registration at a counter, and skipping that queue is most of the reason to buy ahead.

If your trip covers both countries — a common shape, since Dubai is where most long-haul flights into the region land — you need two plans and two eSIM profiles. Your phone will hold both; you switch the data line when you cross the border. There is no single product on our shelf that does both.

Sold by total data — and it stops, it does not slow down

This is the part that catches people out. The plan wording on both products is explicit: "Once the total data allowance is used up, the connection will be automatically cut off." Not throttled. Cut off.

There is no unlimited tier on either plan, in any length. So the decision you make at checkout is the whole decision: pick too little, and you are offline for the rest of the trip with nothing to top up to — these plans do not take top-ups the way a daily-allowance plan does. Pick generously and you have paid for data you might not use, but you are not stranded.

If you have only ever used daily-allowance plans, this is the mental model to switch: with a daily plan, a bad day costs you one day's allowance and tomorrow resets. With a total-data plan, a bad day costs you data you cannot get back, and there is no reset coming. The difference is set out properly here, and it is worth two minutes before you buy.

Every tier, and what a gigabyte actually costs

Eight tiers per country, all in stock. Every price in HKD.

Length	Saudi 5 GB	Saudi 10 GB	Saudi 20 GB	Saudi 30 GB	UAE 5 GB	UAE 10 GB	UAE 20 GB	UAE 30 GB
5 days	HK$88	HK$153	—	—	HK$115	HK$203	—	—
7 days	HK$97	HK$172	—	—	HK$128	HK$228	—	—
10 days	—	HK$190	HK$302	—	—	HK$253	HK$402	—
15 days	—	—	HK$340	—	—	—	HK$452	—
30 days	—	—	—	HK$452	—	—	—	HK$602

Note the emptiness on the right of that table: the 15-day and 30-day lengths each offer exactly one data tier. Fifteen days is 20 GB or nothing; thirty days is 30 GB or nothing. There is no choice to make at those lengths, which is unusual on our shelf and worth knowing before you plan around it.

Now the number that actually matters — what each gigabyte costs you:

Tier	Saudi per GB	UAE per GB
5 days · 5 GB	HK$17.60	HK$23.00
5 days · 10 GB	HK$15.30	HK$20.30
7 days · 5 GB	HK$19.40	HK$25.60
7 days · 10 GB	HK$17.20	HK$22.80
10 days · 10 GB	HK$19.00	HK$25.30
10 days · 20 GB	HK$15.10	HK$20.10
15 days · 20 GB	HK$17.00	HK$22.60
30 days · 30 GB	HK$15.07	HK$20.07

The 7-day 5 GB tier is the most expensive gigabyte on both plans, and the reason is structural rather than arbitrary: seven days is the length most people want, and 5 GB is the smallest bucket sold at that length, so the convenience is priced in. If your trip genuinely is seven days and you will use data normally, the 10 GB version is HK$75 more in Saudi and gives you double the data at a lower rate per gigabyte.

The other end of the table is where the value sits: 10 days · 20 GB and 30 days · 30 GB are tied as the cheapest gigabytes either plan sells. On total-data plans, buying bigger is cheaper per gigabyte, which is the opposite of what our daily-allowance plans do. That is the single most useful line in this article.

The UAE costs a third more — at every single tier

We checked all eight tiers, expecting the gap to vary. It barely does:

Tier	Saudi	UAE	Difference
5 days · 5 GB	HK$88	HK$115	+30.7%
5 days · 10 GB	HK$153	HK$203	+32.7%
7 days · 5 GB	HK$97	HK$128	+32.0%
7 days · 10 GB	HK$172	HK$228	+32.6%
10 days · 10 GB	HK$190	HK$253	+33.2%
10 days · 20 GB	HK$302	HK$402	+33.1%
15 days · 20 GB	HK$340	HK$452	+32.9%
30 days · 30 GB	HK$452	HK$602	+33.2%

A consistent 31–33% premium, with no tier where it narrows. So if your itinerary is flexible between the two, the data bill is not the same trip: a week in Saudi Arabia costs HK$97 for 5 GB, the same week in the UAE costs HK$128.

Your day ends at 7pm in Riyadh, 8pm in Dubai

Both plans state: "The Calendar Day in TimeZone UTC+08:00 is applied on the validation date." That is Hong Kong time, and it is the same rule our Asian plans use. But the Middle East is much further west than Asia, so the consequence is bigger.

Saudi Arabia is UTC+3. When the clock in Hong Kong rolls over to midnight, it is 19:00 in Riyadh. The UAE is UTC+4, so its day rolls over at 20:00 in Dubai.

On our South-East Asia plan this rule costs you an hour or two, because Bangkok is only one hour behind Hong Kong. Here it costs you most of an evening:

Land in Riyadh at 18:00 and let the eSIM connect, and your first day lasts one hour. At 19:00 local the counter moves to day two. On a five-day plan you have just spent HK$88 and received four days and one hour.

The fix costs nothing. If you land in the late afternoon or evening, stay on airport wifi and let the plan activate after 19:00 local time in Saudi Arabia, or after 20:00 in the UAE. You have 30 days from purchase to activate, so waiting three hours costs you nothing and buys you a full first day. Dubai's airport wifi is good enough to do this comfortably; so is Riyadh's.

Two smaller notes on timing. A morning arrival is fine — you lose nothing meaningful. And because the rollover is at 19:00 or 20:00 rather than midnight, an evening of heavy use sits partly in one day and partly in the next, which is worth remembering if you are rationing a small bucket.

Why data costs more here than in Asia

The honest version, because the gap is large enough to need explaining. Same seven-day trip, plans from the same shelf, all priced this week:

7 days	Data you get	Price	Per GB
Singapore · Malaysia · Thailand · Vietnam	2 GB/day (14 GB)	HK$63	HK$4.50
Japan	2 GB/day (14 GB)	HK$75	HK$5.36
Saudi Arabia	10 GB total	HK$172	HK$17.20
UAE	10 GB total	HK$228	HK$22.80

A gigabyte in the UAE costs roughly four times what it costs in South-East Asia. That is not a pricing error and it is not unique to us — wholesale roaming rates in the Gulf are structurally higher than in Asia, and every travel eSIM sold for this region reflects it. Anyone quoting you Asian prices for the UAE is quoting a number they cannot deliver.

What follows from that is practical rather than defensive. In the Middle East, lean on wifi harder than you would in Tokyo — hotels, malls and airports in Dubai and Riyadh are well covered — and treat your mobile data as the thing you use between places, not in them. And buy the bigger bucket: because these plans cut you off rather than throttle you, the downside of running out is absolute.

What you do not get

No phone number, no calls, no SMS. Both plans are data only. Ride-hailing apps in the region commonly want a local number to call you, so expect to work around that with in-app messaging.

No top-ups. Once the allowance is gone the connection stops, and there is no add-on to buy. This is the single biggest difference from a daily plan and the one people discover at the worst moment.

Your IP will most likely show Hong Kong. Both plans run on the same APN (CMHK/CMLink) as the rest of our shelf, so your connection geolocates to Hong Kong rather than to where you are standing. Usually harmless; occasionally a local streaming catalogue or a bank app behaves oddly because of it.

Five days minimum. If you are transiting Dubai for a day or two, this is the wrong product and we would rather say so here than in a support ticket. Dubai airport has free wifi that is genuinely usable, and for a 24-hour stopover that plus your hotel is usually enough. For anything from five days up, one of these plans is the simplest way to land connected.