Mainland China eSIM: the only plan we sell that runs past 30 days

Across sixteen destinations on our shelf, fifteen stop at thirty days. Buy the longest Japan plan, the longest Indonesia plan, the longest UK plan — thirty days, and that is the ceiling.

Mainland China is the exception. It sells at 60, 90, 180 and 365 days, and nothing else we offer comes close. If you are relocating, studying, posted abroad, or spending a season with family rather than a fortnight on holiday, this is the only product on our shelf built for you.

Here is the full ladder, an honest read of where the value is, and one structural trap: our China + Hong Kong + Macao card also stops at 30 days, so a trip longer than a month needs a different shape entirely.

Five cards in this corner of the map

Before the numbers, the thing people get wrong: we sell five overlapping products here, and which one you want depends on your border crossings, not on your destination list.

Card	Covers	Local network	Real-name registration	Longest plan
Mainland China	Mainland China	CMCC	Not required	365 days
China · HK · Macao	All three	CMCC / CMHK / CTM	Required — Hong Kong leg	30 days
Hong Kong · Macao	Hong Kong, Macao	CMHK / CTM	Required — Hong Kong leg	30 days
Hong Kong	Hong Kong	CMHK	Required	7 days
Macao	Macao	CTM	Not required	7 days

Two things worth pulling out of that table.

Mainland China does not require real-name registration. Hong Kong does. The rule attaches to the card's coverage, not to how long you actually stand in each place — so a mainland-only trip on the China card needs nothing from you, while any card that touches Hong Kong has to be registered at realname-reg.com/en before it will connect there. The full comparison of these five is here if your itinerary is still moving.

And the three-region card stops at thirty days. That is the trap, and it has its own section below.

All eighteen tiers

Eight daily-allowance lengths, then ten total-data tiers that run from a month to a year. Every price in HKD.

Daily plans	2 GB/day	5 GB/day	Total plans	Price
1 day	HK$14	HK$17	30 days · 1 GB	HK$13
3 days	HK$36	HK$45	30 days · 5 GB	HK$40
5 days	HK$58	HK$73	30 days · 10 GB	HK$62
7 days	HK$79	HK$101	30 days · 20 GB	HK$107
Daily plans stop at 7 days — the 8-to-29-day gap is covered by total plans only.			60 days · 20 GB	HK$108
			60 days · 30 GB	HK$159
			90 days · 30 GB	HK$198
			90 days · 50 GB	HK$237
			180 days · 50 GB	HK$276
			365 days · 100 GB	HK$510

Note what is not on that table: no 1 GB/day tier and no unlimited tier, on any length. On our Hong Kong and Macao cards you can buy unlimited daily data for HK$15 a day; on mainland China the ceiling is 5 GB/day. If your plan was to hotspot a laptop all day every day, this card will not do it.

Sixty days costs one dollar more than thirty

This is the single most useful line in the article, and it is not a promotion — it is just what the price list says:

Tier	Price	Difference
30 days · 20 GB	HK$107	—
60 days · 20 GB	HK$108	+ HK$1 for twice the length

Same 20 GB. One extra dollar, thirty extra days. If your trip is anywhere between 31 and 60 days, the 60-day tier is not a decision, it is free money — and if your trip is a fuzzy "six weeks or so", buy the 60-day tier rather than gambling on 30 and having to buy again.

The same shape appears at the top end, less dramatically:

Tier	Price	Difference
90 days · 50 GB	HK$237	—
180 days · 50 GB	HK$276	+ HK$39 for ninety extra days

But longer is not always cheaper per gigabyte

Now the part that goes the other way, because it would be dishonest to leave it out. Two steps on this ladder get worse per gigabyte as you go up:

Tier	Price	Per GB	Per day
30 days · 1 GB	HK$13	HK$13.00	HK$0.43
30 days · 5 GB	HK$40	HK$8.00	HK$1.33
30 days · 10 GB	HK$62	HK$6.20	HK$2.07
30 days · 20 GB	HK$107	HK$5.35	HK$3.57
60 days · 20 GB	HK$108	HK$5.40	HK$1.80
60 days · 30 GB	HK$159	HK$5.30	HK$2.65
90 days · 30 GB	HK$198	HK$6.60	HK$2.20
90 days · 50 GB	HK$237	HK$4.74	HK$2.63
180 days · 50 GB	HK$276	HK$5.52	HK$1.53
365 days · 100 GB	HK$510	HK$5.10	HK$1.40

Read the 30 GB row across: 60 days · 30 GB costs HK$5.30 per gigabyte, and 90 days · 30 GB costs HK$6.60 — 24.5% more for the same data and a longer window. The same thing happens at 50 GB: 90 days is HK$4.74 per gigabyte and 180 days is HK$5.52, 16.5% more.

So the rule on this plan is not "buy the longest". It is:

• Under two months: 60 days · 20 GB at HK$108. The 30-day version costs the same.
• Around three months: 90 days · 50 GB at HK$237 — the cheapest gigabyte this plan sells. Avoid 90 days · 30 GB, which is priced worse than the 60-day equivalent.
• Six months: 180 days · 50 GB at HK$276 works out to HK$1.53 a day.
• A year: 365 days · 100 GB at HK$510, or HK$1.40 a day. Nothing else on our shelf is remotely in this range.

One honesty note on the annual tier: 100 GB across twelve months is about 8 GB a month. That is a normal amount if you are on wifi at home and at work and use mobile data between places. It is not enough if you plan to tether a laptop to it daily. If you are unsure what you actually use, work it out first — on a 365-day plan, guessing wrong is expensive in both directions.

Longer than a month? The three-region card will not work

This is the structural trap, and it catches people who have already decided they want one card for everything.

Our China + Hong Kong + Macao card stops at 30 days. There is no 60, 90 or 365-day version of it. So a trip that is "mostly mainland, plus a few days in Hong Kong" and runs longer than a month cannot be covered by the three-region card at all.

The shape that does work is two cards: a mainland card for the long stretch, and a Hong Kong & Macao card for the border hops. The arithmetic, for a 60-day mainland stay with three days in Hong Kong:

Option	What you buy	Price	Data	Switching
One three-region card	2 × 30 days · 10 GB	HK$150	20 GB	Never
Two cards	China 60 days · 20 GB + HK & Macao 3 days · 2 GB/day	HK$131	26 GB	Once, at the border

The two-card version is HK$19 cheaper, gives you more data, and costs you one manual switch of the data line when you cross into Hong Kong — about ten seconds in Settings. The single card is worth the premium only if you cross the border often enough that switching every time would annoy you.

At 90 days the difference narrows to almost nothing (HK$221 against HK$225), so at that length choose on convenience instead of price. Past roughly six months the comparison stops being close at all, because covering six months on a 30-day card means buying six of them.

And one thing specific to the mainland leg, which the plan wording states plainly: crossing from Hong Kong into the mainland switches network automatically, and the mainland leg runs on CMCC and is subject to mainland network restrictions. What that means for Google, WhatsApp and Instagram is set out here — read it before you land, not after.

What you do not get

No phone number, no calls, no SMS. Data only. On a long stay this matters more than on a holiday: a lot of mainland everyday life — food delivery, ride-hailing, banking, 验证码 by text — assumes a mainland mobile number. This card does not give you one, and you will probably end up buying a local SIM anyway once you have an address.

No top-ups on a total plan. Once the allowance is gone the connection stops. There is no add-on to buy. On a 365-day plan in particular, buy the tier above what you think you need.

No unlimited tier, and no 1 GB/day. The daily ladder is 2 GB or 5 GB, and it stops at seven days. Heavy users should be looking at the total-data tiers, not the daily ones.

Your IP will most likely show Hong Kong. This plan runs 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 mainland app or a bank behaves oddly because of it.

Western services stay unreachable on the mainland leg. Stated on the product page itself: Google, WhatsApp, Instagram and most Western services are unreachable on a mainland network without a VPN, and the eSIM does not change that. If your work depends on those tools, sort out your VPN before you fly — that is not something we can fix from the eSIM side.