The Cost of Mobile Internet Around The World

Israel has the cheapest mobile internet in the world, with one gigabyte of data costing on average just $0.04 in 2022. With three in four Israelis owning a smartphone, the country has an even higher smartphone penetration than the United States. This is according to UK-based price comparison website cable.co.uk, who analyzed 5,292 mobile data plans across 233 countries.

As our chart shows, Italy places second in the global ranking, with a low cost of $0.12 per 1GB. The country has excellent internet infrastructure with 5G now available to around 95 percent of its residents. It also maintains the internet of neighboring San Marino ($0.14), which places third in the global ranking. According to Dan Howdle, a consumer telecoms analyst at cable.co.uk, many of the cheapest countries have excellent mobile and fixed broadband infrastructure which allows providers to offer large amounts of data at cheap prices. In some countries, economic conditions dictate the price which has to remain low so people can afford it.

Some of the costliest data plans, however, are in the remote island nations of Africa and South America. For instance, the Falkland Islands rank in 231st place with 1GB of internet costing $38.45, while the same amount of mobile data in Saint Helena, a British Overseas Territory located in the South Atlantic, costs an average of $41.06 - more than 1,000 times that of Israel’s.

Regionally, North America is the most expensive overall, with an average cost of $4.98 per GB, which is higher than the global average of $3.12. Canada is the most expensive of the region ($5.94), followed by the United States ($5.62), while Greenland is the cheapest ($3.36).