• 5,603 mobile data plans in 237 countries were gathered and analysed by Cable.co.uk to compare the cost of one gigabyte (1GB) of mobile data across the entire world

• The UK comes in at 58th in the world, with 1GB of mobile data costing an average of USD 0.62 

• Israel is the cheapest country in which to buy mobile data, with the average cost of 1GB at USD 0.02

• The United States remains, rather surprisingly, one of the most expensive nations on the planet for purchasing mobile data, coming in 219th in the world, with an average 1GB cost of USD 6.00

• Zimbabwe is the most expensive place in which to buy mobile data this year. The average cost of 1GB there is USD 43.75 – more than two thousand times more expensive than 1GB in chart-topper Israel

• Five of the ten most expensive countries to buy mobile data are in sub-Saharan Africa. Island nations in Oceania and the Caribbean also tend to be among the most expensive in the world

Data from 5,603 mobile data plans in 237 countries were gathered and analysed by Cable.co.uk between 5 July 2023 and 6 September 2023.

Israel is home to the cheapest mobile data plans in the world, with one gigabyte (1GB) of data costing an average of just USD 0.02.

The most expensive place in the world to buy mobile data is Zimbabwe, where the average cost of 1GB is USD 43.75 – over two thousand times the cost of mobile data in Israel. Italy is second-cheapest, with 1GB costing USD 0.085 on average. It’s followed by Fiji (USD 0.088) in third place (both represented as 0.09 in the overview).

In previous reports, Cable.co.uk analysed more than 1.3 billion broadband speed tests to rank 224 countries by average internet speed, and revealed the cost of getting online in 219 countries. 

Cable.co.uk has also analysed the cost of electricity tariffs in 230 countries back in 2021. Data was also gathered in 2020 to better understand the effect of Covid lockdown periods on global network speeds.

Commenting on the UK specifically, Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst at Cable.co.uk, says: 

“Our yearly mobile data pricing tracking study is as much a measure of the quantity of data offered as it is the price of data more broadly. After all, those countries with the most improved (cheaper) pricing across the five years our tracker now covers tend to be those offering tens or even hundreds of times more data in 2023 as was available for similar money in 2019.

“It’s encouraging to see the price of data coming down across the globe as whole, with the vast majority of countries offering 1GB of mobile data for less than USD 2.00. It’s a very different picture to the one we saw in 2019.”

You can download the full data set, plus further insights, a detailed research methodology description, interactive tools and an interactive map via this study’s landing page.