Are you overpaying for mobile data in Malaysia? Here’s a handy comparison

Back in the early 2010s, this writer got his first smartphone. Unaware of how mobile data works, he had fun watching his location pin move on Google Maps during a 6-hour bus ride and got slapped with a RM500 bill later.

Nowadays though, mobile data has gotten a lot more accessible, and we live in a region where data can get pretty cheap. According to a 2022 article, Thailand‘s mobile data averaged only around RM1.69 per GB, Philippines’ average was only RM2.31 per GB, while Malaysia sits somewhere in between. 

However, our friends from YES 5G recently upped the stakes by introducing the YES Power 35 Postpaid plan, the cheapest plan to date offering 100GBs of uncapped 5G and 4G data speed for both regular and hotspot use. At RM35 per month for 100GB, this means 1GB of data is literally pocket change!

So naturally….

 

We compared the Price per GB with other cheap postpaid plans in Malaysia

And the gap was massive! Here are the popular local providers that we analysed:

All of these are the cheapest postpaid plans offered by the providers, except for Hotlink – their cheapest plan offers a measly 2 GBs for RM30, so we picked their second cheapest plan to make it a more fair comparison. Some providers may also have temporary promotions for extra bandwidth or lower prices. In those cases, we’ll be ignoring the temporary quotas/discounts and going for the normal values.

After calculating the Price per GB of mobile data they offer, here’s the ranking of the mobile plans, from cheapest to most expensive:

 

The YES Power 35 plan is the clear winner in terms of cheapness, costing only 35 sen per GB with UMobile’s UPostpaid 38 coming in a close second at 63 sen per GB. And relatively, paying RM4 per GB is pretty steep. However, we should make it clear that…

 

Price may not be everything, so say yes to the provider that suits you best

People have different reasons to pick certain mobile plans. For example, if you’re a food delivery rider, you might be more inclined to pick providers with more coverage. If you’re someone who works from home, you might choose those with a more stable connection where you live.

Or maybe you’re the kind of user that goes for perks – some providers throw in free data for social media or offer freebies. You’ll have to go to their respective sites and read their T&Cs to find out more, but some more obvious perks we’ve seen are listed below:

But if your main concern is getting as much data as you can at the cheapest price, well, the YES Power 35 plan would be your best choice.

And if you’re someone who needs a lightning fast connection for gaming or streaming, YES 5G being the winner of Ookla’s Speedtest Awards in Q3-Q4 2023 also offers you the fastest mobile network in Malaysia, reaching top download speeds of 569.09 Mbps and top upload speeds of 65.58 Mbps. At least, that’s what they said on paper, so we went out and bought a YES 5G SIM card to test the connection ourselves. Here are the results we got around our office:

We’ll also be doing a video soon to test out our YES 5G SIM card more comprehensively, so stay tuned!