Vietnam eSIMs for Australians: free arrival data or a plan for the whole trip?

Free airport data is a useful offer, particularly when the first things you need are the hotel address and a message to the person collecting you. It becomes less useful if you mistake a generous first-day allowance for the connection you’ve arranged for the whole holiday.

MobiFone offers eligible international tourists a free eSIM with 10GB for 24 hours after the required registration. You can use it for that first day, then buy a continuation package if it suits. Or you can choose an allowance for the whole stay before flying. The useful comparison is what you’ll need after the free period ends.

Below, we compare our data-only plans with MobiFone’s Travel offer and its FR10/FR30 continuation packages. Prices, registration and activation instructions were checked on 25 October 2026, with Vietnamese dong and Australian dollars labelled separately.

MobiFone’s Travel page limits the free offer to international tourists, with one eSIM per valid passport. Its advance form takes passport details, an e-visa application number, email and arrival date. Without an e-visa application number, use its airport-poster QR route, which requires a passport photo and online verification. Save the issued QR from the confirmation screen or email.

Budget for one free profile for this trip, rather than assuming you can repeat the offer to cover the rest of the stay. The package supplies data, without included ordinary local calls or SMS.

If you’ve completed registration in advance, calling 900 after landing starts the full 24-hour allowance. If registration is unfinished, that call only gives temporary access; the full 24 hours starts when registration is approved and the complete package is ready. Finish registration promptly: otherwise service is suspended 24 hours after the call, and ordinary internet can pause sooner if the temporary data runs out.

For example, a completed registration activated by calling 900 at 1pm on Monday gives a 24-hour period ending at 1pm on Tuesday. That’s an illustrative reading of the published clock, rather than a calendar-day allowance ending at midnight.

For the incomplete-registration example, suppose the call happens at 1pm but successful registration and full-package provisioning happen at 6pm. The full period then runs from that later event, rather than ending at 1pm the following day. The practical task is to finish registration promptly, not try to turn temporary access into a planned extra day.

For a traveller arriving on Monday and leaving the following Friday, neither starting hour covers the whole stay. Ten gigabytes is a sizeable allowance for one day, but the expiry remains the controlling limit if the job is directions and messages throughout a longer holiday.

The current Travel top-up list shows two named continuation packages:

The FR30 detail page confirms its price, duration, data and domestic minutes. Those minutes don’t include ordinary calls to Australia. If laptop sharing is important, check it separately: the advertised data totals don’t establish hotspot permission or an unrestricted daily upload rate.

For MobiFone’s main-account route, fund at least the package price, select FR10 or FR30 on Travel, enter its eSIM number and choose Main Account. Send XN to 9091; successful confirmation activates the package. Make that confirmation when you’re ready for the paid period, rather than counting the free allowance as an automatically queued extension.

For a traveller needing up to seventy included ordinary domestic minutes over ten days, FR10 supplies the stated calling allowance. A twelve-day calling requirement doesn’t fit one ten-day package started on arrival, so FR30 is the duration fit of these two. A larger data headline can’t give the shorter package two additional days.

For a stay built around maps, messages and app calls, our Vietnam data eSIMs let you arrange one allowance before departure, priced in Australian dollars:

These four variants name MobiFone, Viettel and Vinaphone, with speed described as network dependent. They start at first supported-network connection, must start within sixty days of purchase and stop data when the total allowance is used. They aren’t reloadable and don’t include an ordinary Vietnamese number, calls or SMS.

Hotspot use may depend on the phone and local network. Our separate 50GB/180-day offer at A$149.95 has conditional sharing terms too, so spending more on it doesn’t establish a hotspot guarantee. Its useful difference is longer validity: one 50GB balance across 180 days, with 180 days from purchase available to start. Confirm the exact plan’s suitability before buying for essential sharing.

For a twelve-day trip using about 4GB on the phone, 5GB at A$14.95 leaves 1GB spare. If the expected total rises to 8GB, 10GB at A$19.95 covers it: another A$5 buys another 5GB, leaving 2GB spare against that revised budget. The free MobiFone 10GB has plenty of data for either assumed total, but its one-day validity doesn’t cover the twelve-day trip.

If you exhaust the selected 5GB plan and still need another 5GB, the option is a new 5GB/30-day purchase at A$14.95, installed as its own profile on working Wi-Fi. It isn’t a top-up to the original non-reloadable profile. Budget for video calls, uploads and anything else you’ll use away from Wi-Fi when choosing the first allowance.

If one day of arrival data is all you need, MobiFone’s free offer can cover it once registration is completed. For a longer trip with ordinary local calls, compare the named continuation packages and their dates. For a longer app-based trip, choose enough total data and running validity before flying.

Follow the instructions for the service you’ve chosen. MobiFone’s call to 900 activates its own profile; it isn’t a setup step for a SIM Shop order. With our plan, save the delivery email before flying and install after landing on working airport Wi-Fi, hotel Wi-Fi or another steady trusted connection, following the issued settings and our Vietnam setup guide.

Keep the first address and transfer details offline too, so you can find them while registration or setup is still under way.