Everything you need to know about using an eSIM in Taiwan.
Taiwan's three carriers, Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan Mobile, and Far EasTone, run excellent 4G island-wide with 5G expanding across Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung. Chunghwa is generally the strongest for broad, consistent coverage, great for east-coast and mountain road trips. An eSIM Taiwan plan puts you on those networks without a passport form in sight.
Taiwan requires prepaid SIMs to be registered to a real identity, no anonymous lines. Foreign tourists register with a passport, on the spot at airport counters. That passport, your number, and your call records sit with the carrier, and Taiwan's surveillance regime lets authorities access that metadata.
The privacy law here, the PDPA, is solid on paper, but it's corporate-facing, it governs what businesses do with your data, not whether a carrier logs your SIM's metadata once you've handed over your passport.
For a typical 5 to 14 day trip, 3 to 10 GB covers maps, messaging, and plenty of night-market photo uploads. Tourist plans are strict about validity, so match your data window to your stay. 5G plans cost noticeably more than 4G, so if you just need maps and Google, 4G is the lazy, cheap choice.
A privacy-focused eSIM from ZILLA skips the real-name registration entirely. No passport, no registered number, no metadata ledger in your name. Pay with crypto, scan, connect. You keep Taiwan's excellent coverage and lose the identity handover.