Pillar 06 · Daily tools
Connectivity, payments, delivery and the handful of subscriptions worth keeping — plus an honest note on which of them pay us and which do not.
Updated
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The 2026 expat family guide to the Bangkok tech stack — VPN for home banking, eSIM, streaming, home internet, the school-iPad setup, and the apps that matter.
Read the full guide
Most “best apps for expats” articles are affiliate link farms with a paragraph of introduction. They list thirty things, recommend all of them, and earn from about eight. You cannot tell which eight, which is the point.
This pillar takes the opposite approach and it costs us money to do it. We name the small number of services that do real work in a Bangkok family’s week, we explain what each one is actually best at, and where we have no commercial relationship with anything in a section, we say so in the body of the page rather than burying it behind a disclosure link.
That is not a moral posture, it is the only version of this pillar worth reading. A recommendation you cannot audit is not a recommendation.
The practical shape of the advice is narrower than you would expect. Connectivity is the one thing worth solving before you land. Payments quietly determine how easy the first month feels. Everything else can wait until you are here and can see what your own family actually reaches for — which is how our working setup guide is organised.
One limitation worth stating plainly: some of these services cannot be properly tested from a desk. Where that is true, we say what we have verified and what we have only read, rather than reviewing a spec sheet and calling it experience.
For getting connected before you arrive, see travel. For the payment side, money.
Questions
Not for daily life. You need one if you want your home country's streaming, banking or government services to keep working the way they did before you moved — which for most families is the real reason, and it is worth being clear that it is a convenience purchase rather than a safety one.
Both, in that order, for most families. An eSIM has you connected the moment the plane doors open, which matters when you are coordinating a car with two tired children. A local prepaid or postpaid SIM is cheaper for the long run and is what you will actually keep.
Fewer apps than the listicles suggest. Payments, transport, food delivery and one messaging app carry almost everything. The rest is optional, and a guide that hands you thirty apps is padding rather than help.
From some, and we say which on the page itself rather than only in a footer. Where we hold no relationship with anything in a section, we say that too — the eSIM section currently says exactly that, and it gets rewritten the moment it stops being true.
Gaps
These belong in this pillar and they are not here. We would rather name them than let the page imply the ground is covered.
Read next
Visas, the moving-in week, and weekend trips that work with kids. Booking.com and Klook playbooks, not Pinterest itineraries.
Open the travel pillarWise vs Revolut, Thai bank accounts as a foreigner, and the cost of raising a family in Bangkok in 2026 — with our actual numbers.
Open the money pillarNewsletter
We'll send the longer guides and occasional finds — visa updates, school waitlists, insurance renewals. No churn, no clickbait.