There is something about the word “unli” that immediately changes how I look at an offer. Take Mang Inasal. A Regular Chicken meal with one rice costs ₱99. Make the rice unlimited and it becomes ₱139. That extra ₱40 does something interesting to the decision. Instead of asking whether I will actually eat enough rice to make the upgrade worth it, the easier thought is: for ₱40 more, I do not have to think about rice anymore.

That, I think, is what makes “unli” more interesting than a normal discount. Unli-rice, unli-calls, unli-text, unli-data and unli-fiber are very different products, but the promise behind them is surprisingly similar: pay a fixed amount, then stop counting.

Filipinos obviously like a good sulit deal, but unlimited offers may work not only because they give us more. They also give us certainty.

The data on this part is fairly clear. PwC’s 2025 Philippine consumer study found that 42% of Filipino consumers actively look for promotions and discounts, while 56% buy in bulk to stretch their budgets. NIQ’s 2026 research likewise found that low price remains the top shopping driver in the Philippines.

That matters in a country where food still takes up a large portion of the household budget. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, food and non-alcoholic beverages accounted for roughly a third of average family expenditure in 2025.

So price clearly matters. But I do not think price alone explains the appeal of ‘unli.’ If all we wanted was the cheapest possible option, we would simply choose the lowest-priced meal or the smallest data package every time. Instead, people are sometimes willing to pay a little more upfront for the comfort of knowing that there will be enough.

That is where unlimited pricing starts to get interesting.

There is a well-established idea in behavioral pricing called flat-rate bias. Researchers have found that consumers sometimes prefer a fixed price even when paying per use could ultimately cost less.

Part of that is about insurance. Once you have paid the fixed price, you know your spending will not suddenly go above it. Part of it is convenience. You no longer have to calculate the cost of every additional use.

Researchers also talk about the ‘taximeter effect.’ Anyone who has watched a taxi meter climb knows the feeling. Even when you have already decided to take the ride, seeing the number go up makes every additional minute feel expensive. The same thing can happen with other kinds of spending. Another serving means another charge. Another gigabyte means another charge. Another minute on the phone used to mean another few pesos disappearing from your load.

Unlimited removes that meter. Once you have paid, the next refill or the next hour of usage no longer feels like a new purchase. That may be one reason ‘unli’ feels so satisfying. You are not just buying more. You are also paying to stop thinking about the cost of every little bit of more.

Mang Inasal says Unli-Rice has been part of its proposition since its first store opened in Iloilo in 2003. When the company later expanded to Manila, Forbes reported that an unlimited-rice value campaign originally planned for only two months performed well enough to become permanent.

Then, in 2004, Sun Cellular launched its famous 24/7 offer. For ₱100, subscribers could get 10 days of unlimited calls and texts within the network, while ₱250 extended it to 30 days.

For anyone who remembers the prepaid era, this was a meaningful shift. Before unlimited plans became common, using your phone meant constantly thinking about load. How much was left? Should I make the call? How long could we talk? Sun offered something different: pay once and worry less about every individual call or text. Competitors eventually responded with their own unlimited and bucket-priced offers.

I find the comparison interesting because Mang Inasal and Sun Cellular were selling completely different things, yet the underlying proposition was almost identical. You know exactly how much you are paying, even if you do not know exactly how much you will use.

More than twenty years later, we are still being sold versions of the same idea. Unli-rice is still around, and so are unli calls and texts. Now we also have unli 5G, unlimited access to certain apps and unli fiber. Somewhere along the way, ‘unli’ stopped sounding like a temporary promotion and started sounding like a normal product feature.

The more I thought about unlimited offers, the more I kept coming back to another Filipino word: bitin.

A meal can be cheap and still feel bitin. A data package can be affordable and still become annoying if it runs out when you need it. You can get a good deal on something and still feel dissatisfied if what you bought turns out to be not quite enough.

That is why I think sulit is more complicated than simply paying less. Sometimes sulit means getting a lot for your money, but sometimes it may simply mean knowing that you will not run out before you are satisfied.

Interestingly, PLDT recently used this exact language in promoting its prepaid fiber service: “Never Bitin.” That does not prove that fear of being bitin is why Filipinos choose unlimited plans, but as a way of describing the appeal, it fits remarkably well. An unlimited offer removes one question from the transaction: what if this is not enough?

Go back to that Mang Inasal menu. A Regular Chicken meal goes from ₱99 with one rice to ₱139 with Unli-Rice. Paa Large goes from ₱139 to ₱179, while Pecho Large goes from ₱169 to ₱209. The difference is consistently ₱40.

But the more interesting part is not the price. It is what Mang Inasal chooses to make unlimited. The chicken does not become unlimited. The rice does.

That tells us something about how a good unlimited offer is designed. The customer gets the feeling that a limit has disappeared, but the business still decides exactly where to remove that limit.

From the customer’s side, the question is simple: how much could I get? From the business side, the question is much more practical: how much will people actually consume?

When we see the word ‘unlimited,’ it is easy to imagine the extreme. How much could I eat? How much data could I use? How much value could I squeeze out of this?

But businesses cannot build an unlimited offer around the hungriest person in the restaurant or the heaviest user on the network. They have to think about what happens across everyone who buys it.

Some customers will barely use the extra capacity. Others will make sure they get their money’s worth. What matters is whether the overall pattern still works at the price being charged.

If the average customer consumes an amount the business has already accounted for, the model can work even when a few people consume far more. That is what makes unlimited pricing such an interesting business model. The customer is thinking about how much they could get, while the business is thinking about how much people will probably get. The gap between those two is where the economics of ‘unli’ lives.

This is easy to forget because the word itself sounds so open-ended. In reality, the company still makes almost all of the important decisions. It decides what part of the product becomes unlimited, sets the price, designs the rest of the offer, estimates usage and manages capacity.

The limit disappears for the customer, not for the business. That is probably the biggest contradiction behind ‘unli’: it feels carefree only because someone else has already done a lot of worrying about the numbers.

And if those numbers are wrong, things can get expensive very quickly.

In 2023, Red Lobster in the US made its Ultimate Endless Shrimp promotion a permanent $20 menu item. Customers liked it more than the company expected.

Demand was stronger than anticipated, and the promotion became one contributor to roughly $11 million in operating losses during the period. Red Lobster later raised the price.

Endless Shrimp was not the sole reason for the company’s later financial problems, but it is a useful warning. The goal of an unlimited offer is not simply to get as many people as possible to say yes. The business also has to correctly understand what happens after they say yes.

How many refills will they ask for? How much will they use? How long will they stay? How much does every additional unit actually cost the company? The customer does not need to think about those questions. The company does.

For me, this is the real business lesson. A good unlimited offer creates a strange but useful imbalance. The upside feels almost open-ended to the customer, while the actual cost remains predictable enough for the company.

The customer looks at the offer and thinks, “I can really get my money’s worth.” The company looks at the same offer and thinks, “We know roughly what this will cost us.”

When both of those statements can be true at the same time, ‘unli’ works. When they cannot, unlimited stops being a clever pricing strategy and starts becoming an open-ended liability.

I do not think Filipinos are uniquely wired to love unlimited offers. The appeal of flat-rate pricing has been observed in other markets too.

What I find more interesting is how deeply the idea has settled into Philippine consumer language. For more than two decades, we have used the same word for rice, calls, texts, data, internet access and all sorts of dining offers. There is almost no explanation required anymore. Put “UNLI” beside a product and we already understand the basic deal.

Maybe that is because it takes something complicated and makes it very simple. You know what you will pay, and you do not have to know exactly how much you will use.

Perhaps that is the real reason “unli” feels so sulit. Not because we always consume the maximum, but because, for once, we do not have to worry about where the maximum is.

For the customer, the meter disappears. For the business, it never does.