The side by side
Everything in this table comes from the body responsible for the island in question — Phuket’s Provincial Administrative Organisation and Koh Samui City Municipality — read on 6 September 2026 and linked in full under Sources.
| Phuket | Koh Samui | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is, administratively | Its own province | One district of Surat Thani province |
| Island area | 543.034 sq km (largest island in Thailand) | 227 sq km / 142,031 rai |
| Total area including satellites | 570.034 sq km / 356,271.25 rai, with 32 satellite islands adding 27 sq km | About 252 sq km / 157,273 rai |
| Districts and subdistricts | 3 districts - Mueang Phuket, Kathu, Thalang - with 17 subdistricts, 96 villages, 61 communities | 7 subdistricts, 39 villages, 118 communities |
| Local government bodies | 1 PAO, 9 subdistrict municipalities, 2 town municipalities, 1 city municipality, 6 SAOs | One city municipality |
| Registered population | Not stated on the PAO general-data page we opened on 6 September 2026 | 68,212 (32,847 male, 35,365 female) |
| Who owns the airport | Airports of Thailand PCL, a state enterprise - one of AOT's six | Bangkok Airways, which states it owns and operates Samui, Sukhothai and Trat |
| Terrain | About 70% mountain; high point Khao Mai Thao Sip Song, 529 m; east coast mud and mangrove, west coast mountain and sand | Not stated on the municipal data page we opened on 6 September 2026 |
| Distance from Bangkok | 867 km by Highway 4 and Provincial Highway 402; 688 km by air | Not stated on the municipal data page we opened on 6 September 2026 |
| Our own available listings, 6 September 2026 | Zero | Zero |
Where a cell says a figure was not stated, that is what it means: the body publishes the other figures and not that one. We have not filled the gap from a secondary source.
Who owns the airport - the difference nobody writes
If you take one thing from this page, take this. The two islands’ airports are owned by fundamentally different kinds of organisation, and it is established from two independent records rather than one.
Airports of Thailand lists on its own homepage the six airports it owns and operates: Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang, Phuket International, Chiang Mai, Mae Fah Luang–Chiang Rai and Hat Yai. Samui is not among them. Separately, Bangkok Airways states in its own investor disclosure that the company “owns and operates 3 resort-style airports namely Samui, Sukhothai, and Trat”.
So one record names Samui’s owner and the other confirms it by omission. Phuket flies through a state-enterprise airport; Samui flies through an airport owned by an airline.
We are not going to tell you what that does to your fares, because we did not measure fares and we are not going to guess at one. What we will say is that it is the right question to research before you commit to years on one island rather than the other, and that you should research it with actual bookings on your actual dates rather than with anybody’s summary, this one included. The ownership is the fact; the consequences are yours to price.
Airport-side practicalities are on getting from Phuket Airport to the island and getting from the airport to Koh Samui. Aviation in Thailand is regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand, linked under Sources.
One island, one council - or one island, nineteen bodies
This is the second structural difference, and it shows up the first time you deal with anything local: a building rule, a noise complaint, a zoning question, a licence.
Phuket is a province. On its own Provincial Administrative Organisation’s figures, it divides into three districts — Mueang Phuket, Kathu and Thalang — with 17 subdistricts, 96 villages and 61 communities. Its local government is one Provincial Administrative Organisation, nine subdistrict municipalities, two town municipalities, one city municipality and six subdistrict administrative organisations. Each of those sets its own by-laws within its own boundary. The practical consequence is blunt: a rule that binds Patong does not bind Choeng Talay. If someone tells you “the rule in Phuket is X”, the first question is which local body they read it from.
Koh Samui is one district of Surat Thani province, administered by a single city municipality covering seven subdistricts, 39 villages and 118 communities. One body writes the local rules for the whole island. That is genuinely simpler, and simplicity has value when you are new and dealing with local government in a second language.
| When you need to... | Phuket | Koh Samui |
|---|---|---|
| Check a local building or land-use rule | Identify which of the nineteen local bodies the plot sits in, then read that body's own by-laws | One municipality's rules cover the island |
| Understand what an area name means | Beach names and development names sit in different districts from each other - check the tambon, not the marketing name | Beach names sit within one district and one municipality |
| Deal with the province | Phuket PAO, 5 Thanon Narisorn, Talat Yai, Mueang Phuket 83000 | Provincial matters run through Surat Thani, not through the island |
Area by area: Phuket areas and neighbourhoods and Koh Samui areas and neighbourhoods.
Seasons - and the eight-month rainy classification
Phuket’s own province describes its climate as equatorial, under the influence of the southwest and northeast monsoons, hot and humid year-round, with two seasons rather than three: rainy from April to November and hot from December to March.
Read that again, because it is not what the holiday market implies. On the province’s own reckoning, eight of the twelve months are in the rainy classification. That does not mean eight months of downpour, and we are not going to dramatise it. What it means is that any plan built on a short, contained wet season is built on a marketing calendar rather than on the province’s.
Turn it into behaviour. View in the wet half if you possibly can. Ask specifically about drainage on the plot and vehicle access to it in heavy rain — a steep unpaved approach is a different property in October than in January. And treat any rental yield projection that assumes twelve months of occupancy as a projection about the seller’s hopes.
We have no equivalent official season months for Koh Samui on this page. Samui sits on the Gulf coast and its wet season is understood to run at a different time of year from the Andaman side, which is genuinely useful to know — but we did not obtain that from a Thai authority on 6 September 2026, and the Thai Meteorological Department publishes its 30-year normals as chart images we could not read figures from. So this page states Phuket’s seasons because the province states them, and states nothing for Samui. Do not read the absence as agreement. Check TMD, linked under Sources, before planning around it.
Our own weather and flood pages, which are separate work: Phuket weather, Koh Samui weather and Koh Samui flood risk.
What it costs - what we can prove today
Here is where most island comparisons quietly stop being sources and start being guesses. We would rather be short and true.
We carried zero available listings in Phuket and zero in Koh Samui. Of the 18 available listings on BAANLYY that day, 14 were in Bangkok, two in Chiang Mai, one in Chonburi and one elsewhere. We are saying so rather than padding around it. A portal with no stock on an island cannot tell you what that island costs, and pretending otherwise is how a made-up price band gets into circulation and stays there.
We would normally set that beside a dated survey of one named portal, labelled as asking prices on one day. Not this time: the portal we use for that answered with a bot-verification challenge on 6 September 2026, and we do not work around those. There is no portal survey on this page and no older read relabelled with today’s date.
Two figures the Thai state does publish, which outrank any portal average anyway:
| Official figure | What it is, and what it is not |
|---|---|
| Land and building appraisal value (Department of Lands / Treasury Department) | The state's own valuation for a specific plot or unit, searchable by the public. The basis for transfer taxes and fees - not a market price, and usually below one |
| REIC condominium price index | The Real Estate Information Center's quarterly index for new condominiums under sale. The detailed figures sit behind REIC membership |
Our island budget pages, which are separate work with their own sourcing: cost of living in Phuket and cost of living in Koh Samui.
Where the two are the same
| Identical on both islands | Why |
|---|---|
| Visa and immigration rules | Set nationally. The island changes which office you attend, not what you qualify for |
| What a foreigner may and may not own | National property law. It does not soften on an island |
| National park entry charging | Set by the Department of National Parks under national regulation, not by the island - though the band differs park by park |
| Being an island | Both depend on a single air link and on sea crossings for freight, and both are more expensive to supply than the mainland for that reason |
No national park entry fees appear on this page. The Department of National Parks sets them by regulation and the bands differ by park, but we could not re-verify the current bands from the department itself on 6 September 2026, and everything else reachable was news coverage and listicles. No ferry operator, crossing time or fare appears either — no operator’s own timetable was opened on the day. Both are things you would act on, so both are gaps rather than guesses.
The national rules: Thailand visa routes and what foreigners can own.
Who each island suits
No winner, because there is not one. There is a fit, and the fit turns mostly on how much choice you want and how much complexity you will accept to get it.
| Phuket suits you if | Koh Samui suits you if |
|---|---|
| You want the widest choice - of areas, of services, of direct flights through a state-enterprise airport | A shorter list of options is a feature, not a limit |
| You will drive, and you accept that character and local rules change between areas | You would rather deal with one municipality for the whole island |
| You want the option of moving between very different areas without leaving the province | You want somewhere small enough to know properly within a year |
| You will view in the wet half and ask about drainage before you commit | You will find out the Gulf-coast season yourself rather than assume it matches the Andaman |
| You are comfortable checking which of nineteen local bodies a rule came from | You want the administrative side to be as simple as it can be |
Areas in detail: best areas to live in Phuket and best areas to live in Koh Samui. Wider context in island living in Thailand.
Frequently asked questions
Considerably, and it is worth having the real numbers. Phuket's own Provincial Administrative Organisation gives the island as 543.034 square kilometres, with 32 satellite islands adding 27 square kilometres for a provincial total of 570.034 square kilometres, or 356,271.25 rai. Koh Samui City Municipality gives its own total as about 252 square kilometres (157,273 rai), of which the island of Samui itself is 227 square kilometres (142,031 rai). So Phuket island is roughly two and a half times the size of Samui island. Phuket is also 21.3 kilometres at its widest and 48.7 kilometres at its longest, and about 70 per cent of it is mountain.
It matters more than almost anything else on a long stay, because it shapes how you get on and off the island for years. Phuket International is one of the six airports Airports of Thailand owns and operates, alongside Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang, Chiang Mai, Mae Fah Luang-Chiang Rai and Hat Yai - a state enterprise, with the disclosure and regulatory footing that implies. Samui Airport is not on that list. Bangkok Airways states in its own investor disclosure that it owns and operates three resort-style airports: Samui, Sukhothai and Trat. So Samui's airport is owned by an airline. We are not going to tell you what that does to fares, because we did not measure fares; we are telling you the ownership, because it is a fact you can check and because it explains a great deal about route choice from Samui.
They are structured completely differently, and Samui is the simpler of the two. Phuket is its own province, divided into three districts - Mueang Phuket, Kathu and Thalang - with 17 subdistricts, 96 villages and 61 communities, and on the PAO's own count its local government consists of one Provincial Administrative Organisation, nine subdistrict municipalities, two town municipalities, one city municipality and six subdistrict administrative organisations. That means a by-law binding Patong does not bind Choeng Talay: the rules can change between one beach and the next. Koh Samui is one district of Surat Thani province, administered by a single city municipality covering seven subdistricts, 39 villages and 118 communities. One body, one island.
Phuket's own province describes its climate as equatorial with two seasons, and states them as rainy from April to November and hot from December to March. Eight of the twelve months fall in the rainy classification on the province's own reckoning, which is not what the holiday market tends to imply. That is worth turning into behaviour rather than worry: view a property in the wet half of the year if you can, ask specifically about drainage and vehicle access to the plot, and be sceptical of any rental projection built on twelve months of occupancy. We do not give equivalent official season months for Samui on this page because we did not obtain them from a Thai authority on 6 September 2026 - see the note in the seasons section.
There is no answer that is right for everyone, so here is the shape of it. Phuket suits you if you want a wider choice of everything - more districts, more hospitals, more schools, more direct flights through a state-enterprise airport - and you accept that the rules and the character change between areas and that you will drive. Koh Samui suits you if a smaller island with one municipality and a shorter list of options is a feature rather than a limit, and if you are comfortable that your air link runs through an airport owned by one airline. Neither is cheaper or better in a way we can prove to you from official sources, and any page that tells you otherwise should be asked where its numbers came from.
Down to one island?
Each has its own hub here — areas, buildings, hospitals, schools and current stock. Bring a shortlist of areas, not an island.
General information only, not legal, tax or relocation advice. BAANLYY LLC is a Nevada company and a listing portal: it does not own, lease, manage or control any property listed on this site and is not a party to any lease or sale. Administrative boundaries, local by-laws, airport arrangements, seasons and prices change; confirm anything you intend to act on directly with the relevant Thai authority, the local administration, the operator and the building. BAANLYY never takes paid placement in editorial content.
Sources
- Phuket Provincial Administrative Organisation (PAO) — general data on Phuket province: area, islands, districts, subdistricts and local bodies ↗Phuket Provincial Administrative Organisation · Accessed 6 September 2026
- Koh Samui City Municipality — own published basic data: area, subdistricts, communities and registered population ↗Koh Samui City Municipality, Surat Thani · Accessed 6 September 2026
- Airports of Thailand PCL (AOT) — the six airports AOT owns and operates ↗Airports of Thailand Public Company Limited · Accessed 6 September 2026
- Airport business — Bangkok Airways owns and operates Samui, Sukhothai and Trat airports ↗Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited · Accessed 6 September 2026
- Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT) ↗
- Land and building appraisal-value lookup — Department of Lands & Treasury Department ↗Department of Lands and Treasury Department, Kingdom of Thailand · Accessed 6 September 2026
- Real Estate Information Center (REIC), Government Housing Bank, Thailand ↗
- Thai Meteorological Department (TMD) ↗
- National park entry-fee bands under the 2564 regulation (in force 7 June 2565) — Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation ↗Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation · Accessed 6 September 2026
Official primary sources are listed above with the date we last checked them. Thai rules, fees, thresholds and procedures change and can be applied differently by individual offices and embassies — confirm the current requirement with the responsible authority before relying on it. General information only, not legal, tax or medical advice. BAANLYY never takes paid placement in editorial content.