Do I Need a Travel Adapter for Sri Lanka?

These are the five comparisons people actually search for. Each answer below comes from the same dataset the checker above uses, so the two cannot drift apart.

• Almost

  Is the Sri Lanka plug the same as the UK?

  Almost. Your Type G plug fits Sri Lanka's 13 A sockets and the supply is the same 230 V 50 Hz, but Type D round-pin sockets are still the commonest thing on the wall in older buildings, so carry one conversion adaptor.

• Almost

  Is the Sri Lanka plug the same as India?

  Almost. A India Type D or Type M plug goes straight into Sri Lanka's round-pin sockets and the supply is the same 230 V 50 Hz, but it will not enter a 13 A rectangular socket, so carry one adaptor to Type G.

• No

  Is the Sri Lanka plug the same as Europe?

  No. Germany uses Type C and Type F and none of it fits a Sri Lankan socket, so you need an adaptor. Mains here is 230 V 50 Hz against 230 V 50 Hz there.

• No

  Is the Sri Lanka plug the same as Australia?

  No. Australia uses Type I and none of it fits a Sri Lankan socket, so you need an adaptor. Mains here is 230 V 50 Hz against 230 V 50 Hz there.

• No

  Is the Sri Lanka plug the same as the USA?

  No. United States uses Type A and Type B and none of it fits a Sri Lankan socket, so you need an adaptor. Mains here is 230 V 50 Hz against 120 V 60 Hz there.

Sri Lanka's side of this is fixed by national standard, not computed. The Sri Lanka Standards Institution's code of practice for small residential buildings, SLS 703-1:1998, states the supply in its own published abstract: “single phase with a nominal voltage between phase and neutral conductors of 230 V a.c. 50 Hz”. SLS 703-2 and SLS 703-3 give 400 V three phase for larger buildings. Three socket types are in service, because the round-pin family was never ripped out when the 13 A family became the standard for new work:

• Type G SLS 734-1 to 734-5:2017, the current standard. Every new or rewired installation.
• Type D SLS 948-1:1991, SLS 948-2:1991, SLS 948-3:1991, still the commonest socket in older houses, guest houses and hotels.
• Type M SLS 948-1:1991, SLS 948-2:1991, SLS 948-3:1991, high-current points: water heaters, air conditioners, older irons.

Your side needs three facts, and only three: which plug letters your country standardizes, its nominal supply voltage, and its frequency. The checker then runs four steps.

Step 1, plug fit. Take the set of plug letters your country uses and intersect it with Sri Lanka's {D, M, G}. A non-empty intersection means your plug physically enters a Sri Lankan socket, and the result names which ones it does not reach. An empty intersection means an adaptor. Type C, the unearthed two-pin Europlug, is deliberately not counted as a fit even though its pins can be forced into a round-pin socket: it is unretained, unearthed and outside SLS 948, which is why SLS 1588:2018 exists.

Step 2, voltage. A device marked 100 to 240 V passes with nothing more than the adaptor. A device marked with one voltage in the 220 to 240 V band also passes, because 230 V sits inside the tolerance of a 220, 230 or 240 V rating. A device marked with one voltage in the 100 to 127 V band is the dangerous case. Power in a resistance goes as V² / R, so the overload factor is the square of the voltage ratio:

overload = (230 / V_origin)²

Step 3, frequency. A 60 Hz origin against Sri Lanka's 50 Hz matters only for loads tied to the mains cycle. Chargers rectify the input first, so they are unaffected. A mains-synchronous clock advances 50 minutes in a real hour instead of 60, losing about 10 minutes an hour. An induction motor turns at five sixths of its rated speed and can run hot on a 60 Hz-only rating. Where your country is already 50 Hz the row is suppressed.

Step 4, transformer sizing, only where step 2 says stop and you have entered the rated watts. Continuous rating with headroom, rounded up to a size actually sold:

required VA = ceilToStandard(watts × 1.25)
sizes sold: 100, 200, 300, 500, 1000, 1500, 2000, 3000 VA

The 1.25 factor is ordinary transformer practice for a resistive or lightly inductive load. It is our assumption, stated as one, not a figure out of a standard. For a motor load, starting current is several times running current and the sizing is the transformer maker's call.

The arithmetic is identical whether you are flying in with a hair dryer or shipping a rice cooker home from Osaka, so the toggle at the top changes the wording and nothing else. Every overload figure is then computed twice: once as the square of the voltage ratio, and once by deriving the element's resistance from its rating, putting 230 V across it and dividing the resulting power by the rated power. The two agree to the last decimal in all four examples below, which is what catches an inverted ratio or a dropped square.

Four cases, computed by hand first and then re-checked by the code. All four reconcile, by both formulas.

The full table, every row in the page as served. Use it to answer “what plugs are used in Sri Lanka” for whichever country you are coming from, without filling in the form above.

The SLSI standards catalogue has no deep links and is POST driven, so the link below goes to its search page. Enter the number and the entry comes back with the title and abstract quoted here. Every SLS number on this page was resolved that way on 2026-10-26.

• Sri Lanka Standards Institution: standards catalogue (search 703, 734, 948 and 1588)
• Sri Lanka Standards Institution: official site
• IEC TR 60083:2015, Plugs and socket-outlets for domestic and similar general use standardized in member countries of IEC
• Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka: licensing
• Ceylon Electricity Board: official site