African eSIM prices are set by where each ladder stops

Seven markets, and how much of each has been read

Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania — seven countries on a continent of fifty-four. This is where somebody has read the prices off a checkout, not a survey of Africa.

That comes to 173 plans, 149 of them verified. Airalo sells in all seven and every row has been read: 13 August 2026 in Morocco, Egypt and South Africa, 17 August in the other four. Nomad reaches three of them, read on 17 August; Saily the same three, on 18 August.

The other 24 rows are Holafly's 18 and eSIMCard's 6, and not one has been checked. That is not a local gap. Holafly holds 240 rows on this site, eSIMCard 78 and eSIM Go 34, and the verified count for all three is zero in every country we cover — so ranking them here would be one read column against unread ones. They stay out of the table below.

The verified floor, market by market

Only Morocco and South Africa reach the median verified floor across the 94 countries we price, $0.98 a gigabyte. Kenya and Nigeria sit at the top of the whole site: only Fiji matches Nigeria's $4.70, and the one entry above them is a single 1 GB product rather than a market, covered on the Middle East page.

The ceiling decides the floor

Sort the seven by their largest plan and the prices sort themselves.

• 50 GB on sale — Morocco $0.90, South Africa $0.98.
• Stops at 20 GB — Egypt $1.85, Tanzania $2.15, Ghana $2.40.
• Stops at 10 GB — Kenya $4.60, Nigeria $4.70.

Per-gigabyte rates fall as plans get bigger on every ladder we hold, so a range that ends early never reaches the cheap end of its own curve. Kenya and Nigeria end early: nine rows each, nothing above 10 GB, no unlimited tier.

The blunt version: $49 buys 10 GB for 30 days in Nigeria, 20 GB for 30 days in Ghana, or 50 GB for 30 days in South Africa. One seller — Airalo — one month, all three read off the checkout. Five times the data for the same money, and the only variable is the country on the label.

The bottom of the ladder does not move that way. Airalo's 1 GB over 3 days is $4.50 in Ghana, Tanzania and South Africa, the same figure to the cent, and $4.50 again in Georgia, Malta, Indonesia and four Middle Eastern markets. Kenya's is $8 and Nigeria's $7.50. Prices repeating across unrelated countries read as a seller's tiering rather than local wholesale cost — nobody publishes how they price, so that is inference, but it fits the data better than a story about local costs.

Four of the seven are one company's price list

Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania hold Airalo rows and nothing else — nine, nine, eleven and seventeen. All verified, which is not the same as covered. If another seller undercuts Airalo in Nairobi we would not know — and neither would a page listing six brands with figures nobody read.

South Africa, Morocco and Egypt are the deep ones: five sellers each, three of them verified. Depth changes the answer in two. Morocco's floor belongs to Nomad, whose 50 GB over 30 days at $45 is the only plan that size in the country — three dollars more than Airalo's 20 GB, for two and a half times the data. Egypt's floor is Nomad's too, 20 GB over 30 days at $37 against Airalo's $42 for the same size and window. Saily wins one row in the whole region, the cheapest single gigabyte in South Africa at $3.99 over 7 days.

What Airalo's labels are, and are not

Airalo sells these markets under Nakuru Mobile, Nigercell, Fifi Mobile, Tanzacomm, CellSA, Choukran and Giza Mobile. Every one is Airalo's own product name rather than an operator. Airalo publishes no host network for any country, and neither does Nomad, Saily or Holafly — we read Holafly's own country pages on 18 August 2026 and they name no carrier, so the operator names our data once carried against its rows came from us rather than from Holafly. eSIMCard's listing is unread in either direction. Nothing here tells you which African network your handset will attach to.

Airalo also sells paired tiers in South Africa, CellSA and CellSA Plus: the 50 GB plan is $49 under one name and $55 under the other. Check both at every size.

Where a local SIM is worth the queue

We hold counter research for three of the seven. Egypt is the cheapest, about $8 for a prepaid SIM at the airport; Morocco is around $12 and South Africa around $18, and all three require a passport to register. Egypt's $8 is below any Egyptian eSIM plan of 5 GB or more — the strongest local case in the region.

For Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania we hold no local SIM research at all: no counter prices, no operator names, no registration rules. In markets this dear, buying locally probably beats $4.60 a gigabyte — but that is a guess, and we are not printing one.

The order to work in

Check the ceiling before the price: a market with a 50 GB plan will almost always beat one without, by more than any switch of seller inside it. Check the window too — Kenya's 10 GB runs $46, $47 and $48 for 7, 15 and 30 days, so the short plan saves two dollars and gives you a deadline. Then prefer a price somebody read.

For every country's arithmetic see the cheapest eSIM plans, and for the method how we test. Neighbouring regions: Europe, Asia, Latin America and the country-by-country overview.