European eSIM plans, and the 28 countries where you may not need one

First: most European travellers should buy nothing

If your everyday SIM is from an EU or EEA country, roam-like-at-home already covers you in 28 of the 34 European countries we hold data for. Your domestic allowance works in Spain, Italy, Poland, Greece, Iceland, Norway and the rest of the bloc at no extra charge, subject to your operator's fair-use policy. Buying a travel eSIM on top of that is paying twice.

The six exceptions in our data are the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Turkey, Serbia, Albania and Ukraine. Those sit outside the arrangement, and they are where a European eSIM plan earns its money — along with every trip made on a non-European SIM, which is most of the traffic that reaches this page.

Everything below assumes you actually need to buy.

Europe is the cheapest region we cover

Verified floors — the lowest per-gigabyte rate somebody has read off the seller's own checkout — cluster tightly across the continent. All 34 of our European countries now sit under $1 a gigabyte, against a median of $0.98 across all 94 countries on this site. In Latin America and the Caribbean, three of the fifteen markets we cover manage it.

Every one of those floors is a 50 GB plan over 30 days. Eleven of them are Nomad's, read on 17 August 2026 — Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Germany, France, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, Iceland, Romania and Albania. Italy is a dead heat, both sellers at $35. The remaining twenty-two are Airalo's, read on 13 and 17 August. Austria is the cheapest country in Europe at $29 for 50 GB; Albania, Estonia and Ukraine are the dearest at $49 for the same thing.

At smaller sizes the ordering shifts. Airalo's verified 5 GB over 7 days is $6 in Bulgaria, $7 in Austria and Czechia, $7.50 in Belgium, Poland and Portugal, and $8 in Spain. Bulgaria at $6 is the cheapest verified 5 GB plan anywhere in Europe, which is not where most people would guess. Nomad's 5 GB plans run a full 30 days rather than seven, so they read dearer per gigabyte and are the better buy on a longer trip: $9 in Spain, France and Turkey, $10 in Portugal, $12.50 across most of the rest.

A correction: the Nordic bargain was our error

Until 17 August 2026 this page told you that Nomad charged exactly $29 for 50 GB over 30 days in five countries — Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Sweden — that none of Nomad's figures had been read off a checkout, and that the repeated $29 was the single reason Scandinavia looked cheap in listings that treat all prices alike.

Nomad's entire catalogue has since been read off nomadesim.com: 436 plans across all 47 of its countries, in USD, on 17 August 2026. The $29 was wrong. The real price is $45, in all five.

That reverses the conclusion rather than confirming it. Nomad is dearer than Airalo in every one of those countries: Austria $45 against $29, Belgium $45 against $32.50, Denmark $45 against $35, Norway $45 against $36, Sweden $45 against $42. The instinct was right — a price that undercuts everything around it is worth checking before you rank it — but the number itself was never Nomad's, and the error ran in the seller's favour.

The number that really repeats itself

What survives is stranger than the thing we got wrong, and it is the same shape of finding.

Thirteen European countries carry a byte-identical Nomad ladder. Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden all price 1 GB at $4.50, 3 GB at $9, 5 GB at $12.50, 10 GB at $16, 20 GB at $20 and 50 GB at $45 — and unlimited at $11, $18, $25 and $33 for three, five, seven and ten days. Ten rungs, thirteen countries, not a cent between them. Austria and Poland share a second identical ladder; France and Spain a third.

Iceland and Romania are in that group, and Norway and Sweden are too. A pricing model that puts Reykjavík, Bucharest, Oslo and Sofia on the same ten numbers is not tracking what a network costs in each of them.

Airalo repeats itself the same way. Estonia, Iceland, Serbia and Ukraine all price 50 GB over 30 days at exactly $49 — as do fourteen countries outside Europe, from Colombia to Macau. Fifty-six countries price 1 GB over 3 days at exactly $4.00. Prices identical to the cent across markets with nothing in common are not tracking local wholesale cost; they look like a seller's tiering policy, with the ends of the ladder pinned and the middle left to move. Neither company publishes anything about how it prices, so that is inference — but it is why the rung you buy usually matters more than the border you cross.

The plus-tier puzzle

Airalo sells two named products side by side in several European countries, at different prices, for identical data, and publishes nothing about the difference.

In Belgium, 10 GB over 7 days costs $11 as Belganet or $18 as Belganet+ — 64% more. In Austria, 50 GB over 30 days is $29 as Servus Austria or $36.50 as Servus Austria+. In the UK, the same 50 GB is $39 as Uki Mobile or $54 as Uki Mobile+.

Those names are Airalo's own retail brands, not carriers. Airalo does not publish a host network in any European country, so there is no coverage difference on record to justify the premium. Until there is, buy the cheaper one. Airalo in the UK and Airalo in Belgium list both ladders in full.

The six countries outside the roaming bloc

Turkey is the cheapest of them and among the cheapest in Europe. Nomad's verified 50 GB over 30 days is $31, or $0.62 a gigabyte; Airalo's is $34.50. A Turkish airport SIM runs about $20, so here the eSIM genuinely wins on price at volume.

The UK sits at $0.78 a gigabyte on Airalo's verified 50 GB at $39. Nomad stops at 20 GB there, $25, which is $1.25 a gigabyte — one of the few European markets where Nomad has no large plan at all. A UK airport SIM is about $10, which for a light user beats both by a wide margin.

Switzerland is still among the more expensive countries in Western Europe: Nomad's verified 50 GB is $43 and Airalo's $45, and 5 GB over 7 days from Airalo is $13, more than double the Bulgarian equivalent.

Serbia has moved. Airalo charges $49 for 50 GB there, which is what this page used to quote as the Serbian floor; Nomad's verified $35 for the same size is $0.70 a gigabyte and puts Serbia in the middle of the European table rather than at the bottom.

Albania has moved further. It was the dearest verified market in Europe at $1.77 a gigabyte, on the reading that nobody sold above 20 GB there. Nomad does: 50 GB over 30 days at $49, or $0.98 a gigabyte. Albania is no longer an outlier, and no European country in our data now stops at 20 GB. A local Albanian SIM still costs around $8, which no eSIM here approaches.

Ukraine is Airalo-only in our data, at $0.98 a gigabyte on a verified 50 GB plan at $49.

What no European eSIM can tell you

Which network you will be on. Airalo, Saily and Nomad each publish no host network in a single European country — none of the three, anywhere — Holafly names none either, eSIM Go has no consumer page at all, and the carrier names our data once carried against eSIMCard's rows came from our own text rather than from eSIMCard. If coverage in a specific rural area is the deciding factor — Norwegian fjords, Highland Scotland, the Albanian interior — the only purchase that settles it is a local prepaid SIM, sold for roughly $8 in Poland, Hungary and Albania and $9 in Bulgaria and Slovakia.

That is also the option that pays this site nothing, which is why we say so. For the full ranking, see the cheapest eSIM plans; for the regional alternatives, Asia and Latin America.