Middle East eSIM prices cluster tightly, except in Lebanon

Seven markets, and one that is not a market

Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. That is 131 plans, every one of them verified.

Airalo sells in all seven and every row has been read — 17 August 2026 in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Jordan, and 8 October in Israel, the UAE and Lebanon, in US dollars. Nomad reaches only the UAE, read on 17 August, and Saily's five Emirati rows were read on 18 August. Every row we have withdrawn in the region sits in the UAE too: seven from Holafly, whose durations do not match anything it sells, and five from eSIMCard. Six of the seven markets are one company's price list, verified end to end.

Holafly and eSIM Go hold 240 and 34 rows on this site and not one verified row in any country, so ranking them against Airalo would set a read column against unread ones. They are left out below; eSIM Go sells nothing here anyway. eSIMCard's 78 rows have been withdrawn altogether.

The verified floor, market by market

Six markets inside $0.78 to $2.40 is a fairly narrow band by this site's standards: Africa's seven span $0.90 to $4.70 and Asia's twenty-three run ten-fold. Only Israel reaches the $0.98 median floor across the 94 countries we price, and none of the six comes near the dearest.

Lebanon is the outlier, at $4.90 a gigabyte

Airalo sells nine plans in Lebanon, all under the name Salbeh, read on 8 October 2026 in US dollars: 1 GB over 3 days at $9.50, 3 GB at $19 to $19.50, 5 GB at $31 to $33, and 10 GB at $49 to $59, with nothing larger. The best rate is $4.90 a gigabyte, on the 10 GB over 7 days at $49. That is the dearest floor in any of the 94 countries we price; the next dearest, Nigeria and Fiji, are $4.70.

There is no larger plan and no second seller, so there is no telling whether $4.90 reflects Lebanese conditions or just the only ladder somebody listed. It is quoted because omitting it would be tidier than the data, but kept out of every range here.

What sets the level

The ceiling does most of the work, as it does everywhere. Israel is the only one of the seven selling 50 GB, and it holds the cheapest gigabyte. Saudi Arabia sells the only 25 GB plan in our entire dataset, 45 days for $49, and comes second. The four that stop at 20 GB fill in behind.

The ceiling is not all of it, though. Israel's 20 GB over 15 days is $16, or $0.80 a gigabyte — within two cents of its own floor, and below every other market's cheapest rate. Israel is cheap the whole way up.

The bottom rungs tell the other half. Airalo's 1 GB over 3 days costs exactly $4.50 in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Jordan, whose floors run $1.96 to $2.40 — and $4.50 again in Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa, Georgia, Malta and Indonesia. At the top, $49 buys 20 GB for 30 days in Jordan, 25 GB for 45 days in Saudi Arabia, or unlimited data for 15 days in Qatar and the UAE. Rungs that repeat to the dollar across unrelated markets read as a seller's tiering rather than local wholesale cost. Airalo publishes nothing about how it prices, so that is inference.

The UAE is the crowded one, and the messy one

Five sellers list Emirati plans and two have been read: Nomad's nine rows and Airalo's seventeen. Saily's five have since been read too. The twelve rows we held for Holafly and eSIMCard have been withdrawn — eSIMCard's after we read its site and found ours wrong, Holafly's because they described windows it does not sell. The verified sellers differ. Nomad's 20 GB over 30 days is $29 against Airalo's $34 for the same size and window — 15% lower, and it is what takes the UAE's floor to $1.45. On Airalo's ladder alone the country would sit at $1.65, still second in this table.

Where a page names Holafly or eSIMCard as the cheapest UAE plan, ask when that price was read — we no longer hold one for either.

Jordan sells no unlimited plan

Airalo's eleven Jordanian rows are metered end to end: 1, 3, 5, 10 and 20 GB. Every other market here with a ladder sells an unlimited tier — Israel, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all do, and Iraq's runs to 10 days. Where those tiers exist they fall into two bands, and neither is cheap. Airalo's 30-day unlimited is $69 in Israel, $72 in the UAE, $97 in Saudi Arabia and $99 in Qatar — thirty dollars across four countries whose metered floors run $0.78 to $2.15. If you want unlimited, Israel and the UAE are the cheaper pair. If you want value per gigabyte, the country decides everything.

No host networks, no local SIM research

Airalo lists these markets under Annatel and Annatel+ in Israel, Burj Mobile in the UAE, Red Sand in Saudi Arabia, Pearl Mobile in Qatar, Babel Mobile in Iraq, Jornet in Jordan and Salbeh in Lebanon — its own product names, not operators. Airalo publishes no host network in 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 operators our data once held against its rows were ours rather than Holafly's. eSIMCard does publish host carriers on its country pages, confirmed on its Japanese one, but we have not read its Emirati page and hold no network for it here. Nothing here can tell you which network your handset will attach to.

We hold no local SIM research for any of the seven either — no counter prices, no registration rules, no operator detail — and we will not describe what we have not checked.

What to do

Israel is the clear buy, and its plain tier beats its plus tier at every size: 50 GB is $39 under one name and $47 under the other. In the UAE, compare the two verified sellers first. In Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Jordan the only choice is which rung of one ladder, and the largest plan is always the cheapest gigabyte.

For the wider arithmetic see the cheapest eSIM plans and how we test. The Asia page leaves these markets out on purpose; neighbours are Africa, Europe and the country-by-country overview.