Nomad in Bulgaria: a full ladder that Airalo undercuts, except where it doesn't

The range, corrected

This page previously said our Bulgaria data held exactly two Nomad plans, a 3GB month at $7 when Nomad charges $9 and a 10GB month at $14 when Nomad charges $16, and that both figures were indicative. All three parts of that were wrong. Nomad's Bulgarian catalogue was read from nomadesim.com on 17 August 2026, and it holds ten plans.

This is the same ladder Nomad sells in twelve other European countries — Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden all carry byte-identical pricing. It is a seller's tiering policy, not a reading of what Bulgarian wholesale costs. That is worth holding on to, because Bulgaria is one of the cheapest markets in the EU and Nomad charges the same here as it does in Norway.

Airalo takes every metered size

Airalo's Bulgaria figures were read off its own site on 13 August 2026, so both sides of this comparison are now checked prices.

The correction has made this worse for Nomad rather than better. On the old figures the gap at 10GB was two dollars and this page said a price change could close it; the real gap is four, and at 5GB Airalo sells the same allowance for a little over half the money. At 20GB the two are level. Only at the top does the shape change: Nomad does sell 50GB here, which an earlier version of this page said it did not, but at $45 against Airalo's $36.

The pitch that doesn't survive Bulgaria

Nomad's structural advantage in most markets is validity. It sells small data allowances over long windows, so a two-week trip doesn't turn into a seven-day plan plus a top-up you buy in a car park. That advantage is close to worthless in Bulgaria, because nobody here charges much for time. Airalo wants $6 for 5GB over seven days and $7 for the same 5GB over thirty — a month of validity costs a dollar. When a rival gives the long window away, selling it at a premium is not a proposition.

Where Nomad wins: unlimited

This is the part the old page could not see, because it did not know Nomad sold unlimited data in Bulgaria at all. It does, at four windows, and it undercuts Airalo at every one of them: $11 against $11.50 at three days, $18 against $18.50 at five, $25 against $27 at seven, and $33 against $34.50 at ten. Holafly, the usual unlimited specialist, is dearer than both at $19 for five days and $36.90 for ten, and it blocks hotspot tethering where Nomad allows it.

The margins are one to two dollars rather than transformative, and Airalo carries on past ten days where Nomad stops. But if you want uncapped Bulgarian data for a week or less and you want to tether a laptop to it, Nomad is now the cheapest way to get it.

Tethering is supported across Nomad's Bulgaria range, metered plans included, which is not universal here — Holafly blocks it outright.

The network question

Nomad publishes no host network in Bulgaria, or anywhere else. Our data used to carry A1 and Vivacom against its Bulgarian rows; that was an error on our side rather than a claim Nomad makes, and it has been removed. Airalo, Saily and Holafly publish nothing either. The Bulgarian operators this page once credited to Holafly's own listing came from the same faulty data, and Holafly's country pages name no carrier.

It would change less than you'd think even if one of them were confirmed. No travel eSIM we track lets you choose the network you land on once you are in the country. The Bulgarian gaps worth planning around are the same whoever you buy from: remote hiking trails in the Rhodopes, the Rila mountains above the ski resort bases including the Musala summit area, some deep Black Sea coastal cliffs, and rural villages in the north-west. If reliable signal in those places is the point of the trip, a local SIM you can choose by carrier beats any eSIM in this comparison.

Two cheaper answers first

Bulgaria is in the EU. If your everyday SIM is European, roam-like-at-home applies and your usual allowance should work here at no extra cost, within your tariff's fair-use cap — which makes the right spend for a lot of visitors zero.

If not, a Bulgarian prepaid SIM is about $9 at the airport from Vivacom, A1 Bulgaria or Yettel Bulgaria, with a local number attached. Registration requires a passport or ID, which is the trade: paperwork and a counter queue against a QR code that asks for nothing.

Verdict. Buy Nomad in Bulgaria only for unlimited data over a week or less, where it is now the cheapest option that also allows tethering. For metered data, Airalo's verified prices are lower at every size the two of them share except 20 GB, where they are level. This page previously called the 10GB gap close enough to check before ruling Nomad out; on the real prices it is not close. The full comparison is on our Bulgaria hub.