Six eSIM providers, and how much of each one can be checked
Airalo and Nomad have now been read off their own checkouts in full, and Saily in thirty-seven of its forty-eight countries. eSIM Go publishes no consumer price to read, eSIMCard's 78 rows have been withdrawn after we read its site and found them wrong, and parts of Saily's and Holafly's lists are still unread.
Six sellers, and three of them can be checked
Our data holds 2,699 plans from six travel eSIM providers across 94 countries. The single most important thing to know about the market is that three of those six have never been checked against their own checkouts — a better position than this page described a week ago, when it was four.
| Provider | Plans held | Countries | Verified | Plan shape |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Airalo | 1,686 | 94 | all 1,686 (13 and 17 Aug) | 3 to 30-day windows |
 Nomad | 436 | 47 | all 436 (17 Aug) | metered mostly 30-day, unlimited 3 to 30 |
 Saily | 225 | 48 | 185 (37 countries) | 7-day and 30-day only |
 Holafly | 240 | 45 | none | unlimited only, 1 to 90 days |
 eSIM Go | 34 | 16 | none | 30-day only |
"Verified" means somebody opened the seller's own site and read the price off it, on the date shown. Everything else was lifted from older article text and carried forward labelled indicative. How we test explains why we keep the two apart rather than blending them into one ranking.
The spread inside that verified column is the number worth carrying away. The cheapest gigabyte anybody has confirmed is Thailand at $0.24, on Nomad's 50 GB plan over 10 days at $12 — a row this site called suspect until somebody read it. The median country floor is $0.98. At the far end, Lebanon works out at $27.00 a gigabyte, but that is a lone 1 GB plan rather than a market; the dearest real ladders are Nigeria and Fiji at $4.70 and Kenya at $4.60, each capped at 10 GB, all three Airalo. Which provider you pick moves the price by tens of per cent — Nomad holds the cheapest verified rate in 25 countries, Airalo in 67, and they tie in Argentina and Italy. Which country you are standing in moves it nearly twentyfold.
Airalo
The widest coverage, and one of the two providers we have read in bulk: all 1,686 rows are verified, in all 94 countries. The United Arab Emirates was the last gap and closed on 17 August 2026, when 17 Emirati rows were read off the checkout — there is no longer an Airalo price on this site that nobody has looked at. It is also the only seller we hold at all in 46 of the 94 countries, so in half the dataset it wins by default rather than on merit.
Its ladder is the most granular in the market: the same allowance is usually sold over 3, 7, 15 and 30 days at four different prices, which means Airalo is frequently both the cheapest and the dearest option in a country depending on which row you land on.
Three quirks matter. First, Airalo sells under invented retail names rather than its own: Chido in Mexico, Belganet in Belgium, Uki Mobile in the UK, Chimba in Colombia, Servus Austria in Austria. These are product names. They are not carriers, and they have been misread as carriers before.
Second, in thirteen countries Airalo runs two of those named products at once, at different prices, for identical data. Belgium's 10 GB over 7 days is $11 as Belganet or $18 as Belganet+. The United States' 10 GB over 7 days is $21.50 as Change or $28 as Change+. Mexico's 10 GB over 7 days is $17 as Chido or $23.50 as Chido Plus. Airalo publishes nothing about what the premium buys, and since it publishes no host network anywhere either, there is nothing on record to compare. Airalo in the USA lists both ladders.
Third, and newly visible now the dataset covers 94 countries: the ladder repeats itself across markets that have nothing to do with each other. Fifty-six countries price 1 GB over 3 days at exactly $4.00. Eighteen of the 56 countries selling 50 GB over 30 days price it at exactly $49. Seven price 20 GB over 15 days at exactly $48. China, Hong Kong, Macau, Mongolia and Kazakhstan share both fixed ends — $4.00 at the bottom, $49 at the top — while the 20 GB rung between them runs from $22.50 in Macau to $39 in China. Prices identical to the cent across unrelated countries are not reading local wholesale cost; they read as Airalo's own tiering, ends pinned and the middle left free. Airalo publishes nothing about its pricing, so that is inference rather than proof, but it is a better account of these figures than anything the sellers offer.
Saily
Present in 48 of our 94 countries against Airalo's 94, a fifth as many rows, and half of them verified — 100 prices read across 20 countries on 13 and 16 August. The other 40 rows are indicative, covering eleven countries: Albania, Argentina, Bulgaria, Colombia, Finland, New Zealand, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and the United Arab Emirates. Everywhere else Saily sells, the price we show was read off its own checkout on 13, 16 or 18 August 2026.
Its real difference from Airalo is shape, not price. Saily sells almost everything on a 30-day window — only its 1 GB plans run shorter, at 7 days — where Airalo splits the same allowance across four durations. On a long slow trip that favours Saily. In Japan, Saily's verified 20 GB over 30 days is $24.99 against Airalo's 20 GB over 15 days at $24: a penny more for double the window. Saily in Japan sets the two ladders side by side.
Saily also sells unlimited plans. We hold no price for a single one of them, in any country, so every Saily figure on this site covers its metered plans only.
Holafly
Every one of Holafly's 240 rows is unlimited. There is not one metered plan in our data from them, which means Holafly cannot be ranked on cost per gigabyte at all — there is no gigabyte figure to divide by. It is the only provider in this market that opts out of the comparison entirely by design.
None of those 240 prices has been verified. Holafly is also absent from 49 of the 94 countries we cover, including Australia, Thailand, the USA and almost everything added on 17 August 2026. Its duration range is the widest of anyone's, from one day to ninety, which is the genuine argument for it — a short, heavy trip where you cannot predict usage. Holafly in Japan covers what we hold.
Nomad
All 436 rows across 47 countries, read off nomadesim.com on 17 August 2026. Until that day we held 166 rows, none verified, and this page used Nomad as its example of why unchecked prices should not be sorted alongside checked ones — the $12 Thai 50 GB that looked impossible, and 50 GB at exactly $29 across five European countries.
Checking settled both, and not in the direction the argument assumed. The $12 Thai plan is real: it runs 10 days rather than the 30 we had recorded, and at $0.24 a gigabyte it is the cheapest verified rate on this site. The $29 European 50 GB is not real at any price — Nomad charges $45, which makes it dearer than Airalo in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the countries where our unchecked figures had made it look cheapest.
With both columns verified, Nomad is cheaper per gigabyte than Airalo in 25 of the 47 countries where both sell, dearer in 20 and level in two. It is strongest on a 20 GB month — cheaper in 36 of the 43 countries where both sell that plan — and weakest at 1 GB, where Airalo matches or beats it in 44 of 46. It sells unlimited in 45 countries at 3 to 30 days, and it publishes no host network anywhere, which is also true of Airalo and Saily. Nomad in Thailand has the detail, and the provider page sets out what we got wrong.
eSIMCard and eSIM Go
eSIMCard held 78 rows across 31 countries, including an entry plan priced identically in fifteen unrelated markets and several figures carrying odd cents that looked converted from another currency rather than set as a price list. Both were tells. We read eSIMCard's own pages on 18 August 2026, found the figures were not the ones it charges, and could not store the real ones: it prices the same size and duration at two or three different amounts depending on a Standard/Universal toggle and a per-plan speed limit our four fields cannot express. All 78 rows have been withdrawn — see our eSIMCard page. None of that makes it a bad shop: it is a genuine retailer with a far wider catalogue than we ever showed, and the only one of the six that publishes the host network its plans use.
eSIM Go is the thinnest: 34 rows across 16 countries, no unlimited plans, and only 30-day windows at 3, 5, 10 or 20 GB. It shows up as a mid-table 10 GB option and little else. eSIM Go in Italy is typical.
The thing none of them will tell you
Which network you get. Airalo, Nomad and Saily publish no host network in any of the 94 countries — Nomad's silence on this was confirmed when its prices were read, and the operator names our old Nomad rows carried for 39 countries came out of generated prose and have been deleted. Holafly names none either — we read its country pages on 18 August 2026 and found no carrier on any of them, so the operators our old Holafly rows carried came from the same generated prose. eSIM Go has no consumer page on which it could publish one. eSIMCard is the single exception in this market: its Japan page names three Japanese operators against its plans, and it is the only one of the six that publishes this at all. Every provider comparison that ranks on coverage is ranking on unverified assertions.
If the network is what matters, no eSIM answers it. Buy locally. Otherwise, work from the country you are going to — Asia, Europe, Latin America — and check the cheapest plans rather than the brand.
Common questions
How many eSIM providers are there really?
Far more than six — this compares the six that appear across our 94 countries: Airalo, Saily, Holafly, Nomad, eSIMCard and eSIM Go. Airalo is the only one in all 94; Saily reaches 48, Nomad 47, Holafly 45, eSIMCard 31 and eSIM Go just 16. In 46 countries Airalo is the only seller we hold at all.
Why can Holafly not be compared on price per gigabyte?
Because every one of its 240 plans in our data is unlimited. There is no allowance to divide the price by, so it cannot sit in a per-gigabyte ranking without inventing a number. That is a real argument for it on short heavy trips and a real reason it cannot be ranked against metered sellers.
Which provider has the most verified prices?
Airalo, by a distance: all 1,686 of its rows were read from its own site — 910 on 13 August 2026 and a further 776 on 17 August — covering all 94 countries. Nomad is next and is also complete: all 436 rows in 47 countries, read on 17 August 2026. Saily has 185 verified rows across 37 countries. Holafly and eSIM Go have none at all, and eSIMCard's 78 rows have been withdrawn rather than left unverified.
Do any of these providers say which network they use?
Airalo, Nomad and Saily publish no host network in any country we cover. The other three name carriers in some listings, but those are their own unconfirmed claims and we treat them as leads rather than facts. Buying a local prepaid SIM is the only way to know which network you are on.
Why do the same prices keep appearing in unrelated countries?
Because at least one seller appears to price by tier rather than by market. Fifty-six countries carry an Airalo 1 GB, 3-day plan at exactly $4.00, and 18 of the 56 that sell 50 GB over 30 days price it at exactly $49, while the 20 GB rung in between moves freely. Airalo does not publish its pricing method, so this is what the data shows rather than what the company says.