Nomad in France: our prices were wrong, and wrong in its favour

What Nomad charges in France

Read off Nomad's own French checkout on 17 August 2026:

There are four uncapped plans as well: $11 for three days, $18 for five, $25 for seven and $33 for ten.

The correction, which runs the other way for once

This page opened with the line "Never buy Nomad's 5GB plan", on the grounds that it cost $17 — a dollar under the 10GB for half the data — and was the worst value in our French dataset. Every number in that argument was wrong, and all of them were too high:

The page also said the range was four plans. It is ten. There was no 3GB row, no 50GB row and no uncapped ladder in our data, and there should have been.

The pattern this page built its verdict on — a 5GB plan absurdly close to the 10GB — does not exist. The real ladder falls steadily with size, the way a sanely priced one does.

Against the verified market

Airalo's figures were read from its site on 13 August 2026 and Saily's from its own on 16 August, so every column here is a checkout price rather than an inference. On those figures Nomad is the cheapest French plan at all five sizes. The margins are not trivial either: two dollars at 5GB and again at 10GB, and a third off Saily's price at 3GB.

The 50GB row is the one that matters most for the country. At $35 it is fifty cents under Airalo's $35.50 and gives France a floor of 70 cents a gigabyte, which is the cheapest data in the market by some distance.

Two caveats keep this from being a clean sweep. Airalo sells shorter windows Nomad does not — 5GB over 7 days at $9.50, 10GB over 7 days at $15, 20GB over 15 days at $22.50 — so if your trip is a week and you want to pay for a week, Airalo's grid is finer. And at the entry tier Saily's verified 1GB over 7 days is $3.99 against Nomad's $4, on identical terms. A cent is not a reason to choose either.

Uncapped, where only Holafly used to compete

Airalo sells no unlimited plan for France at all. Until now that left the category to Holafly, whose French ladder has since been read off its own site on 18 August 2026. Nomad's four uncapped plans are verified too, and they undercut Holafly at all four lengths the two share: $11 against $11.90 at three days, $18 against $20.50 at five, $25 against $27.50 at seven and $33 against $36.50 at ten.

Holafly still owns the long end of that ladder. It sells fifteen days at $50.50 and thirty at $73.90, and nothing from Nomad runs beyond ten days. It sells nothing shorter than three days either — the one-day French pass this page used to list does not exist, in France or anywhere.

The line about Orange and SFR, removed

This page used to say Nomad was the only mid-market provider in our France data with anything in the network field, and that two of its rows pointed at Orange and SFR. That was never sourced from Nomad. Nomad publishes no host network for France or for any other country, the values came out of older generated prose, and they have been deleted rather than qualified.

So the position is the same as it is for Airalo, Saily, eSIM Go and eSIMCard: nobody tells you which French carrier you land on. Holafly is in the same position — the Orange, SFR and Bouygues trio this page used to credit to its listing came from our own data rather than from the seller — so there is no network information available in this market at all.

If the network genuinely decides your trip — mountain roads, deep countryside, coastal Brittany — the answer is a French prepaid SIM where you choose the carrier at the counter: around $15, from Orange France, SFR, Bouygues Telecom or Free Mobile, with your passport in hand because registration requires ID.

Verdict

Buy Nomad for France if you are buying on price, which at these figures is most people. The 5GB at $9 covers an ordinary week, the 10GB at $14 covers a fortnight with navigation, and the 50GB at $35 is the cheapest data in the country. Look at Airalo instead if you want a short validity window rather than a month, and at Saily if you want a single gigabyte for a long weekend. And if you are coming from elsewhere in the EU or EEA, roam-like-at-home means your existing SIM already works at domestic rates and none of this applies. The full field is on our France hub.