Data in Paris: digital tickets above ground, patchy tunnels below

Start here if your contract is European

If your phone plan comes from an EU or EEA country, roam-like-at-home means your domestic allowance works in Paris at domestic rates. There is nothing to buy. Check your operator's fair-use cap if you are staying a long time, and stop reading.

Everybody else — UK, US, Canada, Australia, most of Asia — needs a travel eSIM or a French prepaid SIM. That decision is no different in Paris than anywhere else in France. What is different is when you need the data working, and where in the city it stops.

The ticketing is digital and it is booked ahead

Paris has moved its headline attractions onto timed entry almost across the board. The Louvre sells timed slots online. Versailles requires advance tickets. The Eiffel Tower lift is effectively advance-only in practice, because same-day slots are often sold out. Musée d'Orsay runs timed slots, and Sainte-Chapelle prefers online booking.

That is not a small operational detail. Turning up at the door expecting to pay cash costs you either the visit or hours of queuing, and the whole infrastructure now assumes you arrive connected.

The order of operations that follows: book before you fly, screenshot or download the confirmations, then treat live data as the backup rather than the plan. A phone that cannot load an email at the barrier is a phone with a dead battery in a queue.

Underground is where the coverage question actually lives

Above ground there is no story to tell. 5G reaches all 20 arrondissements and any provider will serve you.

The Metro is the exception, and it is uneven rather than bad. Most above-ground sections have 4G and 5G. Underground coverage exists and is expanding, and the newer sections are the good ones — Line 14 is well connected below ground. The older, deeper tunnels are where you lose it, which matters mainly if you are following a live route rather than one you already know.

Both apps worth having want live data. RATP is the official Metro and bus app, good for timetables and routing. Citymapper is better on real-time delays and multi-modal journeys including night buses. Set your route before you go down the steps and it will survive the tunnel.

What plans cost

Airalo's rows were read from its own site on 13 August 2026 and Saily's from its own on 16 August 2026. Every price below is a checkout price rather than an estimate.

A long weekend of maps, messaging and ticket QR codes fits inside 3 GB. A week with photographs and the occasional video call is comfortable on 5 GB, where Saily's $10.99 for 30 days is now a cent under Airalo's $11.00 — or $9.50 if Airalo's 7-day window is long enough for the trip.

One thing worth knowing, because pages elsewhere get it wrong: the French ladder does not stop at 20 GB. The verified 50 GB plan at $35.50 is 71 cents a gigabyte, the cheapest data in the French set by a wide margin. Irrelevant for three days in the Marais. The obvious buy if you are here for a month.

Buying in Paris instead

Charles de Gaulle has an Orange kiosk plus Relay stores in all terminals. Relay is the airport newsagent chain, so expect a shelf of prepaid packs and a till rather than advice. Our country data puts a typical French airport SIM at around $15. In town, Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free Mobile all run high-street shops, and staff there will set the SIM up for you.

France requires a passport or ID document to register a prepaid SIM, wherever you buy it — national rule, not a Paris quirk. The reason to bother is a French number, which is genuinely useful for restaurant bookings and hire-car desks, and which no eSIM gives you.

What we cannot tell you about networks

None of the eSIM providers we track has a confirmed host network in France. Nomad and Holafly do not name their hosts at all: the Orange, SFR and Bouygues attributions this page used to carry against them came from our own older data rather than from either seller, and neither company publishes a host network in any country. Airalo publishes no host network anywhere — "Élan" is simply the name it sells the France plan under, its own branding rather than a carrier.

In Paris that gap costs you little, because all four French networks are strong across the city and the choice is close to irrelevant. It matters if your trip runs into rural France. The full comparison is on the France hub.