How we check prices and coverage

Most affiliate comparison sites don't publish a method, which is usually because there isn't one. Here is ours, including the parts that are weaker than we'd like.

Where prices come from

Two categories, and the difference is stated on every table.

Verified. Read directly from the provider's own site, in USD, with no promotional code applied, and stamped with the date it was read. As of 18 August 2026 that is 2,475 of the 2,699 plan rows we hold, or 92%: every one of the 1,686 Airalo rows, covering all 94 countries — 910 read on 13 August 2026 and a further 776 on 17 August, when the dataset grew from 57 countries to 94 — every one of the 436 Nomad rows, covering all 47 of its countries, read off nomadesim.com on 18 August, 185 Saily plans across 37 of its 48 countries, read on 13, 16 and 18 August, and 168 Holafly plans across 28 of its 45 countries, read on 18 August. The United Arab Emirates was the last Airalo gap and closed on 17 August, so there is no longer an Airalo or Nomad price on this site that nobody has read off a checkout. Rows carrying a ✓ or a "checked" date are these. The date on the row is the date somebody opened that checkout, not the date the page was published.

Indicative. Everything else — extracted from our earlier country research and not yet re-read from source. That is now 224 rows: all 78 from eSIMCard, all 34 from eSIM Go, 40 of Saily's 225 and 72 of Holafly's 240. These are marked as indicative, and we are working through them provider by provider.

That distinction exists because of what we found when we started checking. Against Airalo's live pricing, our earlier figures were wrong on 91% of the plans that matched at all; we listed 92 plans Airalo does not sell, and were missing 736 that it does. We replaced that data rather than merging it, and we are saying so here rather than quietly correcting it.

Nomad went the same way on 18 August. We had been carrying 166 Nomad rows; the real catalogue is 436, and a number of the prices we held were wrong — the 50 GB plan we listed at $29 in five European countries is $45, and a Thai plan we had recorded as running 30 days runs 10, which is why its price had looked too low to be real. Pages that argued from those figures have been corrected rather than silently patched.

If a verified price is more than 90 days old, treat it as indicative and check before you buy — we say so on the page rather than hoping you won't notice.

We don't use provider affiliate feeds for pricing. Feeds tend to lag, and they occasionally carry rates that aren't available to an ordinary customer, which produces tables that look great and don't survive contact with a real checkout.

Where coverage claims come from

Three sources, in order of preference:

1. The national telecoms regulator, where one publishes coverage or quality-of-service data. Several European regulators do, and it's the best evidence available.
2. The carrier's own published coverage map, read at the stated date.
3. The eSIM provider's stated host network, cross-checked against which carrier actually holds that spectrum.

That third step matters more than it sounds. A travel eSIM is reselling somebody's network, and providers are often vague about whose. Where we can't establish the host network from a public source, the page says "not disclosed" instead of guessing.

What we can't tell you

This is the honest part, and it's the reason this page exists.

We cannot tell you what real-world speed you'll get on a given network in a given place at a given hour. Nobody can, from a desk, and sites that publish precise speed figures for forty countries did not measure them. We cannot tell you which shop in an airport terminal is open at 6am, or what the queue is like in August. Where a guide describes an airport, it's describing what the airport operator and the carriers publish, not what someone saw last Tuesday.

We also don't test customer support, activation reliability, or how a provider handles a refund. Those matter, and we'd rather say nothing than invent an impression of them.

How often pages are rechecked

Plan prices on country hub pages are rechecked monthly. Provider review pages are rechecked quarterly, or immediately when a provider announces a pricing change. Airport and city pages are reviewed twice a year, because the underlying facts move slowly.

The date on each page is the date of its last actual check, not the date of the last deploy. If we haven't looked at a page in six months, the page will tell you that.

Corrections

We get things wrong. When you find one, email us and we'll fix it and note the correction on the page. Prices that have simply moved since we checked aren't errors, but tell us anyway and we'll bring the recheck forward.

Money

Some outbound links earn a commission. This never changes which plan is marked cheapest — that's computed from the price data, not chosen — and it never changes what you pay. Several providers we recommend pay us nothing at all, and where the honest answer is "you don't need to buy anything," the guide says that. Full disclosure here.