Cheap SIM cards and eSIMs for India

The paperwork is the reason to buy an eSIM

India has some of the cheapest mobile data on earth and one of the most demanding processes for getting hold of it. A local prepaid SIM requires passport and ID registration, and activation takes up to 24 hours after you hand the documents over. That is a full day of a two-week trip spent without a working phone, arriving at an airport where you will want a ride-hailing app immediately.

A travel eSIM costs several times as much per gigabyte and works the moment you land. In most countries we would call that a bad trade. In India it is the single strongest argument for buying one, and it has nothing to do with price.

What the plans cost

Airalo's Indian prices were read from its own site on 13 August 2026, Saily's from its own site on 16 August and Nomad's from its own on 18 August. The Holafly figures are indicative — held in our data, unconfirmed at the provider. eSIMCard's rows have been withdrawn: we read its own pages on 18 August 2026, found the figures we held were wrong, and could not store the real ones. See our eSIMCard page.

Saily and Airalo track each other almost exactly at 30 days: a cent apart at 5 GB, a cent apart at 10 GB, and a dollar apart at 20 GB in Airalo's favour. There is no meaningful saving to hunt for between those two, so choose on validity — Airalo's shorter windows are cheaper if you only need a week — rather than on headline price.

Nomad undercuts both at every 30-day size, and that is a change to what this page said. It used to state that twenty gigabytes was the ceiling in India, that no provider sold above it as a metered plan, and that we had checked the whole ladder before saying so. We had checked Airalo's and Saily's. Nomad's Indian prices had never been read from Nomad, and when they were, on 17 August 2026, they turned out to include a 50 GB month at $43.

That makes India's floor $0.86 a gigabyte rather than the $1.82 we published. It is still not cheap — Greek and Hungarian data go below it, and Indian residents pay a small fraction of it — but it is roughly half what this page has been telling readers the country costs at its best.

Unlimited plans, and the airport counter

Holafly sells unlimited only, at a verified $30.90 for five days rising to $111.90 for thirty. Airalo's verified unlimited is dearer at every comparable length: $31.50 for five days, $99 for thirty. Nomad is cheaper than both at the two lengths it sells, on verified prices — $18 for five days and $33 for ten, against Holafly's $22.90 and $36.90. An earlier version of this page pointed you at Holafly for unlimited; on checked prices Nomad is the better buy.

Against all of that, a tourist bundle from an Airtel or Jio kiosk costs about $7. Airport kiosks operate at IGI Delhi and BOM Mumbai, and the tourist bundles are built around a daily allowance with calls included rather than a single lump of data. The maths is not close: nothing in the eSIM table comes near it. The catch is the same catch as always — passport, ID, registration, and up to 24 hours before it works.

The sensible combination for a longer trip is both. Land on a cheap short eSIM, hand over your documents at a carrier shop when you have the time, and let the local SIM take over once it activates.

Which network you get, and what we can prove

Airalo does not publish a host network for India. Its Indian product is sold as Indicomm — a package name, not a carrier — so any page telling you Airalo runs on Airtel is filling in a blank. Saily publishes no host network either — its India page promises a connection from the country's best networks and names none of them. Nomad publishes none either — an earlier version of this page said it listed Airtel and Jio, and that was wrong; Nomad names no carrier in any country it sells in. Holafly publishes none either — the Airtel and Reliance Jio listing this page used to carry against its shorter plans came from our own data rather than from Holafly. eSIMCard does list Airtel and Jio on its own product pages, and that is the one claim in the market. Nobody has checked it against the network, so read the network stated at checkout and do not pay a premium for one you have only seen in a comparison table.

The Indian networks themselves are well documented. Airtel is the easiest to set up as a foreigner and leads on 5G speed at 187–212 Mbps. Jio leads 5G availability nationally at 69.2% and has wider rural coverage. Average 4G speeds sit around 14–17 Mbps. If you are buying at a counter and can choose, ask for Airtel by name.

Coverage thins in rural Rajasthan, in Himachal Pradesh above 3,000 m, on the Leh–Manali highway at the higher passes, and across the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands. Wi-Fi fills some of the gap: good in hotels, airports and urban cafés, patchy in small towns, and free at major railway stations through Railwire.

Full plan tables and coverage notes are on the India hub.