Nomad, read off its own site in 47 countries

What this page said until today, and why it was wrong

Until 17 August 2026 this page held 166 Nomad prices, none of them checked, and argued that the cheapest of them should be distrusted precisely because they were cheap. The reasoning ran that Nomad's unverified rows were the only numbers on this site undercutting a price we had actually read, and that identical figures repeating across unrelated countries looked like a template rather than a carrier deal.

We have now read the lot. All 436 Nomad prices on this site were taken off nomadesim.com, in USD, on 17 August 2026, covering every one of the 47 countries Nomad sells in. The answer is not the one the old page expected.

• Nomad is cheaper per gigabyte than Airalo — verified against verified — in 25 of the 47 countries where we now hold both. Airalo is cheaper in 20, and they tie in two.
• Thailand's 50 GB plan at $12 is real. At $0.24 a gigabyte it is the cheapest confirmed rate anywhere on this site, and the reason it looked impossible was our own error, not Nomad's.
• Our old figures were wrong in both directions, and we held barely a third of the catalogue: 166 rows against the 436 that exist.
• The repeated prices are real. Nomad does sell 50 GB over 30 days for exactly $45 in nineteen different countries. Repetition turned out to be evidence of tiering, which is what Airalo does too, rather than evidence of invention. We read it wrong.

The old argument is not just outdated, it was backwards. Cheapness was treated as a reason for suspicion when the only honest response was to go and look.

Where our old numbers were wrong

The direction matters. That $29 Scandinavian 50 GB, which the old page treated as Nomad's strongest hand and its most suspicious row at once, does not exist at any price. The real figure is $45, and at $45 Nomad is dearer than Airalo in all five of those countries: Airalo sells the same 50 GB month for $29 in Austria, $32.50 in Belgium, $35 in Denmark, $36 in Norway and $42 in Sweden.

Japan went the other way. Every Japanese figure we held was too high, which makes a cheap provider look dear — a quieter failure than an underquote and just as good at sending you to the wrong seller. We also listed three of Japan's ten plans and missed the rest, including the 50 GB month at $35 that gives Nomad the country.

And $9 for a gigabyte in Albania and Serbia, which this page called the worst rate on the site for any provider anywhere, was never real. Both countries sell 1 GB over 7 days for $4.

Verified against verified

This is the comparison the old page could not make. Both columns have now been read off the sellers' own checkouts, so the cheapest metered rate in each country can be set side by side without an asterisk.

Twenty-five countries look like that. The gap is a rounding error in France, where Nomad's $35 for 50 GB beats Airalo's $35.50, and it is more than double in Morocco, India and the Emirates.

It runs the other way in twenty. Airalo is cheaper in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States — usually because Nomad's 50 GB there is the flat $45 while Airalo prices that rung locally, and in the five of them where Nomad stops at 20 GB while Airalo sells 50. Argentina and Italy are dead heats: $47 for 20 GB and $35 for 50 GB respectively, from both sellers.

Across all 94 countries this site prices, Nomad now holds the cheapest rate we know of in 25 of them. Airalo holds it in the rest, and in 46 countries it is the only seller we hold at all.

Thailand: the price was real, the duration was not

Our Thai row said 50 GB for $12 over 30 days. Three pages flagged it as too good to be true and declined to quote it.

The plan is real and $12 is the right price. It runs 10 days, not 30. One wrong field in our own data turned a genuine offer into a suspected fabrication.

So it is the best rate on this site, with a condition attached: you have to move 50 gigabytes inside ten days to collect it. For a fortnight in Thailand it is not an option, and the 10 GB month at $10 or Airalo's 20 GB month at $18 is the sensible line. Our 20 GB Thai row at $14 was never a plan at all.

The 20 GB rung is where it wins most often

Nomad sells 20 GB over 30 days in 43 of the countries where Airalo sells the same size and window. Nomad is cheaper in 36 of them: $20 against $27.50 in Denmark, $21 against $35.50 in Greece, $20 against $31 in Hungary, $24 against $30 in Australia, $31 against $37 in Canada. Airalo takes Austria at $16 against $19, Portugal at $19 against $20 and Spain at $20 against $21, with Argentina, Belgium, Bulgaria and Poland level.

Compare the same allowance at whatever window each seller offers cheapest and the gap widens further, because Airalo's cheapest 20 GB is usually a 15-day plan while Nomad's is a month.

Unlimited is a similar picture: 163 unlimited rows across 45 countries at 3 to 30 days, and Nomad's 10-day unlimited undercuts Airalo's in 32 of the 42 countries selling both. Airalo wins that pair in Belgium, Croatia, Italy, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain and the United States.

Where it is expensive

At the bottom of the ladder. Nomad's 1 GB plans run $4 to $7, and against Airalo's 1 GB Nomad is cheaper in only two of the 46 countries where both sell one, level in nineteen and dearer in twenty-five. Its worst rates are Canada and Morocco at $7 for 1 GB over 7 days.

By country, the floors run from Thailand's $0.24 to Argentina at $2.35, then Colombia at $1.95, Egypt at $1.85, and the Emirates and South Africa at $1.45. In Argentina, Colombia, Egypt, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom the ladder stops at 20 GB, and a ladder that stops early is what sets a floor more than local costs do — the same pattern Airalo shows.

The United States is the clearest loss: Nomad's 50 GB month is $57 against Airalo's $42, and it is the one country where Nomad goes further, with 75 GB over 180 days at $89 and 100 GB over a year at $120.

The repeats are real, and they mean something else

Nineteen countries price Nomad's 50 GB month at exactly $45. Thirty-four price unlimited over 5 days at $18, thirty price unlimited over 10 days at $33, twenty-one price 3 GB at $9, twenty price 1 GB at $4.50.

The old page read that pattern as proof the numbers had been generated. It is now read off the seller's own site, so it proves something duller and more useful: Nomad prices by tier across most of its range, like Airalo, and only moves off the standard rung where a market forces it — Thailand, Croatia, Greece, Singapore and Turkey below the line, Canada and the United States above it.

The practical consequence is the same as it is for Airalo. Compare the rung you actually want, country by country. A country's headline is mostly a statement about where its ladder stops.

Networks

Nomad publishes no host network, for any of the 47 countries it sells in. Neither does Airalo, and neither does Saily.

Our old rows named operators for 39 countries. Those were extracted from generated prose, several of them carrying marketing tags like "5G capable" that no data field would contain, and they are gone. We now hold no network for any Nomad plan, because Nomad states none. If the operator you land on decides your trip, no eSIM seller here will tell you, and buying locally is the only way to know.

What we would say today

Nomad is a real competitor to Airalo on price, and in half the countries where both sell it is the cheaper one. It is strongest at 20 GB and 50 GB over a month, in Southeast Asia, Japan, southern Europe and the Balkans. It is weakest at 1 GB, in Scandinavia and the Low Countries where its flat 50 GB price loses to a locally set Airalo rung, and in North America.

The rule this site was working to — take the verified price over the cheaper unverified one — was the right rule and it produced the wrong answer here, because the checking had not been done. It has now.

Country detail: Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, Turkey, Germany, Spain, Canada, the United States and Sweden. Everything we price sits together in the cost-per-gigabyte ranking, Airalo is the other fully checked seller, and how we test explains what verified means.