Saily in Romania: cheapest to 5GB, and it does sell 20GB after all

The range

Five plans, all capped, all with hotspot tethering supported.

All five were read off Saily's own site on 18 August 2026. Four of the five moved, all downward, and the fifth is a plan this page stated twice that Saily did not sell. Airalo's comparison prices were read on 13 August 2026 and Nomad's on 17 August 2026.

No calls or SMS are included, which is standard for a travel eSIM and rarely matters — messaging apps run over data. No passport or ID is needed to buy.

Where Saily wins

One place, but it is a real one: the cheapest week of data in Romania.

Airalo's entry plan is $4.00 and lasts three days. Saily's is $3.99 and lasts seven. The penny is irrelevant; the four extra days are not. For a long weekend in Bucharest or a short trip to Brașov where you need maps, messaging and a boarding pass and nothing else, $3.99 is the correct spend in this country and no provider we hold beats it.

That is also the ceiling of the argument. Buy a second gigabyte and the case collapses.

Where it loses

At 10GB and 20GB, where Nomad prices aggressively.

Nomad's 20GB month at $20 is the row that settles a long stay: eight dollars under Saily for the same allowance and the same window, and $1.00 a gigabyte against Saily's $1.40. At 10GB the gap is two dollars the same way.

Everywhere else Saily wins, and at 3GB and 5GB it wins outright rather than on validity: $7.99 against Airalo's $8 for a plan that lasts thirty days instead of seven, and $10.99 against Airalo's $11 over the identical window.

This page previously said Saily was "the most expensive of the three capped providers" at 5GB and 10GB, and that above 10GB it had nothing at all. The first was wrong at 5GB and the second was wrong outright — both because the Saily prices behind them were our own estimates rather than Saily's.

The network line, and why we won't lean on it

Our data used to record Orange and Vodafone against exactly one Saily plan — the $3.99 one — and nothing at all against the rest. That inconsistency was itself the clue. The entry was ours rather than Saily's: its country pages name no operator, in Romania or in any market it sells, so there is no host network here to weigh.

No travel eSIM in Romania gives you a checkable answer on this, so if the specific carrier matters to your trip, the only way to control it is a physical local SIM from Orange Romania, Vodafone Romania, Digi or Telekom Romania. That runs about $13 at the airport and registration needs a passport or ID card at the counter.

Coverage, and the question to ask first

The gaps are geographic and provider-agnostic: remote Carpathian trails above roughly 1,600 metres, the Danube Delta's reed channels once you are on the water away from the villages, and very remote rural settlements in the Moldova region. Cities and main roads are fine on any of these plans.

Before any of it, check your own contract. Romania is an EU member, so an EU or EEA home plan should work at domestic rates under roam-like-at-home, and a lot of European visitors should buy nothing at all.

Verdict

Buy Saily in Romania if you want one gigabyte for a week. $3.99 is the floor and the seven-day window makes it more useful than Airalo's three-day plan at the same money.

Buy it at 3GB and 5GB too, where it is now the cheapest thirty-day plan in the country on prices everyone concerned has had read at source.

Above that, go to Nomad: $16 at 10GB, $20 at 20GB and $45 for 50GB, which at $0.90 a gigabyte is the cheapest data in Romania. For unlimited it is Nomad from $11 for three days, or Airalo from $11.50 to $69; Holafly's verified Romanian ladder runs $11.90 to $73.90 and forbids tethering. The full comparison is on the Romania hub.