SIM & eSIM guides

An eSIM (embedded SIM) is a small chip soldered into your phone, tablet, or watch that does the job of a physical SIM card without the plastic. Instead of swapping a card, you download a profile — the digital credentials for a mobile plan — over the internet.

The practical differences: you can install a plan in minutes without waiting for postage or visiting a store, you can keep several profiles on one device and switch between them, and you do not have to remove your home SIM to add a travel plan. Not every device supports eSIM, and support can differ by region and model — where we cannot confirm support for a specific device, we say so rather than assume it works.

Installing an eSIM usually means scanning a QR code, tapping a link from the provider’s app, or entering activation details by hand. Installing the profile is not the same as starting the plan.

The important thing to check is the activation trigger: some plans start counting validity the moment you buy or install them, while others only start when the eSIM first connects to a network in your destination. That difference decides whether you should install before you travel or wait until you land. We record the activation trigger as a fact per plan and mark it “Not publicly disclosed” when a provider does not state it clearly.

• Roaming — keep your home number and plan and use it abroad. Most convenient (calls and texts to your normal number keep working), but often the most expensive per gigabyte unless your home plan includes roaming.
• Local SIM or eSIM — a plan from an operator in the country you are visiting. Usually the cheapest data, but you get a local number and may need to show ID to register (KYC rules vary by country).
• Travel eSIM — a plan from a provider that specialises in visitors, often covering many countries from one profile. A middle ground: quick to set up and usually data-only, so it is best paired with an app for calls.

Which one wins depends on trip length, how many countries you cross, how much data you use, and whether you need a callable local number.

A plan marketed as “Unlimited” very often carries a fair-use policy: a daily or total amount of full-speed data, after which the connection is slowed (throttled) — sometimes to a speed that is fine for messaging but not for video.

When we show an unlimited plan, we display the asterisk honestly, pull out the fair-use threshold as its own fact where it is disclosed, and deliberately do notcompute a “price per GB” for it (that number would be meaningless for an uncapped plan). If the full-speed allowance is not stated, we mark it “Not publicly disclosed” instead of implying it is truly unlimited.

When you compare connectivity options, weigh:

• Total landed cost — the real price you pay in your currency, including taxes and any activation fees, not just the sticker figure.
• Real full-speed allowance — the amount of usable data before throttling, not the marketing word.
• Coverage and networks — which countries and which underlying networks the plan actually uses.
• Activation and validity — when the clock starts and how many days you get.
• Policies — top-ups, refunds, tethering/hotspot, and KYC requirements.
• Freshness — when each fact was last verified. A cheaper plan backed by a stale price is not really cheaper.

Our comparison and country pages surface these with the source and verification date behind each fact. See the methodology for how those facts are established.

Before buying an eSIM, confirm three things: your device physically supports eSIM, it is carrier-unlocked, and the profile you are buying is compatible with your model. Many phones show their eSIM status in the network or SIM settings, and some let you dial a code to view an EID (the eSIM’s hardware identifier).

Compatibility genuinely varies by model, region, and firmware, so where we cannot confirm that a specific device variant supports a plan, we mark it as unknown rather than labelling it “unsupported” — the two are not the same.