Travel eSIM comparison 2026: eight sellers, one table
Last updated: 29 August 2026. Written by the RapideSIM Travel Team. Eight sellers, read on their own public pages on 29 August 2026, in US dollars. We are one of the eight, so this is a seller's comparison: every figure carries the page it came from and the date it was read, the tiers where we finish last are in the tables rather than removed from them, and where we could not verify something the cell says so instead of guessing.
The short answer
There is no best travel eSIM, because the eight sellers below are not selling the same product under the same word. If you want the most full-speed data per day on an unlimited plan, that is Saily (5 GB/day on the country plans we read — United States, Japan, Turkey, Spain; 3 GB/day on their Europe regional plan, which is not the same product as a European country plan). If you want the strongest public record, that is Holafly (4.7 out of 5, 108,922 reviews) — and one flat price wherever you go. If you want the largest brand with a middle-of-the-road daily allowance, that is Airalo (3 GB/day, 49 site languages).
If you want the cheapest month of unlimited data, it is Simbye in the United States and Japan ($46.95 and $64.95) and eTravelSim in Turkey and Europe ($45.00 and $39.00) — and read the cautions attached to each of them below. If your trip is short, Nomad is keenly priced inside its 10 to 21-day ceiling. RapideSIM — us — is worth a look if you want an unlimited option on a destination where the big names do not offer one, and if you would rather not install an app: an unlimited tier exists on 91 of our 103 products. Our daily allowance, 2 GB, is the lowest in this table — tied at the bottom with Nomad and Simbye, who publish the same figure — and our Trustpilot score is the lowest of all eight. Both facts are in the tables.
How this comparison was made
- Read on the sellers' own public pages on 29 August 2026. Nothing here comes from a third-party blog, an affiliate roundup, a price aggregator or a press release.
- Identical tiers only. Prices are in US dollars for data-only plans at three tiers that most of these sellers offer: unlimited for 7 days, 5 GB for 30 days, unlimited for 30 days. Where a seller does not sell that exact tier, the cell says so; we never substituted a nearby plan to fill a gap.
- Currency. Some sites default to euros in Europe. We switched every currency selector to USD before reading. If you re-check and get numbers about a tenth different, check the currency first.
- One destination, several products. Some sellers list several competing products for the same country — eTravelSim has at least five for the United States, and Airalo's Europe page sells both a $71 and a $159 unlimited 30-day plan from different networks. We priced the main product on the destination page and flag the alternative in a note. Any sentence of the form “seller X's price for country Y is Z” is unreliable by construction, ours included.
- No network testing. We ran no speed, latency or coverage tests. You will find no claim on this page about who has the best network, because we have no measurement that would support one.
- What we could not count. Only three of these eight publish a machine-readable catalogue. Where a figure could not be established, the table says “not established”, which means we did not verify it — not that the seller fails on it.
Table 1 — what each seller publishes about its own limits
| Seller | Published daily allowance on unlimited plans | Hotspot / tethering | App required to install | Top-up without reinstalling | Site languages | Public Trustpilot score (29 Aug 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saily | 5 GB/day then 1 Mbps on the country plans read (US, Japan, Turkey, Spain); 3 GB/day then 1 Mbps on the Europe regional plan only | Not established | Yes — “download the Saily app. Set up the eSIM from your device by following instructions in the app” | Not established | 14 | 4.7 — 30,148 reviews |
| eTravelSim | 4 GB/day then 1 Mbps. A separate “Truly Unlimited Data” range advertises no cap instead. | No on standard unlimited plans (“these plans do not support mobile hotspot usage”); allowed on the separate premium range | Not established (app offered) | Yes — dedicated recharge products | 10 | 3.9 — 765 reviews |
| Airalo | 3 GB/day at up to 20 Mbps then 1 Mbps, reset every 24 hours | Yes, counted against the daily allowance | Not established (app offered) | Yes — “without reinstalling or switching eSIMs” | 49 | 4.1 — 40,862 reviews |
| RapideSIM (us) | 2 GB every 24 hours then 1 Mbps, reset every 24 hours — joint lowest in this table | Yes to a laptop or tablet; using the eSIM as a router for several machines is excluded | No app exists — QR code and instructions by email | Yes — "no need to install a new one… the data is added to your existing eSIM within seconds" | 6 | 2.5 — 54 reviews. The lowest score here. |
| Nomad | 2 GB/day at 4G/5G then 1 Mbps | Yes — “Nomad's eSIMs support tethering / hotspot” | Not established (app offered) | Yes — add-on plans tied to the main eSIM | 14 | 4.3 — 42,417 reviews |
| Holafly | No figure published. The terms point to the network operator's fair use policy without giving a number. | Two answers on their own site: “Unlimited hotspot” on the home page card, but “Share 1 GB of data per day… Your total sharable data depends on the length of your plan (for example, a 7-day plan includes 7 GB)” on every destination page we opened — pooled over the plan rather than reset daily | Not established (app offered; eSIM details consulted in the app) | Not applicable — their selling point is “no more top-ups” | 18 | 4.7 — 108,922 reviews |
| Yesim | No figure published. Their help centre states “Yesim itself does not enforce a Fair Usage Policy (FUP)”; the limit depends on the partner network and is not published. | Yes — “personal hotspot/tethering is available on most Yesim plans” | Their FAQ places unlimited plans in the Internet section of the Yesim app | Varies by plan; some plan pages state “Balance top-up: Not available” | 6 (help centre) | See the note under this table — Trustpilot displays no score for this company |
| Simbye | 2 GB/day — “Unlimited plans include a fair use policy of 2GB high-speed data per day, after which speeds are reduced until the next 24-hour cycle”. The reduced speed itself is not given a figure. | Yes — “Most Simbye eSIMs support hotspot/tethering”, and “hotspot usage counts toward your data package limit” | Not established (app offered) | Yes — “no second eSIM and no new QR code” | 13 | 3.9 — 105 reviews |
The Yesim row, in Trustpilot's own words. On 29 August 2026, the Yesim page on Trustpilot displayed, in place of a score: “This company's rating is unavailable due to a breach of our guidelines”, alongside 2,941 reviews. We quote that sentence exactly and link to the page so you can read it yourself — trustpilot.com/review/yesim.app. We do not know what lies behind it, we make no accusation, and the situation may have changed since we read it. Check the page before drawing any conclusion.
Table 2 — the same three plans, priced at all eight sellers
Same allowance, same duration, same data-only format, four destinations everyone sells. We are the cheapest on five of the twelve destination-and-tier combinations below, and the dearest on one of them — Japan, unlimited for 30 days. That losing line is in the table, not summarised away.
Unlimited data, 7 days
| Seller | United States | Japan | Turkey | Europe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RapideSIM | $18.49 — cheapest | $28.99 — second dearest of the eight | $15.99 — cheapest | $16.49 — cheapest |
| Simbye | $18.95 | $18.95 | $18.95 | $23.95 |
| eTravelSim | $21.00 | $19.99 | $17.00 | $17.00 |
| Yesim | $24.36 | $29.40 — dearest of the eight | $27.72 | $25.20 |
| Nomad | $23.00 | $25.00 | No 7-day plan (5 or 10 days only) | No 7-day plan (5 or 10 days only) |
| Saily | $24.99 | $26.99 | $26.99 | $26.99 |
| Airalo | $25.00 | $27.00 | $24.50 | $27.00 |
| Holafly | $27.50 | $27.50 | $27.50 | $27.50 |
5 GB of data, 30 days
| Seller | United States | Japan | Turkey | Europe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RapideSIM | $10.99 | $7.49 — cheapest | $5.49 — cheapest | $9.99 |
| eTravelSim | $10.00 | $7.99 | $6.25 | $6.50 |
| Yesim | $10.80 | $10.56 | $10.80 | $11.52 |
| Nomad | $16.00 | $10.00 | $9.00 | $17.50 |
| Simbye | $11.95 | $11.95 | $9.95 | Not sold — their Europe plan starts at 20 GB |
| Airalo | $13.50 | $11.00 | $10.00 | $19.50 |
| Saily | $13.99 | $10.99 | $9.99 | $19.49 |
| Holafly | Not sold on the four product pages we checked — unlimited only, billed per day | |||
Unlimited data, 30 days
| Seller | United States | Japan | Turkey | Europe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RapideSIM | $61.99 | $120.99 — the dearest of the seven that sell this plan in Japan, 1.9 times the cheapest ($64.95, Simbye) | $59.99 | $59.99 |
| Yesim | $54.00 | $66.00 | $68.40 | $67.20 |
| Simbye | $46.95 | $64.95 | $46.95 | Not sold — their Europe plan stops at 15 days |
| eTravelSim | $59.00 | $69.99 | $45.00 | $39.00 |
| Airalo | $68.00 | $69.00 | $69.00 | $71.00 |
| Saily | $67.99 | $71.99 | $71.99 | $71.99 |
| Holafly | $73.90 | $73.90 | $73.90 | $73.90 |
| Nomad | No 30-day unlimited plan — Nomad caps at 20 days (US, $52), 21 days (Japan, $49) and 10 days (Turkey $28, Europe $34) | |||
Three cautions on the price tables. Yesim shows a sale price next to a higher struck-through price — Japan 5 GB/30 days was $10.56 against a struck-through $22.20. We list the price you actually pay, and we mention this because comparing our price to someone's struck-through price is the trick these pages exist to avoid. A separate warning on the Yesim column: an earlier reading of the same URLs returned figures exactly 1.2 times lower on every line, struck-through prices included. We could not establish the cause, so we publish what the page showed us on 29 August 2026, with the currency selector set to "$, USD", and flag that your own screen may differ. Airalo's Europe page sells two different unlimited 30-day plans, $71.00 (Eurolink) and $159.00 (Discover), covering different territories; we quote the first and name it. Nomad lists two Europe plans at 5 GB/30 days, $17.50 and $18.00, from different networks; we quote the cheaper.
Where we finish last
A comparison written by a seller is worth nothing if the seller wins every row. Here is the full list of places where this table goes against us.
- Japan, unlimited for 30 days: $120.99. Last of the seven sellers offering it, against $64.95 at Simbye, $66.00 at Yesim and $69.00 at Airalo. There is no reading of that number that flatters us. It is under review; until it changes, do not buy a month of unlimited data in Japan from us.
- Japan, unlimited for 7 days: $28.99. Second dearest of the eight; only Yesim, at $29.40, is higher. Simbye sells the same week for $18.95.
- Daily allowance: 2 GB. The lowest in this table, tied at the bottom with Nomad and Simbye, who publish exactly the same figure — against 3 GB at Airalo, 4 GB at eTravelSim and up to 5 GB at Saily. Six of these eight sellers publish a number; ours is joint last of the six. If you measure unlimited plans by full-speed data per day, three of these sellers give you more than we do and two match us.
- Trustpilot: 2.5 out of 5 from 54 reviews. The lowest score of the eight, and the smallest review base of the eight. Fifty-four reviews is thin, but a thin base does not make a bad score irrelevant, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
- Prices in general. The four destinations above are not representative. In a wider survey we ran on 26 August 2026 — 571 strictly comparable tiers across 96 countries, meaning every tier where we and at least one of Simbye and eTravelSim sell the same volume for the same duration — we were more expensive than the cheaper of those two on 489 of the 571, or 86 %. Across all 571 tiers, the ones we win included, the median gap is +36.1 %. Anyone showing you four destinations, us included, is showing you a sample.
- Size and languages. 103 products and 6 site languages, against catalogues claiming 200+ destinations and up to 49 languages.
- No app. No push notifications, no in-app account, no in-app top-up. That suits some travellers and not others; it is a limitation before it is a feature.
Where we do come out ahead, and how far that goes
One measurable advantage, stated with its limits. An unlimited tier exists on 91 of our 103 products — 88 % — against 141 of eTravelSim's 227 (62 %) and 56 of Simbye's 170 (33 %). A product counts if the word "unlimited" appears in its title or in any of its variant titles; that is the whole rule, and all three catalogues are public JSON you can re-count in a minute. If your destination is one where the big catalogues sell capped data only, the odds of finding an unlimited option are better with us.
That comparison holds against those two sellers and nobody else. eTravelSim, Simbye and RapideSIM all run on Shopify and publish a complete machine-readable catalogue, so all three can be counted the same way in a few seconds. Airalo, Holafly, Saily, Nomad and Yesim do not, and counting them honestly would mean loading two hundred-odd product pages each. So the 88 % is breadth, measured against two of the seven others, and it says nothing about how much data you get per day — where we are at the bottom of this table. Both things are true at once, and a comparison that gave you only the first one would be the kind of page this one is trying not to be.
Who each seller is right for
Holafly
Long stays in expensive places, and travellers who want to pay once and stop thinking. One flat price everywhere we checked, and the strongest public record here. The trade-off: no daily figure published anywhere, and no capped plan on the four pages we looked at, so light users pay the unlimited price.
Saily
Heavy users. The largest published daily allowance in this table, and a 4.7 record from 30,148 reviews. The trade-off is the install: their instructions run through the Saily app.
Airalo
The default choice, and a reasonable one. Middle-of-the-table daily allowance with tethering explicitly counted against it, top-ups without reinstalling, 49 site languages, 40,862 reviews. Rarely the cheapest at any tier above.
Nomad
Short trips. Keen prices inside a 10 to 21-day ceiling, a 4.3 record from 42,417 reviews, and the same 2 GB daily allowance we publish. If your trip is longer than the ceiling, you are buying twice.
eTravelSim
The cheapest long unlimited plans in this table on several destinations, and a published 4 GB daily allowance. One thing to read first: their standard unlimited plans state that they “do not support mobile hotspot usage” (their eSIM FAQ), while a product page for the same kind of plan lists “Tethering / Hotspot: Supported” — two answers in one catalogue. On balance checking they now offer both a “View Balance” button in the account section and an email to support, so that is no longer the gap it was when we first read the page.
Yesim
Durations cut to the exact day, from 1 to 30 — the only seller in this table that does it, and the reason to look at them. Not, however, the cheapest: on a month of unlimited data they are beaten on all four destinations, by Simbye in the United States and Japan and by eTravelSim in Turkey and Europe, and their 7-day Japan plan is the dearest of the eight. Two things to check yourself before buying: their help centre publishes no daily figure, and Trustpilot currently displays no score for the company (see the note under Table 1).
Simbye
The cheapest seller in this survey more often than any other. $18.95 for a 7-day unlimited plan on three of the four destinations, and the cheapest month of unlimited data in both the United States ($46.95) and Japan ($64.95). They publish a daily allowance, and it is the same 2 GB we publish. Against that: a small public record (105 reviews), an unlimited tier on 33 % of the catalogue, no figure at all for the speed you drop to after the 2 GB, and no Europe plan below 20 GB or beyond 15 days.
RapideSIM
Us. Worth a look if your destination is one where unlimited is hard to find, if you want to install from a QR code without putting an app on the phone, if you want to check your balance and top up by order number without reinstalling anything, or if you are buying a 7-day plan for the United States, Turkey or Europe, where our prices led this table. Not the right choice if you want the most data per day, the strongest review record, or a month of unlimited data in Japan.
How to read any eSIM comparison, including this one
- Check the date. Prices and review scores move weekly. Two sellers in this survey changed review counts in the three days before we published. A comparison page with no visible date, or no author, is telling you something.
- Check whether the tiers really match. “Unlimited 7 days” at one seller and “unlimited 10 days” at another are not the same purchase, and the difference is usually placed to flatter whoever wrote the page.
- Read the daily allowance before the word “unlimited”. It is the number that decides what you actually get: six of the eight sellers here publish a figure, three of them higher than ours, two of them equal to ours, and two publish none at all.
- Check hotspot rules if you carry a laptop. One seller in this table forbids it on its cheaper unlimited plans and allows it on the dearer ones.
- Count how many losing rows the page admits. If a seller's comparison has none, it is an advertisement with a table in it.
Sources
All read on 29 August 2026 unless stated. Daily allowances and policies: saily.com/esim-japan, saily.com/esim-spain, saily.com/esim-europe, simbye.com/pages/faq, etravelsim.com/products/turkey-esim, etravelsim.com/pages/faq-for-esim, etravelsim.com “Truly Unlimited Data”, airalo.com unlimited packages, nomadesim.com/japan-eSIM, holafly.com terms, holafly.com/esim-japan (hotspot), help.yesim.tech unlimited data plans policy, our own usage policy. Catalogues: rapidesim.com, etravelsim.com, simbye.com, nomadesim.com plan sitemap, holafly.com product sitemap. Prices: the destination product pages of each seller — United States, Japan, Turkey and Europe — linked from the tables above. Review scores: the Trustpilot page of each seller, read 29 August 2026. The wider price survey quoted in “Where we finish last” was run on 26 August 2026 across 571 strictly comparable tiers in 96 countries; the median gap quoted there is the median over all 571 tiers, not over the subset we lose.
If you want to look at our plans
The four destinations priced above are United States, Japan, Turkey and Europe. The full catalogue — 103 plans — is on rapidesim.com. Whichever of these eight you choose, read that seller's unlimited usage policy before paying. Ours is at rapidesim.com/pages/unlimited-usage-policy-1.
Last updated 29 August 2026 by the RapideSIM Travel Team. We re-read every figure on this page when we update it, and we date it the day we do. Found a figure that has changed, or one we got wrong? Tell us and we will correct it and re-date the page.