Saily alternatives: the app, and the limits

Last updated: 29 August 2026. Written by the RapideSIM Travel Team. Every figure below was read on the sellers' own public pages on 29 August 2026, in US dollars. The method, and what we could not check, is at the bottom of the page. We sell travel eSIMs too, so read this the way you should read any comparison written by a seller: follow the links.

The short answer

Saily and three alternatives, side by side

Price, including the row we lose badly

Three identical tiers on the four destinations we surveyed. A warning about this table before you read it: these four destinations are not a random sample, and they flatter us. See the section below on where we lose.

Sources, all read 29 August 2026: Saily United States, Japan, Turkey, Europe (35 countries); RapideSIM United States, Japan, Turkey, Europe. Compare the covered-country lists too: a "Europe" plan is not the same set of countries at every seller.

Where RapideSIM loses to Saily

• The daily allowance, by more than double. 5 GB a day against our 2 GB on every country plan we read — United States, Japan, Turkey, Spain — and 3 GB against our 2 GB on their Europe regional plan. Both plans slow to 1 Mbps afterwards, so the whole difference is how long you stay at full speed. Saily is the most generous seller on this row in our entire survey.
• Reputation, by a distance. 4.7 out of 5 from 30,148 reviews against our 2.5 from 54 (Trustpilot, 29 August 2026). We are the lowest-rated seller in this comparison.
• Japan for a month. $71.99 against our $120.99. We were the most expensive of the seven sellers we priced on that exact tier. If that is your trip, do not buy it from us.
• The price table above is a flattering sample. Four destinations chosen because everyone sells them is not a catalogue. When we priced 571 strictly comparable tiers across 96 countries against Simbye and eTravelSim on 26 August 2026 — every tier where we and at least one of them sell the same volume for the same duration — we were the more expensive on 489 of the 571, or 86 %, with a median gap of +36.1 % taken over all 571 tiers, the ones we win included. We did not run that wide survey against Saily, so we cannot tell you how the two catalogues compare beyond the twelve rows above — and neither can anyone who has not done the work.

Where we are genuinely different

No app, at any step. You buy on the site, you get a QR code and an installation page, and that is the whole product. There is nothing to download, nothing to create an account in, and nothing that stops working when a phone is reset abroad. Saily's own instructions put the app in the installation path; their optional US phone number goes further and asks for identity verification inside it. For most travellers an app is a convenience — Nomad and Airalo both use theirs to sell top-ups. For some it is one more thing to install on a phone with no connection yet, which is the exact moment an eSIM is supposed to help.

Width of the unlimited tier, not the size of it. An unlimited tier exists on 91 of our 103 products — 88 % of the catalogue, counted from our own public catalogue file on 29 August 2026. We can only compare that number with sellers who publish a machine-readable catalogue, which is why it is not in the table above: Saily, Airalo and Nomad do not, and we are not going to estimate theirs. Note what this claim is and is not: it is about how many destinations have an unlimited option, not about how much full-speed data that option gives you per day. On that second question Saily beats us, as the row above says.

Who each one is right for

Choose Saily if…

You want the largest published daily allowance and you are buying a country plan — United States, Japan, Turkey, Spain, all 5 GB when we read them. You are comfortable installing an app. You want the reassurance of a large, high review base. One thing to check yourself: if you buy their Europe regional plan rather than a single-country one, the published figure drops to 3 GB. Two more: on the Turkey and Spain pages the pre-selected "Best Choice" tier is a capped plan, and the "Unlimited plan includes" panel with the figure in it only appears once you select the unlimited option.

Choose Airalo if…

You want a middle ground: 3 GB per day at up to 20 Mbps published everywhere they sell unlimited, hotspot allowed and simply counted against that allowance, top-ups without reinstalling the eSIM, and a site in 49 languages.

Choose Nomad if…

Your trip is short and you want a low absolute price. Nomad's daily allowance is 2 GB, the same as ours, and their unlimited plans stop at 20 or 21 days in the United States and Japan and at 10 days in Turkey and Europe — a real limit, but a 10-day Europe plan at $34.00 is inexpensive for the duration (read 29 August 2026 on nomadesim.com).

Choose RapideSIM if…

You do not want an app in the path, you want tethering to a laptop or tablet written into the policy, or your destination is one where the price gap in the table above is the one that matters to you — Turkey and Europe are the clearest cases. What you are trading away is daily headroom: 2 GB a day at full speed instead of Saily's 5, published so you can check it before you buy rather than discover it on day two. For the record, 2 GB is also the lowest figure published by any of the six sellers in our wider survey that publish one — we tie Nomad and Simbye there, and we are beaten by Airalo, eTravelSim and Saily.

How this comparison was made

• Every figure was read on the seller's own public pages on 29 August 2026, except the 96-country price survey, which is ours and dates from 26 August 2026. Nothing here comes from a third-party blog, an affiliate roundup or a price aggregator.
• Prices are in US dollars, data-only, at identical tiers: same allowance, same duration. Saily displays euros by default from Europe; we switched the currency selector to USD before reading. Anyone re-checking these figures without switching will get numbers about a tenth higher.
• Saily's daily allowance is quoted per plan because it is published per plan, and the split is between country plans (5 GB on the four we read) and the Europe regional plan (3 GB) — not between continents. Any page that gives you a single figure for Saily, or that turns "3 GB in Europe" into a rule for European countries, has not read more than one of their pages. Their site refused our automated requests on 29 August 2026, so these figures come from reading the pages in a browser with the currency selector on USD.
• Destination counts are quoted as what each seller claims, never as verified inventories. Saily publishes no count at all, and a sitemap is not one.
• We did not test network speed, latency or coverage anywhere. No claim on this page is about how fast any of these eSIMs runs.
• "Not checked in this survey" means we did not verify it — never that the seller fails on it.
• Prices and review scores move. Use the links, not our numbers, when the stake is real money.

If you want to look at our plans

Now that the comparison is on the table: our unlimited and capped plans for the four destinations above are at United States, Japan, Turkey and Europe. If your destination is not one of those, the full catalogue is on rapidesim.com. Read our unlimited usage policy before buying an unlimited plan — from us or from anyone else. It is the document that tells you what the word means in practice.

Last updated 29 August 2026 by the RapideSIM Travel Team. Found a figure that has changed or that we got wrong? Tell us and we will correct it and re-date the page.