Tara Singh
Connectivity abroad has changed more in the last two years than in the previous decade and eSIM has finally caught up. Physical SIMs are less essential but are better in specific scenarios than eSIMs. Roaming plans from your home carrier have also quietly improved. I tested 11 roaming plans from 11 different carriers in 12 countries in 2025. I recorded the retail price, the actual cost of the bill, the real speeds of data and the quality of service from the carrier. Here is a summary of what your options are for connectivity in 2026 and when to use each option for your trips.
We consider eSIMs the new default for trips of one to four weeks. Many providers such as Airalo, Holafly, and Saily offer easy-to-buy regional packages (e.g. Europe) that you can scan in as an eSIM within 5 minutes after activation. Prices are usually in the range of $4 to $14 per week and 1-3GB. However, there is a catch: they are usually data-only, so you’ll keep your home number for SMS and calls. We recommend disabling mobile data on your home SIM after 24 hours to avoid charges for roaming with active mobile data.
As noted above, there are three scenarios in which Physical SIMs still win out. For regions and countries where you need a local phone number to use local apps for booking restaurants, and getting in and out of taxis and car services, for example booking a car with BlaBlaCar you need to enter a local phone number to receive an SMS with a confirmation code. Second, on long stays (more than a month) the cost of replacement eSIMs will far outweigh the cost of buying local SIMs in stores for tourists. And finally, there are a number of countries in the world that have very competitive prepaid SIM plans for tourists – countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Spain, and Mexico and Morocco. In Spain, for example, I have found that 50GB of local data for 15 euros on Orange for a month long stay is far cheaper than any eSIM, in terms of cost per GB, and that is not taking into account that for a month long stay your swap out cost for eSIMs would be extreme as well. For some reason or another though Swapping out Physical SIMs for trips of this length (and even just a few weeks) causes most people a lot of stress and frustration, in large part due to 2-factor SMS codes no longer arriving while your home SIM is out of commission. In terms of that stress and that friction it really far outweighs any minor cost savings that eSIMs provide for trips of this length.
The plans that your home carrier sells for roaming are much better than they were in the past. T-Mobile’s Magenta plan now includes free 2G speed data in over 200 countries plus 5GB of high speed data in over 100 countries. This is great for the long-haul traveler as it would cost over $50 per week in many countries for a local data plan. Verizon’s TravelPass is $10 per day and covers 2G data in over 185 countries. AT&T International Day Pass is $12 per day for use in over 200 countries and includes 1GB of high speed data plus 2GB of additional data at lower speeds after that is used up. These plans are better for short trips of 3 days or less as they can be less expensive than buying local data plans for each day of your trip and they can be very convenient.
I also tested the download speed of various data plans. Airalo in Spain (pack Spain Regional) averaged 11 Mbps down. The local prepaid SIM card from Orange in Spain (500MB for 10 Euros) averaged 67 Mbps down. Even Holafly’s “unlimited” data plans (for example 1 week in Italy) have a fair-use limit of 1GB per day after which the speed is drastically reduced (0.22 Mbps on the Holafly Italy plan after 1GB). These limits are usually listed in the fine print under the section for “unlimited data”.
Finally after all of this experience I have a Playbook. For less than 3 weeks buy an eSIM before you depart, wait 24 hours for your home SIM to start incurring roaming charges and then switch to eSIM data only. For more than 3 weeks in a single country go to a local carrier shop on the second day of your trip and buy a local prepaid SIM. For long international trips from the USA use your T-Mobile Magenta Max plan for 80% of your international data needs. Use a password manager to store your SIM credentials.
The experience that I had a while back with eSIMs not connecting when crossing borders that were within the region for which the customer had purchased a package, has to hold true for eSIMs for international travel. For example, while Saily’s Caucasus package did work in Georgia and Armenia, it didn’t work in Azerbaijan, even though that country is within the region for which the package was purchased. It was only when I went into a local kiosk and purchased a local SIM did I have service again.
Two questions that I’m often asked. For one, how do you compare the option of purchasing an eSIM against your own carrier’s roaming add-on plan, and how does that relate to cost. The answer is simple, if your own roaming add-on costs less than $20 per day for your two week trip, then it’s probably more convenient to stick with your own roaming add-on plan. But for trips longer than two weeks, it’s generally cheaper to use an eSIM for data. Second, how many different eSIM providers can you actually use at the same time, and does it cost more? For data, I generally recommend to use only one provider per region (e.g. for Europe, I recommend to use only one provider per country), but it’s absolutely fine to use different providers for different regions. For example, I’d typically use two different eSIMs for international trips, one for data, and one as a secondary/backup plan in case my primary plan runs out of data. But in terms of costs, most phones support multiple different plans, and as long as you only activate the plans that you’re actually going to use, the combined monthly cost should be no more than $25 per month for most travelers.
Markets and provide misleading information about their plans. ESIM providers misrepresent the countries in which you will have full access to your data plan. Your carrier misrepresents the cost of roaming and additional fees once you’ve exceeded a certain amount of data, minutes, or texts. Local SIM shops at airports usually sell you the exact same plan you can get two blocks down from the airport for half the price, usually with a lot of extra stuff you don’t need. None of this is exotic, it can be thwarted with a little old-fashioned research, attention to terms and country coverage lists, and having a bit of patience and walking down the street a couple of blocks.
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