eSIM Market Insights by Simsurf
Pascal Briod
Guide
Byron Mühlberg
Reviewer
Simsurf collects data about eSIM plans to power an interactive comparison tool. Based on the data from 19 providers and more than 21,000 eSIM plans, this report explores some key insights about the eSIM market:
- Travel eSIMs are widely available and generally affordable
- Europe is where travel eSIMs are the cheapest, Africa the most expensive
- The cheapest eSIM provider depends a lot on the destination and data usage profile
Introducing our Simsurf Index
As a comparison website, we're focused on highlighting which eSIM plan is the cheapest for a given country, trip duration and data usage. In this macro analysis, we take a similar approach of looking at the cheapest options for different scenarios, rather than looking at the average or median cost of eSIMs in a given country.
We believe this is a more robust way to compare the cost of travel eSIMs between countries and use cases.
To build our Simsurf Index, we look at the cost of the cheapest eSIM plan for a combination of four trip duration
- 3 days
- 1 week
- 2 weeks
- 1 month
And four data usage profile
- Light daily use (0.2 GB per day)
- Moderate daily use (0.4G per day)
- Heavy daily use (2 GB per day)
- Unlimited (or when unlimited plans are not available, min 10GB per day)
This gives us 16 scenarios, for which we query our database of 21,000 eSIMs plans to find which one is the cheapest. We then average those 16 values to calculate the Simsurf index of a country.
The cost of surfing the web around the world
With a Simsurf Index of $1.27 (the median cost of surfing the web for 1 day), Europe is where travel eSIMs are the most affordable. For low daily data usage, the median cost per day drops to $0.25, and you can get unlimited data for less than $2.89 per day in half of the countries in Europe.
eSIMs are notably more expensive in North America (Canada and the US) than in Europe, especially for low data usage scenarios ($0.50 versus $0.25).
Africa is the region where the cost of surfing the web with travel eSIMs is the most expensive. In most African countries (with the exception of some more touristic places like Egypt or Tunisia), travellers would be better off buying a physical SIM card from a local carrier.
Islands nations across the world tend to be on the more expensive side as well, due to the higher cost of building mobile data infrastructure in those regions.
Median cost of surfing the web for 1 day
Top 10 cheapest countries for travel eSIM
The cheapest country in the world for travel eSIM is Thailand, with a Simsurf Index of $1.05. You can get plans for 10GB for less than $10, or two-weeks unlimited data for $25 (less if you have a coupon).
Very close to Thailand
Africa is the region where the cost of surfing the web with travel eSIMs is the most expensive. In most African countries (with the exception of some more touristic places like Egypt or Tunisia), travellers would be better off buying a physical SIM card from a local carrier.
Islands nations across the world tend to be on the more expensive side as well, due to the higher cost of building mobile data infrastructure in those regions.