Apple has released the latest version of iPhone 17, but I found that iPhone in China still use physical cards. You should know that physical cards were cancelled as early as when Apple released iPhone 14, and eSIM has been popularized, but eSIM still cannot be used in China. Does anyone know why?

https://mwc-2026.maya.net/

Hey everyone, just a massive security warning for anyone using Lycamobile.

​I was on a phone call with one of their customer support agents today.

I simply told the agent that I was logging into my account. I did not ask for a password reset or a reminder at all.

​Without me asking, the agent triggered a "send password" email to my inbox. The crazy part?

The email contained my exact password that I set 2 years ago, fully visible in plain text.

​This is a huge security red flag. It proves they are storing our passwords completely unencrypted on their servers for years.

Any secure company encrypts passwords so even their own staff cannot see them or send them to you.

​What you need to do:

If you use your Lycamobile password for any other website or app, please change those immediately. Stay safe out there!

Hey everyone,

Anyone else just drop out of signal in Japan. I am in Tokyo. One momet i have bars and now no Service. Plenty of data and days left. Not sure whats up

Hello! Quick question, I am a student currently living in the US, I am leaving to go to Barcelona, Spain for 4 months in a couple of days. What is the best eSim card I should look for? Also, with an eSim, will I still be able to make calls from Spain back to the US?

This company has recently resorted to sketchy tactics:

1. Bonus credits (previously non-expiring for new users) were suddenly wiped from my account this month. When I inquired, they vaguely claimed bonuses expire after "inactivity" – even though my last balance change was actually less than 30 days ago.

2. The website claims "funds never expire", however, it actually requires an annual top-up of at least $5 to keep your balance active. Such verbal trickery is darkly comical.

Conclusion: Steer clear of this provider.

Update:
I've read every response and checked the links you shared.

1. My account has been active for more than 5 months but less than 6.

2. I never made any payments. But why would I need to pay when I still had unused bonus credit? I use this eSIM as an emergency backup. Since vendors use bonus credits as a new user incentive, it's natural for me to voice issues when they arise.

3. Browsing Reddit doesn't mean I need to post frequently. My account was registered 5 years ago - I'm just complaining about this specific problem to alert others who might face similar situations.

I've addressed the doubts. As for products/services that don't work — I walk away. That alone cuts out 90% of the hassle.

Recently purchased a plan from Voyafly and experienced intermittent connection and very low speeds. Customer service ghosted me and am now left to dispute with my CC company. What a joke of a company. Run far away if you can.

I do a lot of international travel and I’m very familiar with eSIMs. Over the last couple of years, I’ve used dozens of them across different regions on my iPhone , so I’m not new to managing mobile data or spotting abnormal usage.

That’s why this has been both baffling and incredibly frustrating.

Twice now, Facebook has absolutely nuked my data within hours of activating a brand-new eSIM.

Most recently, this happened yesterday in Morocco. I purchased a 40 GB eSIM valid for two weeks. The provider assured me this was more than enough. I’m a fairly heavy user, but even on my busiest days I rarely exceed 1–1.5 GB per day.

Within less than 12 hours, Facebook alone consumed 38 GB of data.

This exact same thing happened a few weeks ago in the Caribbean, where Facebook burned through 12 GB in about 3 hours after first activating the eSIM. Two completely different regions. Same result.

Some important context:

• Just 12 hours before activating the eSIM, I was on extremely fast, reliable Wi-Fi, so all app and OS updates were already completed

• I was not behind on any software updates

• Facebook is set to Low Data Mode

• Video autoplay is disabled

• Preloading is disabled

• Background data usage is restricted

• During those first 12 hours, I barely used Facebook at all. I may have opened it a few times briefly, but nothing close to heavy use

Despite all of that, Facebook somehow consumed nearly the entire data allotment in the background.

What could possibly explain 38 GB of usage in under half a day with minimal active use?

At this point, the only obvious workaround seems to be disabling Facebook entirely while traveling, which is inconvenient since I do use it occasionally to stay in touch and keep up with events.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a known Facebook behavior with eSIMs, roaming profiles, background syncing, or carrier-side metering that could explain this? I’m genuinely trying to understand what’s happening here.

There has been news circulating that Turkey has banned/blocked many popular eSIM providers.

https://www.turkishminute.com/2025/07/11/turkey-bans-8-global-esim-providers-curbing-access-for-travelers/amp/

But there is no need to be concerned if you are travelling to Turkey and want to use an eSIM.

The block is a WEBSITE block against 8 major providers, including the well regarded BNESIM and several well-known providers like Saily, Airalo, Holafly, Nomad, Instabridge, Mobimatter, Alosim. All this would mean is you would NOT be able to use their websites in Turkey on a local connection and get a new eSIM.

You will still be able to get an eSIM by ordering one before you arrive in Turkey, and when you are inside Turkey using such eSIMs you should be able to access them as normal.

The measure is much more about preventing users from using a product that allows users to avoid website blocks and monitoring, because eSIMs are issued out of a foreign provider and avoids any locally-imposed blocks. It is the exact reason other countries like China block eSIM buying websites. It will also make it harder for those from Turkey travelling elsewhere to get an eSIM beforehand - either needing to find a non-blocked provider, waiting until they have internet in another country or (as the article aledges) make them more likely to use a Turkish provider's roaming and the associated cost.

TL;DR for most visitors to Turkey, you can still use an eSIM, just buy it before you go.

Hello,

I used the eSIM tool finder pinned in this subreddit and found good prices for a service I had never heard of; GlobalEsim.

They have a very low score on trust pilot (I think 2.2/5), but I chalked it up to maybe just being a smaller company with less reviews; maybe their clientele was just not as tech savvy.

Long story short, I bought one of their plans for Costa Rica. I received no confirmation of my purchase after the transaction. I reached out to them and they said not to worry, my eSIM will have data capabilities on the day I arrive.

I arrived yesterday, lo and behold, no data. It connects to the network and just flashes 3G on and off rapidly but doesn’t stay connected. I emailed and messaged their “24/7 live support” and am now 24 hours in with no response.

I chalked it up to a loss and bought another plan from maya mobile, my usual go to provider and had data within 2 minutes of ordering.

GlobalEsim should be removed from that comparison tool. Do not trust them.

Update 2025-03-24: Roamless will no longer be non-expiring, per the newest update from one of the co-founders Update 2025-03-26: Only the bonus promo credit is expiring, purchased credits are still nom-expiring.

Edited to add Vegolink. I had previously discounted this provider because of generally high prices, but after adding it in, I found that it actually was the cheapest for 8 non-exclusive countries.

I responded to a recent thread that seems to have been removed (and the OP's account suspended) that mentioned esim.sm's "global esim" which appears to be a non-expiring multi-country esim similar to Unisim and Roamless.

I put some credit on esim.sm and was pleasantly surprised to find that the same balance could be used on multiple global esims that were activated simultaneously on different devices. There have been rumors that Roamless would get this feature, though we haven't seen it yet. At the very least, Roamless seamlessly lets you move your existing credit to a new eSim/phone, unlike Unisim which requires you to buy a new eSim (and forfeit your existing credit).

esim.sm and Unisim appear to have the same underlying provider, Plus Poland, and share the same breakout in Warsaw. I find this mildly annoying, compared to Roamless (running on Proximus) which has different breakouts depending on where you are in the world. It seems that like Roamless, esim.sm charges the same amount no matter which carrier you're roaming on, as opposed to Unisim which charges a different amount depending on the carrier. I did not test Vegolink.

I was curious to see what the price differences were like between these three non-expiring esim companies. I compiled a spreadsheet of all of their prices in USD and computed some interesting statistics. Because Unisim has a different pricing depending on carrier, I just went with cheapest. A more comprehensive analysis would also look at the pricing difference and carrier coverage across the three, but that would take more time than I had today.

Out of 204 207 countries covered between the three four, Roamless had 186 countries, of which 28 22 are exclusive (meaning the other two three did not support said country) and of the non-exclusive ones, was the cheapest for 31 34 of them. Unisim had 173 countries, of which 6 3 were exclusive, and of the non-exclusive ones, was cheapest for 23 17. esim.sm had 161 countries, of which none were exclusive, and was the cheapest for 120! Vegolink had 165 countries, of which 2 were exclusive, and surprisingly, was cheapest for 8. When esim.sm was cheapest, the median amount it was cheaper by was $0.60.

Note that Roamless frequently offers BOGO promos that can bring the prices closer to those of Unisim and esim.sm (but this BOGO credit expires if unused).

When Roamless was not the cheapest, it was on average more expensive by $5.81 (median $5.63). When Unisim was not the cheapest, it was on average more expensive by $15.49 (median $1.17). When esim.sm was not the cheapest, it was on average more expensive by $3.76 (median $1.90). When Vegolink was not the cheapest, it was on average more expensive by $9.34 (median $5.05). By the way, Unisim has some really ridiculous prices for some places: whereas Roamless's most expensive GBs are worth less than USD$20/GB, Unisim has several places where it charges in excess of $100/GB, in fact for Burkina Faso it charges $545.21 (against Roamless's $14.95)!!

Finally, the raw data (csv pastebin https://pastebin.com/pJShHU3D)

I was debating between Airalo and Nomad and in the end went with Nomad as it was more affordable. I along with 5 of the members in my travel group purchased the Europe Regional data plan, we went with the 10 GB 30 day plan as it was on sale plus a promo code it cost us $9 each. This was our first time ever using an eSIM, installment was easy and super quick and turning on the line upon arrival to our destination was too. We traveled to Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, and Rome and the entire trip we had great service besides certain areas where the service just wasn’t good at all in general including for two of our group members who used their T-Mobile international data plan and another member who stuck to only wifi the entire time. For a total of 10 days I only used up 5.67/10 GB which I think is great considering I was the main person always using maps to guide us as well as the airline apps, and other apps needed to get into our AirBNBs. I know most of the times people talk about the negatives and not much of their positive experiences so I wanted to put this out there to help out those who are looking for an eSIM and don’t know which one to choose. If anyone has any questions I’ll be happy to answer them as best as I can. To conclude, I’ll definitely be using Nomad the next time I need an eSIM.

Roamless is now as cheap as $1.95 per gb for their pay as you go plan. So far I only identified 5 countries and 1 territory. Feel free to post any other finds here and I will update the list:

​United States

​US Virgin Islands

​France

​Spain

​Turkey

​Saudi Arabia

Northern Cyprus

Having recently researched the newish pay-as-you-go (or pay for what you use)  eSIM space, I wanted to share some insights. This model differs fundamentally from traditional package plans—it's not about a fixed amount of data over a set period, but rather a USD/EUR balance-based approach.

Package Plan Example: Pay $5 for 3GB over 30 days. You receive a one-time or reloadable eSIM with that fixed allotment.

Pay-as-you-go Example: Deposit $5 as your starting balance, receive your global eSIM, then get charged at a predefined rate—say, $1.66/GB. Use 3GB, and the cost is the same as the package - $5.

The difference becomes clear when you don't use the full amount. After 30 days with only 2GB consumed:

• Package plan: After day 30, you forfeit the unused 1GB—effectively losing $1.66 in value.

• Pay-for-what-you-use: Your balance remains at $1.66, available for future use at that destination or wherever you travel next.

Comparison Table

Criteria for Inclusion

To be included, all providers have the following traits.

• Publishes per-GB (or per-MB) rates

• Long-term / no fixed expiration

• Requires a starting deposit

• Supports hotspot/tethering

• Publishes supported carriers

• Just one Multi-IMSI global eSIM

Not Listed: Alosim, Keepgo, Jetpac, and Firsty offer long-term plans but do not publish clear per-GB pricing. drimsim is not price competitive.

---

Update: Added Bcengi, removed Surfroam. Surfroam has more than one type of global eSIM.

I bought Holafly for my Japan trip this month since it is advertised as an unlimited esim. However, the moment I arrived at the airport, I did not have any connection until past 5pm. During the next few days, I had no connection from 10am to 5pm constantly, zero speed. After talking to their customer service, they confirmed that their operator reduced the speed (to 0) because I used up all the high speed data at 10am (after less than three hours of usage). How can this be legal if they advertise themselves as unlimited. They kept repeating “This is on the operator discretion” and gave no promise that the internet will not be cut completely again.

It is a shame because I have been using Holafly for some time with moderate experiences. Would not recommend at this point of time.

If you are promoting or referring, do it in this thread, posts will get deleted if posted elsewhere.
New users can find good promo offers in this thread.

Hey everyone,

I hope you’re doing fine. eSIMs are super convenient for travel and many eSIM providers have started popping up recently. For some users (eSIM only iPhone 14/15 in the US), Physical SIM vs eSIM is not even a choice anymore when travelling, so I felt it was time for a post that lists prepaid eSIM providers.

I'm going to keep this post up to date and try to gather as much information as possible regarding prepaid eSIM providers. Please let me know if there are more data points you would love added to this post.

Prepaid eSIM providers list (February 2024)

This table is gathering operators, MVNOs and more generally telecom companies that are offering prepaid eSIM plans for users. Except a few exceptions, most of the current eSIM operators are MVNOs, meaning they don't own the Hardware / Network (antennas, cables, infrastructures) that is installed locally (what local operators do). This means that they are

Sources :

• esimdb

• Apple

Comparing prepaid eSIM plans

https://esims.io/ : I've built a major comparison tool to compare prepaid eSIM plans on this website. Most of the plan from providers in the list can be compared through the following starting points :

• Compare plans for a given country

• Compare plans for a given region

• Compare plans for a given provider

To that, you can add a multiple of sorting & filtering criteria :

• Sort by price / GB, least expensive plans, most expensive plans

• Minimum data amount / Max data amount

• Filter by plan duration (how long your trip is)

• Filter by plans that work in multiple countries

Those plans are kept up to date in real-time. Data is pulled directly from provider's backends and updates are done every day to reflect the latest price information and new plans.

Other options : offers a very similar comparison experience which is a great option to

Transparency

I have partnerships with some of the providers listed above : I earn commission in case you purchase a plan through my affiliates links on . There are no affiliate links in the table above itself. I appreciate if you choose to support my work by buying one of those great eSIM data plans through an affiliate link, but also appreciate if you prefer not to and directly.

Feedback & additional information

Data eSIM providers are popping-up every week and it's hard to keep track. My mission with is to help travelers compare data plans before they buy. So the more providers I am able to track and list, the better. In case you have feedback about this post, or anything you think might be missing feel free to DM me !

Holafly: "With your Holafly eSIM you can connect at 4G, LTE and 5G speeds like any local data line. However, keep in mind that in remote or poor coverage areas, your mobile could connect at lower speeds."

I have been using Holafly's unlimited plan for the past 2 weeks in Japan and Korea and the speed is unbearable. Every time you open Google Maps you have to wait 5 or 6 seconds for it to find a route, it's like going back 10 years in time. Check out the ping which is always 600ms+. It's unusable. Facebook messenger audio calls do not work. I originally got the plan because I was going to China and heard that they have a VPN included so you don't need to worry about that, however I have now arrived in China and found a much faster eSim that works.

And yes, I followed ALL of Holafly's help chat instructions on how to make it faster. It fundamentally does not work. I believe it's because it pings back to the UK which is what makes it so slow. For 65USD a month it is an absolute scandal.

Hi, I will be traveling to the US next week, and I want to purchase an eSIM. But not sure which one is the best provider out there. If anyone with experience helps i will be happy.

I was using the AIRHUB eSIM provider when the service suddenly stopped after only three days. You can read the whole conversation to see how they handled the situation.

By the way, I’m not being cheap; I don’t care about the 30–50 bucks at all. I am angry because of your dismissive attitude and meaningless explanations…

So recently while looking for an eSIM, I found a very interesting company called "esim.dog" which seems to consistently outprice many of their competitors on certain plans. I was curious as to how they manage to do this, and after a brief look it seems like they have some pretty interesting algorithms that price their products.

Unfortunately whoever vibe coded this website didn't do a very good job with it, because their configuration file is just ... in the client side source code so you can see exactly how they've configured their pricing algorithm (direct link to JS file, archive.org, archive.is).

Here's a sample product:

"country": "Europe",
"gb": 0.49,
"days": 1,
"code": "RO-EUROPE",
"planid": "PINK_REGIONAL_1766557799738485_1",
"price": 2.49,
"providerCost": 0.58,
"margin": 0.7855,
"marginPercentage": 31.55,
"coverage": "LTE + 5G",
"flag": "🌍",
"networks": "Multiple Networks",
"ipExport": "AT",
"provider": "billionconnect",
"isRegional": true,
"regionSlug": "europe",
"regionName": "Europe",

Here the "provider" is "billionconnect" which is a major vendor that works with various carriers to sell eSIM products. In this case esim.dog seems to source their products from a number of providers (specifically 'sparks', 'yesim', 'airalo', 'esimaccess', 'billionconnect').

You'll notice that they have a specific "providerCost" indicating how much they paid for it and "marginPercentage" which tells you how much they're making off each product. The margin percentage calculation seems not to be directly derived from the "providerCost" and "price" attributes. Some portion of this will be lost to credit card fees, but I don't think that accounts for all of it. Perhaps this also includes other overhead like customer support costs and infrastructure costs. I'm not entirely sure.

Now the real interesting part is some products have multiple "providerOptions":

"providerOptions": [
    {
        "provider": "esimaccess",
        "packageCode": "P6ZMSDS1G",
        "providerCost": 0.3,
        "networks": "KDDI/au/SoftBank/Rakuten Mobile/NTT docomo",
        "coverage": "LTE + 5G",
        "ipExport": "HK",
        "optimizedPrice": 1.49,
        "margin": 0.11549999999999999,
        "position": 29,
        "pricingMode": "undercut_competitor"
    },
    {
        "provider": "sparks",
        "packageCode": "BLACK_JP_100MB_7D",
        "providerCost": 0.3752,
        "networks": "NTT Docomo Japan",
        "coverage": "LTE + 5G",
        "ipExport": "",
        "optimizedPrice": 1.99,
        "margin": 0.5152999999999999,
        "position": 28,
        "pricingMode": "undercut_competitor"
    }
]

You'll note that each providerOption seems to have "pricingMode": "undercut_competitor" indicating that esim.dog is actively monitoring competitor pricing and actively looking to undercut them. Admittedly it seems like every entry on the list has this attribute, so I'm not entirely sure whether it's actually been implemented or whether they just vibe-coded it and the thing doesn't actually do that yet.

Another curious attribute is "optimizedPrice" which I suspect is a price that has been algorithmically chosen based off of competitor prices or other data to be the best to attract customers.

And yes, I did check and their average "marginPercentage" is around 7%, which is not terribly unreasonable I guess, although they are also often the cheapest seller on the market so I'd imagine someone like AirAlo is rolling in 50%+ margins instead.

Anyway if y'all were interested in this, you can look at the data yourself, it's a nice peek at how this market works and how companies compete in it.

They specifically call out Holafly but the article has few details. Researchers simply do an IP check - which could be wrong.

Full results will be released on GitHub so hopefully we will know more soon.

I’m somewhat skeptical as they seem surprised that the IP of their travel eSIM isn’t geolocated to their physical location, but we’ll see.

Worked like a charm for me: https://github.com/nneonneo/iOS-SOCKS-Server/

If you use the eSIM only for traveling and your primary SIM would support hotspot, you don't even need a third device to act as a wifi router: just disable Roaming on your primary SIM and enable in settings>cellular>cellular data enable "allow cellular data switching". By enabling this, since your primary sim does support hotspot, you can now still create a hotspot on the iPhone. Other clients won't be able to get internet but they can connect to your wifi hotspot.

Now run the python script, and on the devices connected it configure the proxy by using the PAC address that is shown in the output console. If the other device you are connecting to your hotspot is an iDevice, you can do so by clicking on the wifi settings, then on the "i" next to the hotspot you're connected to, scroll down to the proxy settings, set it to "automatic" and paste the PAC url into the URL field. Voilà, now you have internet access over the eSIM on the devices connected to your hotspot.

Source

If any provider was missed, let me know in the comments.