eSIM Trip Cost Planner
Add every country on your trip and how long you are staying in each. We work out the data each leg needs, then price the two ways of covering it — one eSIM for everywhere, or a local plan per country — against every plan we track.
Your trip
Add countries in the order you are visiting them.
Start typing, then press Enter to add it to the trip.
No countries yet
Add the first country above. You can add the rest in whatever order you are travelling.
How you use your phone
One setting for the whole trip. It decides how much data each leg needs.
Only video and social feeds move with this — messaging and maps cost the same either way.
Add a country to start
Once there is at least one country on the trip, we will price both ways of covering it.
Or see it work on an example first:
What the trip costs
We price both ways of covering the trip against every plan we track, then say which one wins and by how much.
One eSIM for everything
A single plan covering every country on the trip.
Your total appears here
- One purchase for every country
- One install
- One expiry date to watch
A plan in each country
The cheapest plan for each country, bought separately.
Your total appears here
- One purchase per country
- One install per country
- One expiry date each
When one eSIM beats a plan per country
A regional plan is one purchase, one install and one expiry date, and it keeps working when you cross a border without you touching anything. That convenience is real, but it is not free: regional inventory is priced against the whole footprint it covers, not against the two or three countries you actually visit. On a trip through several countries where you stay only a few nights in each, one plan usually wins, because a local plan has a floor price and you would be paying that floor several times over for a couple of days of use each.
The picture flips when one country dominates the trip. Somewhere with a competitive local market and a long stay is often cheaper covered on its own, with a small plan bought for the short hops around it — and it flips again if one of your countries sits outside the regional plan's footprint, because then the single plan is not actually a single plan at all. That is the whole reason this tool prices both rather than recommending one.
What “covers 30 countries” does and does not mean
A coverage list is a list of places the eSIM will attach to a network. It is not a promise about speed, about which local operator you land on, or about where your traffic reaches the internet — plenty of regional plans route everything back through one country, which is fine for browsing and noticeable on video calls. It is also not a promise that the allowance is per country: on almost every regional plan the data is one shared pot spent wherever you happen to be, so a heavy week in the first country is data the last country no longer has. When you compare a regional plan against local ones, compare the pot against the whole trip, not against one leg.
How validity windows catch people out
Validity is per plan, and a plan that expires mid-trip has not covered the trip. Two details do most of the damage. The first is when the clock starts: some plans start counting at purchase, some at install, and some only when the eSIM first connects to a network abroad — buying a week early and installing at home can quietly burn days off a plan that started at purchase. The second is stacking. If you buy a plan per country, each one has to cover its own leg including the day you arrive and the day you leave, so the days you are paying for add up to more than the nights you are away.
- Check the start trigger before you buy, and install early only if the plan starts on first connection.
- Count the day you land and the day you leave — a stay of several nights spans one more day than it has nights.
- On a multi-stop trip, a single plan only needs to outlast the whole trip once; a stack of local plans has to outlast every leg separately.
- Topping up usually extends data, not time. An expired plan is expired whatever is left on it.
Where these numbers come from
The data figure for each leg is our own travel usage model — a rate per hour for each kind of app, plus a floor for the traffic your phone generates on its own, multiplied by the nights you are staying and rounded up to a size providers actually sell. The prices are the live plan database behind the rest of this site, converted into your selected currency, filtered to plans that carry enough data and stay valid long enough for the leg they are covering. Where nothing meets that bar we say so rather than showing you a cheaper plan that would not have lasted.
Questions people ask
Can one eSIM cover several countries?
Yes, and it is the normal way to cover a multi-stop trip. Regional and global plans list the countries they work in, and the eSIM attaches to a partner network in each one as you cross the border — you do not swap anything or re-install. The catch is that the allowance is almost always a single shared pot rather than a per-country one, so the data you use in the first country is data the last country no longer has. Price the pot against the whole trip, which is what the planner above does.
Is a regional eSIM cheaper than buying a local one in each country?
It depends on the shape of the trip, which is why this tool prices both instead of picking a side. Short stays in several countries usually favour one regional plan: every local plan has a floor price, and paying that floor four times for a few nights each adds up fast. A long stay in one country with brief hops either side usually favours buying locally, because you can size the big plan to the country you are actually in. Where the two land within a few per cent, treat it as a tie and choose on convenience.
Can I install several eSIMs at once?
Yes. Modern phones hold several eSIM profiles at the same time — commonly eight or more — although only one or two can be active for data at any moment. So a stack of local plans is perfectly workable: install them all before you leave, then switch the active one as you cross each border, in your phone's mobile data settings. What you cannot do is have two of them serving data at once, and forgetting to switch is the usual way people end up using the wrong plan's allowance.
What happens when I cross a border mid-plan?
If the country you are entering is on the plan's coverage list, nothing: the eSIM finds a partner network and carries on spending the same allowance. If it is not on the list, the plan simply stops working there — most travel eSIMs have no roaming outside their own footprint and will not silently bill you for it, but you will have no data until you activate something else. That is why the planner treats a country outside a plan's coverage as a gap rather than quietly dropping it from the total.
When does a plan's validity start?
It varies by provider and it is the single most common unpleasant surprise. Some plans start counting from the moment you buy, some from the moment you install the profile, and some only when the eSIM first connects to a network in a covered country. The last of those is the traveller-friendly one, because you can install at home a week early and lose nothing. If a plan starts at purchase, buying early costs you days of the trip. Check the trigger on the plan page before you buy — it is listed alongside the validity itself.
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Search any country and compare every eSIM we track — price, data, validity and networks side by side.