The Wanderly eSIM Price Index
What a gigabyte of mobile data costs a traveller, country by country. Every figure is read from our live retail catalogue, so the index and the storefront can never disagree.
Methodology
What is measured
Every data-only, single-country plan in the live Wanderly retail catalogue. For each country we compute the median, lowest and highest retail price per gigabyte, the cheapest plan outright, and the cheapest listing in each of five size buckets — 1GB, 3GB, 5GB, 10GB and 20GB. A bucket accepts plans within 25% of its nominal size, which is wide enough to catch a 6GB listing in the 5GB bucket and narrow enough that a 10GB plan never lands there.
What is excluded, and why
- Plans including calls and SMS. They bundle a voice allowance into the same price, so their cost per gigabyte is not comparable with a data-only plan's and would distort every median they entered.
- Regional and global bundles. They cover many countries at once, so charging their price to any single country would understate that country's local pricing.
- Countries with fewer than five plans. A median drawn from two listings swings on every catalogue refresh, and publishing it as research would be worse than omitting it.
- Nothing is interpolated. A country with no listing near a given size is absent from that size's figures rather than contributing an estimate derived from another size.
What this index is not
These are Wanderly's own retail prices, not a survey of the travel eSIM market. Our catalogue is sourced primarily through a single wholesale supplier, so countries sharing a wholesale tier often share an identical median — that pattern is a property of how the plans are bought, not a finding about those countries. The index is an accurate, complete and checkable account of what one substantial retailer charges in 190+ countries. It is a reasonable proxy for market pricing and a poor substitute for a multi-vendor survey, and it should be cited as the former.
Currency, tax and timing
All prices are retail USD, exclusive of tax, as listed to a buyer. Figures are read live on each page load rather than published on a schedule, so the index is current as of the moment you are reading it. Catalogue prices change; a figure quoted from this page should carry the date it was read.
Using and citing this data
The dataset is free to use, quote and republish with attribution under CC BY 4.0. Download it as or . The underlying plan catalogue, including every individual plan behind these aggregates, is also available as a free unauthenticated feed — see the catalog API.
Suggested citation: “Wanderly eSIM Price Index”, Wanderly, https://getwanderly.com/research/wanderly-esim-price-index, accessed 2026-09-15.
Common questions
What is the average price of a travel eSIM per gigabyte?
Across the countries in this index the median price of mobile data on a single-country travel eSIM is a little over $1 per gigabyte. The spread matters more than the median: the cheapest destinations sit under $0.40/GB while the most expensive run past $20/GB, a difference of more than fifty times for the same gigabyte.
Why is eSIM data so expensive in some countries?
Wholesale roaming rates are set by agreements with local network operators, and those rates track how competitive and how built-out the local mobile market is. Small island territories, countries with a single dominant operator, and places with limited international connectivity carry the highest wholesale costs, and that flows straight into retail pricing.
Where is travel data cheapest?
Western and Northern Europe and the more competitive Asian markets consistently produce the lowest per-gigabyte prices, generally under $1/GB. Regional plans covering a whole continent often beat any single-country plan within it, so the cheapest way into one country is sometimes a plan that covers thirty.
Can I use this data in an article?
Yes. The figures, charts and downloadable dataset are free to use and quote with attribution to Wanderly and a link to this page, under CC BY 4.0. Each chart offers a PNG and an embed snippet. The full methodology is published below so you can state exactly what the number you are quoting measures.
How often is the index updated?
The figures are read from the live retail catalogue every time this page loads, so they are current as of the moment you are reading them rather than as of a publication date. The methodology is fixed; the numbers move with the catalogue. A figure quoted from this page should carry the date it was read.
Is this a survey of the whole eSIM market?
No. These are Wanderly's own retail prices, from a catalogue sourced primarily through a single wholesale supplier. It is a complete and checkable account of what one substantial retailer charges in around 190 countries, which makes it a reasonable proxy for market pricing and a poor substitute for a multi-vendor survey.