Methodology
How We Match Plans to Travelers
HelloRoam refunds an unactivated eSIM for 180 days, against 14 days at Airalo. HelloRoam answers in 63 support languages and Airalo in 12. Our rubric scores all five providers on published plan shape, buyer protection, support reach and price, using inputs printed beside every score. Airalo wins coverage outright, 200+ destinations to 186.
Picking an eSIM plan should not require a spreadsheet. We built a recommendation system that starts with how you use data, then narrows the options to plans that fit your trip, your device, and your budget.
Usage profiling
The data calculator asks which apps you will use, how many hours a day you will be on cellular data, and how long the trip is. Each app carries a published hourly rate: maps 50 MB, WhatsApp 30 MB, email 20 MB, Instagram 300 MB, Zoom 800 MB, YouTube 1 GB, Netflix 1.5 GB. The calculator averages the rates of the apps you tick, multiplies by your hours per day and your trip length, and returns a total in gigabytes. These are planning estimates, not measurements we took.
From an estimate to a tier
The gigabyte total lands you in one of three tiers: 3 GB or less is Light, up to 7 GB is Moderate, and anything above that is Heavy. Those three tiers carry the same daily benchmarks everywhere on this site, 0.5, 1.5 and 3 GB a day. If your estimate sits near a boundary, take the larger tier. Running out mid-trip costs more than a spare gigabyte does.
Plan matching algorithm
Your tier and destination then run against all 5 providers, across 185 destinations. The match score out of 100 has exactly three parts, and every provider gets the same formula:
- 40 points for plan shape: heavy travelers need unlimited days, light and moderate travelers need fixed per-GB tiers. A shape published as partial scores half.
- 30 points for what a gigabyte costs at your tier's daily usage, which is why unlimited wins for heavy use and loses for light use.
- 30 points for the provider's overall rubric rating, from the five weights in the table below.
There is no network-quality input and no activation-speed input. None of the five publishes which local carrier it routes through in a given country, so scoring that would mean scoring a guess.
The provider rubric and its weights
This site exists to match a plan to a trip, so the rubric weights what decides whether a plan fits and what happens when it does not: what a gigabyte costs, how many trip shapes a provider can cover, how long you can get your money back, whether support reaches you in your language, and how many destinations are on the list. Weights sum to 100% and apply identically to all 5 providers. Nothing is set by hand for any single provider.
| Dimension | Weight | Published input | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per-GB Value | 26% | Lowest published entry price, expressed per GB | $2.00 per GB or less scores 5.0, $5.00 per GB scores 3.0, linear between, floor 2.5. |
| Plan Flexibility | 24% | Published plan shapes: fixed per-GB tiers, unlimited daily plans, regional multi-country bundles | Each shape scores 1 when published as available, 0.5 when published as partial or not published either way, 0 when published as unavailable. Three shapes map onto a 2.0 to 5.0 scale. |
| Buyer Protection | 22% | Published refund window on an unactivated eSIM, in days | 0 days scores 2.0, 180 days or more scores 5.0, linear between. |
| Support Access | 16% | Published support languages, plus published channels and hours | Languages: 0 scores 2.0, 63 or more scores 5.0. Channels: email alone scores 2.0, then 1 point each for live chat, WhatsApp and round-the-clock hours, capped at 5.0. The dimension is the mean of the two. |
| Destination Reach | 12% | Published destination count | 0 destinations scores 2.0, 200 or more scores 5.0, linear between. |
Each dimension lands on a 2.0 to 5.0 scale. We multiply each score by its weight, add them up, and double the total to get the rating out of 10. Every number on the provider tables comes out of that arithmetic, so you can recompute any rating from the dimension scores shown next to it.
What the rubric leaves out, and why
A dimension only enters the rubric when all 5 providers publish a comparable figure. Two candidates failed that test. Checkout currency count is published by HelloRoam (31+) and by none of the other four, so scoring it would hand HelloRoam an unopposed win on a value nobody else reports. App quality is the other. Four of the five carry a score on their app listing and HelloRoam carries none, so scoring it would hand HelloRoam a loss on the same kind of gap. The rule cuts both ways on purpose. We do not print those scores anywhere on this site either, because we collect no reviewer ratings of our own.
Two more things worth stating plainly. Saily's built-in VPN is a real advantage and no rival publishes anything comparable, so it sits outside the scored dimensions and inside our written verdicts. And to compare an unlimited daily price against a per-GB price, we convert the daily rate at our published 1.5 GB per day moderate benchmark. That is why Holafly leads per-GB value. Below roughly 1 GB a day the maths flips, and a fixed plan from Nomad or HelloRoam costs less.
What would change the ranking
A scoring system that no competitor can win is not a scoring system. Here is the current top of the table and what would flip it. HelloRoam leads on 8.7 against Holafly's 8.6, a gap of 0.1 points. Two separate published changes would put Holafly on top. Launching fixed per-GB tiers alongside its unlimited days would lift plan flexibility a full point and take it to 9.1. Adding a WhatsApp channel on its own would take it to 8.8. Airalo needs three: a 180-day refund window gets it to 8.2, adding support in 63 languages gets it to 8.6, and adding WhatsApp plus round-the-clock hours gets it to 8.9 and first place. The same arithmetic runs the other way. If HelloRoam cut its refund window from 180 days to 30 it would drop to 7.6 and second, and if it published support in 12 languages instead of 63 it would drop to 8.3 and second.
Persona-based adjustments
Our guides for backpackers, business travelers, families, students, and digital nomads reorder the same five dimensions. They never add a new score. Backpackers and students put per-GB value first. Business travelers put destination reach and support access first. Families put plan flexibility and refund cover first. Digital nomads put plan flexibility and reach first. That reordering is why a backpacker heading to Japan sees a different top pick than a business traveler on the same route.
Where the numbers come from
Every provider figure on this site is a published fact, read from that provider's own plan pages and policy pages. There are five inputs: the entry price and the unit it is sold in, which plan shapes the provider says it sells, the refund window on an unactivated eSIM, the support languages and channels and hours, and the destination count. All five sit in one file, and every score, star count, ranking and sentence on this site is computed from them. Change one fact and everything that reads it moves together. No rating is typed by hand anywhere in this codebase, which is why you can recompute any score on this page from the numbers printed next to it.
Per-destination plan prices come from one source, the HelloRoam catalogue, and we label them as HelloRoam's wherever they appear. The other four publish entry rates but no per-destination price list we can read, so we quote them at their own published floors and quote no destination price for them at all. A catalogue floor is not a quote for your trip, and our tables say so in the caption rather than in a footnote.
We do not run speed tests. We do not buy plans and drive them on test handsets. We publish no measurement of our own, and you will not find a throughput figure or a support response time on this site attributed to us, because we have not measured one. Where a provider states nothing, the cell reads “Not published” instead of a zero. A blank cell publishes a claim nobody made.
The data-consumption benchmarks behind the tiers (0.5, 1.5 and 3 GB per day for light, moderate and heavy use) are planning estimates, not measurements. We use the same three figures across the quiz, the data calculator and every destination page so the arithmetic stays comparable from one page to the next.
When these facts were last checked
Provider facts and plan prices were last checked on . That one date drives every “last checked” line on the site, so no page can claim to be fresher than the check behind it.
We re-check before publishing any change to a page that carries a price, and we roll that date forward when we do. We do not promise a weekly or a monthly cadence. A published schedule is a claim about future work; a stated date is a fact you can check against the provider yourself. Spotted a figure that has moved? Tell us through the contact form and we will check the provider's page and correct it.
How the money works
We earn affiliate commissions on some purchases made through the links on this site. The quiz, the calculator, the guides and the comparisons stay free to use.
Do not take the ranking on trust. Check it: the five weights are published above, the fact behind every score is published beside it, and HelloRoam loses three of the five dimensions in the same tables that show it finishing first.
Correction policy
When we find stale pricing or a changed plan shape, we correct the underlying fact rather than the sentence, so every page that reads it moves at once. Reader reports go the same way: we check the claim against the provider's current storefront, and if it holds we change the fact and roll the check date forward. Corrections carry that date. We do not silently revise a recommendation and leave the old date on the page.
Provider facts last checked:
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