With the eSIM, you can book holiday tariffs for internet and telephony simply and cheaply shortly before you travel. Information on tariffs, payment options and practical tips.
Instead of sending the network access data (profile) to the customer on a physical chip, the providers simply make them available for download. It doesn’t matter whether the profile comes from Germany or a country far away: the smartphone downloads it and writes it to the permanently soldered eSIM in seconds, where it is immediately ready for use. In short: You can simply download the USA or Thailand SIM one day before the start of your vacation, instead of looking for a shop at the airport at three in the morning or having a physical SIM delivered to you in advance, which is expensive. Thanks to flexible booking options and a wide range of offers, you can be cheaply online in the destination country as soon as you arrive.
The eSIM is flexible: Android and iOS swallow eSIM profiles from QR codes and links as well as from apps and manage several profiles at the same time so that you can activate and deactivate them within a few seconds if necessary.
Most eSIM providers provide their customers with an app that forwards the eSIM profile to the system. However, installing a profile is a very simple matter even without an app: the provider sends you a QR code that you scan with your smartphone. This happens under iOS under “Settings/Mobile Network/Add Cellular Plan”. In Android, the menu names vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, but you can usually find them under “Settings/Network & Internet” and then in the “SIM cards” menu or in “Advanced/Cellular operator”. If reading the QR code does not work, you can also type in the link contained in the QR code and surf to it.
As soon as the profile is installed, the eSIM appears in the smartphone menu as an independent SIM card. If a physical SIM card is also available, most devices switch to dual SIM operation, in which you can specify which of the two SIMs cards should be responsible for data traffic, telephone calls and SMS by default. If you don’t need your home SIM card abroad, you should deactivate it in order to prevent unwanted high bills, which may arise from unnoticed calls being redirected to the mailbox.
New freedom to travel
In the meantime, a large market has developed around eSIM offers for travellers. During our research, we found over 15 providers who have tariffs for all sorts of countries and issue eSIMs either via the website (QR code) or via their own app. Here, too, there are both cheap and simple offers as well as non-transparent and expensive providers that you should keep your hands off. For our overview, we only selected offers with clear, understandable price lists and normal market costs.
A smartphone with eSIM is a basic requirement for an eSIM tariff. Currently, it is mainly the top models from the major manufacturers that have an eSIM integrated. If your smartphone is missing, you may be able to use a retrofit eSIM. The only alternative is a holiday tariff with a physical SIM, more on this in the paragraph “Plug-in eSIM”.
Tariff selection and payment
Our selection is based on travel destinations outside the EU that are popular in the DACH region: we have listed up to four data packages per provider and destination country in the table on the last page. Most offer time-limited packages. Pay attention to how the provider calculates this: Use usually starts when you log into the roaming network for the first time, but in some cases as early as the booking. If in doubt, you should book the packages shortly before departure from Germany, because it is not certain that you will find free WiFi at your destination that you can use to make the booking.
The offers from BNESIM and Surfroam stand out positively here. The data volume at BNESIM has no expiry date, so a booked package could even be used up the following year if you go on holiday in the same country again. Surfroam does not offer fixed packages, but bills fairly according to consumption per megabyte. You just have to make sure that you pay in enough prepaid credit so that the data connection doesn’t suddenly break off unexpectedly.
In some cases, the respective offers include more packages than we could represent in the table. In some places there are many packages that differ only slightly. So when booking, make sure you choose the package with the right volume and duration.
Most of the providers presented only have one eSIM in their range. However, some also offer to ship a physical SIM card. Then, however, you should plan well in advance for the postal delivery time and expect a hefty surcharge for the extra service. For providers, the effort involved in sending a card is many times higher than if they only provision an eSIM.
- Surf & chat cheaply abroad with eSIMs
- Market overview: A comparison of prepaid tariffs for telephoning and surfing
- Mobile home office: Mobile routers and data tariffs for the always-on office
- Mobile radio technology: The UMTS network will be switched off in Germany
- Vehicle networking: what the end of UMTS means for drivers
- How to save on the inclusive volume of your mobile phone contract under Windows
There is also no need to exchange currencies or worry about whether the holiday provider will accept your own credit card with eSIMs: Most eSIM providers offer several payment methods. However, many providers bill in US dollars. Depending on the payment method selected, this can result in additional costs for the currency conversion, and the exchange rate also fluctuates.
Credit card payments and PayPal are particularly widespread; many also have integrated Google and Apple Pay. Airalo offers a large selection, where in addition to the methods already mentioned, you can also pay the bill with a debit card and Alipay. Only Yesim goes one better and also accepts Klarna, bank transfer, Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum. In view of the transaction costs, however, you have to think about it carefully.
In some cases, however, the payment methods are not immediately obvious: With Nomad, GigSky and eSIM2Fly, we had to click through the ordering process to find out whether we could pay at all; BNESIM told us via WhatsApp support. Both are unnecessarily cumbersome – especially since all providers have FAQs on their website, but these details are missing.
How the eSIM works
The SIM cards that are inserted into the device are threatened with extinction sooner or later. Over the course of decades, they have shrunk from the size of a credit card to the mini and micro format and today, as nano-SIMs, are no bigger than the little fingernail. They may soon be gone altogether.
