eSIM for the USA: 254 Plans and Unlimited by Default

The United States sells more prepaid eSIM plans than any other country this site prices. Ten brands list 254 American plans between them, and 100 of those carry no data cap at all. Unlimited is not the top tier here. It starts at $3.00 for a single day, and every brand on the shelf sells some version of it.

That changes the shape of the decision. In most markets a buyer weighs gigabytes against price. In this one the question splits in two. How many days of an uncapped plan, and what the word uncapped means once the day’s allowance is spent. The first half is printed at checkout. The second half is buried in a fair-use policy that several brands do not publish at all.

Every figure below was recomputed on 24 October 2026 from the same plan files that feed the price and network pages of this site. Where a table says cheapest, it means the cheapest plan that brand sells at that size rather than the cheapest window the brand happens to list, so a row compares ten sellers instead of every product they offer.

Why 100 unlimited plans change the question

Two in five plans in this market are flat-rate. The count runs from two at Ubigi and three at Nomad to thirty at Roamic and thirty at Yesim, and those two brands build a day ladder, with an unlimited plan for every day count from one to thirty.

A ladder makes the per-day price visible, and it does not fall evenly. Roamic charges $3.00 for the first day and $56.00 for thirty, which is $1.87 a day, a fall of 38%. Yesim charges $3.29 and $51.03, which is $1.70 a day, a fall of 48%. The cheaper single day belongs to Roamic and the cheaper month belongs to Yesim, and neither brand advertises the point where they cross.

The metered side of the shelf behaves in the opposite way. Its 154 plans run from $0.60 to $14.34 per gigabyte around a median of $1.98, and both ends are worth reading. The floor is Nomad at 50GB for thirty days, $30.00. The ceiling is not a big plan at all. Ubigi sells 500MB over thirty days twice, at $5.00 on one world list and $7.00 on another, and the dearer of the two is $14.34 a gigabyte, the worst rate sold into the country. The same half gigabyte for a single day costs $0.51 at Yesim. Identical data inside the product, 13.7 times apart across the market and 40% apart between two plans from one brand.

The lesson is not that one brand is cheap. It is that the unit a plan is sold in decides more than the brand selling it, and that a small allowance wrapped in a long window is the most expensive data on this shelf.

What the 254 plans cost at each size

Each row takes the cheapest plan each brand sells at that size, so the two columns are brand records rather than a survey of every window on sale.

Two rows carry most of the argument. At 5GB the spread is $5.00 against $19.00, and the $5.00 plan runs three weeks against thirty days for the $19.00 one, so the cheap end wins on price and loses on nothing that matters (Roamic against Airalo). At 10GB the cheapest plan in the market is valid for three days. Roami sells it at $7.99, and Roamic sells 10GB for thirty days at $8.00. One cent buys ten times the window, and a traveller who books a week and buys the three-day plan has bought the wrong product at the right price.

The 50GB row needs an explanation, because $188.00 is not an American product. It is Ubigi’s world list at 50GB over 180 days, and the $390.00 ceiling for the whole market is the same list at 200GB over 360 days. Set those aside and the dearest American plan is Ubigi’s own $65.00 for 60GB over thirty days. The 765-fold spread from $0.51 to $390.00 is real, and it compares a day pass against a year of global data rather than two competing offers for the same trip.

Where the flat rate stops being fast

Every unlimited plan here has a daily ceiling, and that ceiling decides whether the flat rate was worth buying.

Saily publishes the most generous threshold among the brands that print a single figure, and aloSIM the least, and the difference is not a marketing one. Five gigabytes a day is an evening of streamed video at full speed. One and a half gigabytes is that evening cut short, and the rest of the day runs at 512 Kbps, which is enough for a map and not enough for a video call.

Roamic is worth naming because it prints one figure everywhere and repeats it on every plan page, which makes it the easiest policy in this market to verify before paying. Holafly sits at the other end. It sells six plans, all unlimited, from $11.90 for three days to $73.90 for thirty, and it publishes no daily figure at all.

Read those two against each other and the ladder inverts. A month of unlimited costs $56.00 at Roamic with 3GB a day at full speed. The same month costs $73.90 at Holafly, 32% more, and it buys an unpublished allowance that independent testing in early 2026 put at 500MB to 1GB a day. Holafly also caps tethering at 500MB a day on these plans and sells no top-ups, so a plan that runs dry needs a second purchase rather than an add-on. Paying more here does not buy a bigger daily allowance. It buys a name, and a thinner policy underneath it.

The thirty-day ladder runs $49.99 at Roami, $51.03 at Yesim, $56.00 at Roamic, $67.99 at Jetpac, $68.00 at Airalo, $69.00 at aloSIM, $71.99 at Saily and $73.90 at Holafly. Ubigi’s $120.00 belongs to the world list rather than to an American trip. Eight prices inside $24.00 for a product that differs mainly in a number most of them do not print on the shelf. The fair-use table puts the published threshold beside every plan sold here.

The cheapest month is not automatically the best one either. Roami’s $49.99 publishes no consistent daily figure, since its own destination pages disagree with each other, while Yesim’s $51.03 is 500MB to 2GB depending on the plan page. A dollar and four cents separates them and the allowance does not, which is why the threshold column deserves more attention than the price column.

Does any travel eSIM carry a US number

No, and it is not a question of price. All ten brands in this comparison sell data-only profiles, and there is no voice or messaging product among the 254 plans. A traveller who needs a +1 number is shopping in a different market with different rules.

That market is American prepaid, sold as an eSIM. T-Mobile sells prepaid on an eSIM. Lycamobile sells a prepaid eSIM with calls, texts and data, and it asks for a United States ZIP code before it will check service at an address. Tello sells a prepaid plan on the T-Mobile network the same way. All three arrive with a number, a monthly cycle and an account.

The boundary between the two products is the useful part. A local line buys things a data profile cannot. A verification text from an American bank, a callback from a clinic, a delivery notification, a two-factor code for a service that refuses foreign numbers. It also asks for things a data profile never does. A ZIP code, a card that clears in dollars, and in most cases a decision about whether to port a number in or take a new one.

None of that makes it the right buy for a two-week holiday. The prepaid eSIM runs on a monthly cycle, it renews, and the number it brings is only worth having if something will send to it. The travel plan is a one-off purchase with a fixed window and no account to close afterwards.

The workable arrangement for most trips uses both, and they do not compete for the same slot. Data rides the travel plan, the home line stays in the phone for codes, and the dual SIM arrangement is what keeps the second one reachable. A number is bought when a specific errand needs one, not as an upgrade to the data plan.

Is there a free trial worth taking

There is one, and it belongs to a carrier rather than to the travel market. T-Mobile’s trial runs thirty days with unlimited high-speed data and needs no card. It is limited to people who are not T-Mobile customers and have not been one in the past ninety days, it requires an unlocked handset with eSIM support, and the phone has to be in the United States or Puerto Rico for the setup to complete. Calls and texts stay on the line the traveller already has.

Read the eligibility list as a description of what the product is for. It is a network comparison for somebody who already pays an American carrier and is deciding whether to switch. The data is free because T-Mobile wants the account at the end of it, and the trial ends after thirty days with no route from the free profile into a paid travel product.

Nothing on the travel shelf works that way. None of the 254 plans is a trial, and the cheapest paid entry in the market is $0.51 for 500MB over one day at Yesim. A visitor who wants to see the network before committing to a month can do it for less than a dollar, which is the closest thing to a free trial a data-only product can offer.

Why the day count beats the gigabyte count here

Because unlimited is the ordinary product, a trip should be sized in days first and gigabytes second. The cheapest plan that covers a given stay moves between brands as the stay lengthens.

Roamic holds the short stays because its ladder is flat at $3.00 a day up to day five and falls afterwards. Yesim takes over in the middle because its ladder falls faster. Roami wins the month by a dollar and four cents over Yesim, and the two do not agree on what that month contains: Roami’s own pages contradict each other on the daily threshold while Yesim prints 500MB to 2GB before the purchase.

The metered alternative is cheaper for a light trip and needs a long window to make sense. 5GB over thirty days costs $6.00 at Ubigi, 10GB costs $8.00 at Roamic, 20GB costs $15.00 at Roamic and 50GB costs $30.00 at Nomad. A traveller who will stay under 2GB a day pays a premium for the word unlimited, and the premium is small enough that most buyers will not notice it. A traveller who tethers a laptop to the phone will meet the daily ceiling within an hour.

Which network the plan rides and whether it matters

All 254 plans list T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon, and all ten brands list the same three. No plan in this market is tied to a single carrier, so a brand cannot be picked for its network and a route cannot be pinned to the carrier with the best reach along it.

What a traveller does control is the handset. T-Mobile’s low-band coverage sits on bands 12 and 71, Verizon’s on band 13, and a phone without 71 loses T-Mobile indoors and outside the cities while the plan itself stays perfectly good. That is a decision made before the flight, and the compatibility check is where it gets settled.

The carrier profiles set out where each network wins, and outside the cities the difference is real. It is also unbuyable through a travel eSIM, which is why a drive through the interior is a different problem from a week in Manhattan even at the same price.

What happens at the Canadian and Mexican borders

Nothing, which is the thing to plan around. A United States plan is a one-country list, and the profile stops at the line whether that line is the Niagara river or the Rio Grande.

Two products cover a crossing. A North American bundle names all three countries and runs one window across them, and two separate profiles do the same job with more control over when each clock starts. The Canada and Mexico tables price those legs, and the Americas breakdown shows which regional products list all three countries rather than two.

A trip that never leaves the United States is worse on a bundle, because it pays for two borders the car never reaches. A trip that crosses twice in each direction is worse on two separate profiles, because each one starts charging on the day it first connects.

The first hour after landing

A profile that was installed at home is not the same thing as a working connection, and the gap shows up in the arrivals hall rather than at the gate.

Three settings produce a connection and one of them is counterintuitive. The new line has to be switched on, mobile data has to be pointed at it, and data roaming has to be enabled for that line, because a travel profile joins an American network as a visitor rather than as a local subscriber. The home SIM stays in the phone with its data roaming off, which is what keeps bank codes arriving without a roaming charge attached to them.

The queue is where the phone starts earning. Immigration can take an hour at Kennedy, and the details that make the rest of the evening work, the address of the stay, the rideshare pickup point and the train into the city, all come out of a phone that is already connected. Testing it with a map before leaving the terminal costs a minute and removes the possibility of discovering the problem at a taxi rank.

Terminal wifi is not a substitute. It usually wants a sign-in before it passes traffic, it expires, and it does not follow a traveller onto a platform. How to install an eSIM covers the install itself, which is the part that can be done at home on a connection that is not shared with an arrivals hall.

Is a home carrier day pass ever the better buy

Sometimes, and the reason is continuity rather than price. A daily pass from a home carrier is the only product that keeps an existing number working for calls and texts without a second line, and it is bought from the carrier that already holds the account.

The arithmetic is not in its favour. The cheapest month of unlimited data on this shelf is $49.99 and the cheapest week is $18.00, while a day pass is priced by the home carrier rather than by this market and renews for every day of the trip. Most passes also throttle after a small daily volume, which on a road trip is the same as having no data at the point where navigation matters most.

The two are not exclusive. A traveller who needs calls on their own number can run the home line for voice and the travel plan for data, and pay the home carrier only for what is actually used. That arrangement is the reason the roaming switch on the travel line has to be on while the one on the home line stays off.

What fails before the plan does

Three failures in this market have nothing to do with the price paid, and all three are settled before departure.

A handset locked to a home carrier will refuse the profile outright, which is common on phones bought on instalments. A handset built for the mainland Chinese market has no eSIM hardware at all. A handset without the American low bands holds a city signal and loses it on a highway. What is an eSIM covers the first of those, and the compatibility check covers all three by model and region.

The fourth failure happens after arrival and belongs to the seller. No American carrier holds a record of a travel profile, so a dead line is fixed from another time zone by the brand that sold it. The order number and the address the QR code went to are the two things worth keeping, because a reinstall starts with deleting the profile and that deletion destroys the only local evidence a purchase exists. eSIM against a physical SIM sets out what a counter would have offered in exchange for the same money.

The trip calculator converts a route and a set of dates into a data figure when the day table above is not enough, and the full plan table sorts all 254 by price per gigabyte and by price per day.