Travel fares · Travel eSIM prices

Travel eSIM price monitoring by destination, data allowance and provider

Travel eSIM price monitoring collects the data plans that eSIM sellers offer per destination: allowance, validity, network and price, normalised so a 3 GB week and a 20 GB month can be compared. Prices and currencies can differ by the shopper's country, so collect from the markets your readers are in.

Get started See pricing

Pay per GB · No subscription · Prices in EUR, excl. VAT

Illustration. The URLs and values are fictional; the connection string is the real grammar.

€2.00
per GB on ARC Fast, excl. VAT: −44%
at 1 TB (€1.12 / GB): 185+
countries, city targeting: Never
expires — no subscription

Written for

eSIM comparison sites
Telecom and roaming analysts
Travel apps adding connectivity
eSIM and MVNO pricing teams

The short answer

The comparable unit is destination × allowance × validity × provider, normalised to price per GB and per day. Headline prices alone mislead because allowances and validities differ.
Within the EU and EEA, roam-like-at-home applies until 2032, so for EU residents the eSIM market is mostly about trips outside that area. Price trips to the destinations your readers visit.
'Unlimited' plans usually carry a fair-use or speed policy. Store the policy text with the price.
Catalogues are light. The rotating ISP pool covers most providers; residential exits matter where prices or currencies change with the shopper's country.

The problem

What goes wrong without the right IPs

Plans are not like for like

One seller offers 1, 3, 5 and 10 GB for 7 to 30 days, another sells per-day plans, a third sells regional bundles. Normalise to price per GB and per day, and keep the original plan so the normalisation can be checked.

Regional plans hide coverage

A 'Europe' or 'Asia' plan covers a provider-specific list of countries. Store the list per plan; two regional plans with the same name rarely cover the same countries.

Shopper country changes currency and price

Many sellers localise currency and sometimes price by the visitor's country. A plan collected from one country may not be what a reader elsewhere sees. Collect from each reader market.

Network details sit on a separate page

The local partner network, 5G support, hotspot rules and top-up options are often on the plan detail page, not the list. Fetch them less often than prices, but fetch them.

What to collect

What you can collect

Destination or region and country list: What the plan actually covers.
Data allowance and validity: The basis for per-GB and per-day prices.
Price and currency: As shown to a shopper in the collecting market.
Price per GB and per day: Normalised fields for ranking.
Fair-use or speed policy: Needed to compare 'unlimited' plans honestly.
Partner networks and 5G: Coverage quality, not just price.
Hotspot, top-up and phone number: Plan features readers filter on.
Promotion and code: Temporary discounts separate from list price.

How it runs

How a collection run works

01
Define destinations and allowances
Start from your readers' top destinations and the allowances they buy. Map each seller's destination pages and regional bundles to your destination list.

Sweep catalogues per reader market

Fetch each seller's destination pages from each reader market on rotating exits. Many sellers load plans from a JSON endpoint, which is far lighter than rendering the page.

Normalise a plan to per-GB and per-day prices14 lines

def normalise(plan: dict) -> dict:    gb = plan["data_gb"]                       # None for unlimited plans    days = plan["validity_days"]    price = plan["price"]    return {        **plan,        "price_per_day": round(price / days, 4),        "price_per_gb": round(price / gb, 4) if gb else None,        "unlimited": gb is None,        "fair_use_text": plan.get("fair_use") or "",    }# rows = [normalise(p) for p in fetch_plans(client, destination="JP")]# client uses "http://USERNAME_pool-arcfast_country-de:PASSWORD@proxy.arcproxies.io:8000" with the reader market's country

03
Collect plan details monthly
Networks, 5G, hotspot rules and country lists change slowly. Fetch detail pages monthly, prices weekly or daily.
04
Rank and publish with the date
Rank plans per destination on the normalised price within allowance bands, and show when the price was collected. Readers act on plan prices that change with promotions.

Setup

Recommended setup

eSIM catalogues are mostly public JSON and HTML. Use the cheap pool by default and residential exits where the shopper's country matters.

Plan	Role	Session	Targeting	Price
ARC Basic Rotating ISP	Default for plan catalogues Many light catalogue requests per destination and seller. The rotating ISP pool is cheapest per GB.	Rotating	Country of the reader market	€0.75 / GB €0.59 at 1 TB (−21%)
ARC Fast Rotating residential	Sellers that localise by visitor country Residential exits for sellers whose currency or price depends on the visitor's country, so each market's view is the one its readers get.	Rotating, or sticky for a few minutes where a basket is needed	Country of the reader market	€2.00 / GB €1.12 at 1 TB (−44%)
ARC Mobile Mobile 4G/5G	How sellers present to mobile visitors Optional check from carrier networks in the four supported countries, for sellers whose mobile pages differ. Not needed for catalogue collection.	Sticky, up to 60 minutes	Country only: DE, GB, US or JP	€3.50 / GB €3.15 at 1 TB (−10%)

Prices are list prices in EUR, excl. VAT. Volume discounts apply automatically at checkout — full ladder on the pricing page.

Connect

One connection string per market

The country, city and sticky session are tokens in the username. Change the token, change the market; keep the session handle, keep the IP.

sticky · Germany · 10 min1 line

http://USERNAME_pool-arcfast_country-de_session-k3f9a1x2_sesstime-10:PASSWORD@proxy.arcproxies.io:8000

Swap _country-de for any market you quote. The full grammar is on the residential proxies page.

Illustration

What an eSIM comparison catalogue costs

An illustration with round numbers — your pages, payloads and retry rate will differ. The arithmetic is the real price ladder.

Assumptions

Sellers: 25
Destinations: 150
Reader markets: 2
Cadence: weekly (4.3 a month)
Weight per destination page or JSON: 200 KB
Bandwidth per month: ≈ 7 GB

On ARC Basic

€5.25per month, excl. VAT

7 GB bought in one purchase at €0.75 / GB (list price).

The same 7 GB on ARC Fast: €14.00 at €2.00 / GB. Route only the jobs that need it through the pricier pool.

Sellers with a JSON plan endpoint weigh far less than 200 KB per destination; rendered pages can weigh more.

Bandwidth never expires, so a bigger single purchase is only ever cheaper per GB. See the ladder.

In depth

Travel eSIM prices, in depth

Why travel eSIM prices need monitoring

A travel eSIM is a downloadable mobile profile sold for a destination or region. The GSMA's SGP.22 specification describes the remote SIM provisioning architecture for consumer devices that makes this possible. Sellers compete on per-destination plans with different allowances and validities, and change prices and promotions often.

Comparison sites and travel apps need the normalised view: which plan is cheapest per GB for a week in Japan, which regional plan actually covers the countries on a trip. Telecom analysts use the same data to watch retail price levels for data roaming outside home-network deals.

Roaming rules shape eSIM demand

Under Regulation (EU) 2022/612, travellers in the EU and EEA can call, text and use data abroad within that area without extra charges. The European Commission announced on 1 July 2022 that the new regulation extends roam-like-at-home until 2032. Fair-use policies still apply to stop permanent roaming.

The consequence for pricing data: for EU residents travelling within the EU, a travel eSIM competes with free roaming; for trips outside it, eSIMs compete with operator roaming packs. Weight your destination list toward the trips where your readers actually buy.

Normalising plans: a worked comparison

Plan shape	Normalise by	Watch for
Fixed GB, fixed days	Price per GB and per day	Validity too short for the trip
Per-day plans	Price per day, daily allowance	Throttled speed after the daily allowance
'Unlimited'	Price per day, policy text	Fair-use limits and speed caps
Regional bundles	Price per GB, covered country list	Countries missing from the list

Show both normalised prices and the plan as sold. Readers buy plans, not per-GB averages. For cross-market price comparisons, see comparing prices across markets.

Collecting from each reader market

Use geo-targeting to collect each seller's catalogue from the countries your readers are in, and record the exit country with each row. Check that the exit lands where you expect before trusting a run; testing a proxy location shows how. For sellers that only localise currency, one market plus a stated conversion rate may be enough.

Works with anything that takes a proxy URL

Python requests / httpx
Node.js
Scrapy
changedetection.io
n8n

FAQ

Questions

Something not covered? Write to contact@arcproxies.io.

How do I compare travel eSIM prices fairly?

Normalise each plan to price per GB and per day, compare within allowance bands that fit the trip, check the covered countries for regional plans, and keep the fair-use text for unlimited plans. Collect from the reader's country, because currency and sometimes price change with it.

Do EU travellers need an eSIM inside the EU?

Under the EU roaming regulation, people with an EU or EEA mobile plan can roam within that area at domestic prices until 2032, subject to fair use. Travel eSIMs are mostly relevant for trips outside it, or for travellers whose plan does not include roaming.

Are 'unlimited' eSIM plans really unlimited?

Often they come with a fair-use policy or reduced speed after a daily amount. The details are in the plan terms, which is why a comparison should store and show the policy text, not only the word 'unlimited'.

Which proxies suit eSIM price collection?

The rotating ISP pool for most catalogue pages and JSON endpoints, and residential exits for sellers that change price or currency by visitor country. Billing is per GB; a weekly sweep of a large catalogue stays small.

Can I check how eSIM sites look on a mobile network?

Yes, from Germany, the UK, the US or Japan with ARC Mobile, at country level and with sticky sessions up to 60 minutes. It is an optional check for sellers whose mobile pages differ, not a requirement for catalogue collection.

Sources & review

Last reviewed 30 October 2026 by the ARC Proxies team. Prices are read from the live catalog at build time.

[1]European Commission, Shaping Europe's digital future: New roaming rules: travellers in the EU can roam like at home for 10 more years (1 July 2022)
[2]EUR-Lex (Official Journal of the European Union): Regulation (EU) 2022/612 on roaming on public mobile communications networks within the Union (recast)
[3]GSMA: SGP.22 Technical Specification (eSIM remote SIM provisioning for consumer devices)

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