What an eSIM is and who actually needs one

How it works

The phone contains a separate secure chip, the eUICC. Several operator profiles can be written to it and switched between in settings. The profile downloads over the internet: the seller issues a QR code, you scan it, and the phone fetches the profile from the operator's server.

All six catalogue services work exactly this way — installation is by QR code for every one of them. Two consequences follow, usually discovered at the airport:

• Install it in advance, at home, with working internet. Without a connection the profile will not download.
• The QR does not last forever. At eSIM.World, for instance, the link is valid for 89 days before activation.

One more detail that ruins plans: eSIM365 warns explicitly that a profile must not be deleted before its term expires — reinstallation is impossible. So «I will install it now, take a look, and reinstall later» does not work here.

What an eSIM does not do

This is the central misunderstanding. A travel eSIM is a mobile data package, not a second phone number.

For all six services the «own number» field reads no. Voice calls: no. Incoming SMS: no. Six out of six, without exception.

Practically: a confirmation code from a bank, a marketplace or a messenger will not arrive on such an eSIM. If you bought it to receive SMS, you bought the wrong product. More on that in why an eSIM does not replace a virtual number.

The good news is that you usually do not need it to: your main Russian SIM stays in the phone and keeps receiving calls and texts. The eSIM sits alongside and handles data only.

Who needs one and who does not

You do

• You are travelling abroad and do not want to pay your operator's roaming.
• You need data from the first minute at the airport, without hunting for a local shop.
• You want your Russian number to stay reachable for bank codes while data goes over another channel.

You do not

• You need a number for registration or SMS — that is a different product.
• You are going to one country for a month or more and are willing to buy a local SIM there: it is almost always cheaper.
• Your phone does not support eSIM — and support is far from universal across models and regional variants.

What it costs

We price the same basket — 10 GB over 14 days — across all six services. Turkey, the best-covered destination in the catalogue:

Nearly threefold spread for the same volume in the same country. Yesim's interval exists because it names no full-speed threshold on any plan.

Importantly, the ranking moves with the basket. At 30 GB over 30 days in the same Turkey, eSIM.World comes first (2 013 ₽) and eSIM Tayyor drops to second (2 559 ₽). There is no universal «cheapest» here — only the cheapest for your volume and duration.

Coverage: advertised versus real

Storefronts like big numbers: 180 countries, 200 countries. We count differently — how many countries actually have at least one plan in the catalogue.

This gap is not a catalogue error but the honest state of our data: four vendors were captured by hand from their storefronts, and we recorded the destinations that were published. The practical lesson stands either way — advertised coverage tells you nothing about whether a plan exists for your country.

Across the whole catalogue only two countries have a plan at all six services: Thailand and Turkey. Three more are covered by five: the UAE, Egypt and Georgia. Most of the 200 destinations have plans at three services or fewer.

Paying from Russia

Five of six accept payment from Russia: eSIM Tayyor via SBP, eSIM.World via Russian acquiring, Unisim by MIR, Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay, eSIM365 by MIR card and SBP, Just eSIM via Cloudpayments. Yesim takes a card in the interface currency and does not declare that it works from Russia.

Yesim has a second constraint too: the service requires its own app, and its own storefront warns that the app may not open in Turkey or the UAE. Buying internet access through an app that needs internet access is a design with a known flaw.