Mobile data abroad: what it costs and how not to overpay

What 10 GB over two weeks costs

The price of data depends heavily on the country, and that is not the seller's markup but the wholesale cost of traffic from local operators. The Middle East is traditionally expensive; Europe and Southeast Asia are cheaper.

The spread within one country is also wide. In the UAE the cheapest option is 1 821 ₽ at Yesim and the dearest 7 483 ₽ at Unisim: fourfold for the same volume.

What makes up the price

Package or gigabytes

Five services sell «volume × period» packages. Unisim sells a single balance with no expiry, drawn down at a per-gigabyte price in the current country: 1.15 $ in Turkey, 1.35 $ in Italy, 1.51 $ in Kazakhstan, 3.72 $ in China, 8.36 $ in the UAE.

A package is usually cheaper if the vendor has exactly your size. If not, you pay for the excess. Example: at 30 GB over a month in Turkey, eSIM.World has an exact package at 2 013 ₽ while eSIM Tayyor has to offer a 50 GB one at 2 559 ₽ — and that is the whole reason the first wins.

Duration

If your trip is longer than the vendor's longest package, you buy twice. The catalogue accounts for this by multiplying rather than refusing: 10 GB over 60 days in Turkey at eSIM Tayyor is 1 118 ₽, i.e. two purchases of 559 ₽. Here Unisim's single balance wins: it has no expiry, and the same basket costs 1 343 ₽ with no repeat purchase.

The exchange rate

Some vendors publish prices in dollars. We convert at the Central Bank rate of 79.86 ₽ on 1 August 2026. Unisim is a special case: it declares its own 12.1 % markup over the rate and bills at 89.51 ₽ per dollar.

What «unlimited» actually means

Almost always it is not unlimited but a daily allowance at full speed followed by throttling. From the catalogue:

• eSIM Tayyor — 1–3 GB a day at full speed, then 512 kbit/s. Of its 1 111 plans, 166 are «unlimited» and all of them are daily. It is the only vendor that discloses both numbers — the threshold and the speed beyond it.
• eSIM.World — 2 GB a day at full speed, then 512 kbit/s. Sources disagree on that figure: support and the blog say 512, a third-party review from April 2026 says 384 kbit/s.
• eSIM365 — 1 Mbit/s after the threshold. The gentlest throttling in the catalogue.
• Just eSIM — 32 kbit/s after the threshold. Thirty times slower than eSIM365; at that speed text messaging works and little else. The threshold itself is not named.
• Yesim — no threshold named on any plan, depending on the partner network.

In the catalogue an «unlimited» plan with an undisclosed threshold does not close a volume basket: a promise without a number cannot be compared with a package that has one.

What happens to what you do not use

At eSIM.World unused traffic is forfeited — stated outright in the terms. Other package vendors do not disclose it, but the «volume × period» model implies the same. The exception is Unisim: its balance has no expiry and does not lapse, which is its main advantage for irregular travel.

Two more things that ruin plans:

• eSIM365 — a profile must not be deleted before its term ends; reinstallation is impossible.
• Yesim — refunds only for an unactivated product, and activation counts from the first network connection. You cannot test it and then return it.
• eSIM.World — the profile QR code lives 89 days before activation.

How to use less

1. Download offline maps and material at home — that is the single largest consumer on a trip.
2. Turn off app auto-updates and photo sync over mobile data.
3. Check whether tethering is allowed: declared at eSIM.World, Unisim, eSIM365 and Just eSIM; undisclosed at eSIM Tayyor and Yesim.
4. Buy a package matched to the trip length: at package vendors the remainder is forfeited.
5. For a multi-country route, compare regional packages against buying per country — Just eSIM, for instance, sells «All Europe» and «Worldwide» as separate plans.