If you’ve been watching the travel eSIM market over the last two years, you’ve probably noticed something that feels a bit… chaotic. Prices that used to hover in the “premium but fair” zone have crashed. Providers that once charged €20 for a 5GB plan are now offering 10GB for the same price—or less. Flash sales are constant. Black Friday lasted three months. And new “brands” appear weekly, all promising the same thing: cheaper, easier, better connectivity. esim market consolidation

This is the part of the story where things get uncomfortable, because behind the scenes, the economics don’t add up. Not for everyone. And definitely not for the dozens of small eSIM brands built on reselling the same upstream profiles with nothing more than a shiny website and a bit of ad spend.

Here’s the truth: 2026 is shaping up to be the year the market could snap. Not in a dramatic, sudden-collapse kind of way, but in a slow, predictable, “we all saw this coming” consolidation that may sweep out a substantial portion of today’s travel eSIM brands. Some industry observers estimate that 30–40% of small providers might struggle to survive if pricing continues downward and competition intensifies. The bloodbath won’t happen because the tech is bad. It will happen because the business models behind many of these providers simply cannot survive the pricing race that’s now accelerating.

Let’s break down why.

Everyone is selling the same thing

This is the elephant in the room. Most eSIM brands don’t own infrastructure. They don’t run core networks. They don’t negotiate their own global roaming agreements. Instead, they buy from aggregators—some well-known, some obscure—and repackage those profiles under a new brand with a fancy landing page.

At first, this setup worked. The market was young, demand was exploding, and being “one more reseller” didn’t hurt anyone. Every brand could find its slice of the pie.

But now? There are hundreds.

And when everyone is selling the same underlying product, differentiation collapses to one thing: price. You can talk UX, onboarding, app design, customer support—yes, those matter. But when a traveler sees the same 5GB Thailand plan from ten providers, and they’re all using the same upstream source, you know what happens. They choose the cheapest. Loyalty doesn’t exist in a commoditized market, and travel eSIMs are becoming one of the most commoditized products in all of telecom.

If your only value-add is being “yet another storefront,” you’re in trouble in 2026.

Margins are hitting the floor

You know what’s funny? Everyone thinks eSIMs are high-margin. And for some providers—especially those who buy at scale or negotiate direct agreements—that’s true. But for smaller brands? Margins are evaporating.

Because upstream wholesalers haven’t dropped prices at the same pace that retail brands have. Many resellers are selling certain regional plans at just a few euros above cost. Some are breaking even, hoping to make up the money on volume. And a few are even selling at a loss to buy market share.

This isn’t sustainable. Not when ad costs are rising. Not when customer support isn’t getting cheaper. Not when chargebacks are a real thing. And definitely not when big players with more capital and better buying power start slashing prices even deeper.

By early 2026, we may reach a point where many small brands simply can’t compete without losing money. And when the math stops working, so does the business.

The big players are gearing up for a takeover

This is the part nobody wants to say out loud, but let’s just say it: the large eSIM companies have been preparing for consolidation for a while. They’re raising funds. Expanding wholesale relationships. Locking in strategic partnerships with airlines, hotels, OTAs, and airports. And most importantly, they’re driving prices in ways smaller brands simply cannot follow.

Once you control distribution, you control pricing power. And once you control pricing power, you control the market.

2026 may become the year when the gap between the “top tier” and “everyone else” becomes unbridgeable. Expect acquisitions. Shut-downs. Mergers are born out of necessity rather than strategy. And providers quietly disappearing after burning through marketing budgets they could never earn back.

App-only brands are about to feel the squeeze

One of the major growth stories in the last two years was the explosion of app-first eSIM brands. Some were innovative. Some were copy-paste clones. But almost all depended heavily on paid performance marketing—especially Meta and Google ads.

Now look at what’s happening:

• CPMs are rising
• Travel audiences are expensive
• CAC is spiraling
• App Store privacy changes are making retargeting difficult

If your average order value is €8 and your cost to acquire a customer is €12, there’s only so long you can hold on.

Ad-dependent eSIM providers without strong organic channels—or real brand loyalty—may be the first to fall in 2026. It won’t be personal. It will be math.

Consumer behaviour is accelerating the collapse

Travelers are becoming smarter. They compare. They search. They read Reddit. They use eSIM comparison tools. The days when you could sell a simple Asia pack for €20 are gone.

Once consumers know that most brands sell the same coverage from the same source, buying “the cheapest decent option” becomes the default. This shift alone may push many mid-tier providers out of the market.

Travelers are also becoming more demanding. They expect:

• instant activation
• stable apps
• responsive support
• seamless refunds
• transparent fair-use
• and in many cases, 24/7 chat

These aren’t features small brands can maintain cheaply. A handful will succeed. Many won’t.

And then AI enters the chat

By 2026, recommendation engines powered by AI will guide users to the best plan for their itinerary, device model, data habits, and preferences. That means fewer impulse purchases and more optimized buying decisions.

If you’re not competitively priced, you won’t even appear in the shortlist. If you’re not reliable, your brand will be filtered out based on real-world performance data. AI will reward efficiency and consistency, and punish low-value middlemen.

In many ways, AI may accelerate consolidation by making the market more transparent.

The survivors will share three traits

Not everything is doom and gloom. The coming shakeout won’t wipe out everyone. The winners will be those who actually add value instead of simply passing along a resold product. The brands still standing in 2026 will be the ones that:

1. Control part of their supply chain
2. Build real distribution and partnerships
3. Create something unique—tech, tools, UX, insights, or ecosystem

A brand with differentiation can survive pricing wars. A brand without it cannot.

So what happens next?

Expect turbulence. Expect headlines about restructuring. Expect discounting so aggressive it almost feels irrational. Expect that some names you’ve seen for years will simply vanish one day.

But also expect a healthier, more transparent, more sustainable eSIM market on the other side of this shakeout. Consolidation isn’t a tragedy—it’s a sign that the industry is maturing. And honestly, the market may need this.

Travel connectivity will only get bigger. eSIM adoption will explode. Devices will go fully SIM-free. Regulation will evolve. But to get there, the industry needs fewer, stronger, more stable players—not hundreds fighting over pennies.

2026 could be the year the market resets. And if you’re watching closely, you’ll see the tipping point forming already.

The bloodbath isn’t coming. It’s slowly unfolding.