Holafly’s new Travel eSlM Value Index starts with a genuinely good question: why do travellers still compare eSIMs by the price printed on a product card when that price often tells them very little about what a trip will actually cost?

The 2026 report compares Holafly, Saily and Airalo across five weighted categories: Pricing Efficiency at 35%, Included Benefits at 25%, Customer Experience and Travel Flexibility at 15% each, and Connection Readiness at 10%. Holafly finishes first with 91.1/100, followed by Saily at 86.7 and Airalo at 78.6. The report says the category weights were fixed before data collection, while full source-level data is available on request rather than published alongside the scorecard.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a provider publishing its own benchmark. Holafly clearly identifies itself as the publisher. What matters is whether the methodology supports the size of the conclusion being drawn from it.

That is where things get more interesting.

A clever premise

The strongest part of the Index is what Holafly calls real-trip pricing.

Instead of taking one advertised package and comparing it with another, the methodology calculates what someone travelling for between one and 30 days would actually need to buy. In its worked 11-day example, Holafly costs $39.85, while Airalo costs $47.63 and Saily $48.59, because the latter two are represented by 15-day packages in that scenario. Across the trips analysed, Holafly says its exact-day model produced median savings of 10% to 33% versus the equivalent fixed-duration alternatives.

That is useful. A seven-day headline price tells you surprisingly little if your holiday lasts 11 days.

But there is a catch: trip duration is only one dimension of value.

A traveller spending 20 days checking Maps, WhatsApp and email may be perfectly comfortable with 10GB. Someone spending five days uploading video, tethering a laptop and joining Teams calls has a completely different requirement.

Both are taking a “real trip.” Their real connectivity costs are not necessarily defined by the number of days alone.

And this is where the scope matters.

READ MORE: The Latency Report: Ranking Global eSIMs by Jitter and Packet Loss for Remote Professionals

The final Index compares three providers. That is not automatically a methodological flaw; useful benchmarks do not need to contain every brand in a category. But a three-provider study can establish which provider performs best among those three, under those scoring rules. It cannot, on its own, establish which eSIM represents the best value across an increasingly diverse travel connectivity market.

Holafly’s own accompanying article is careful at one important point, describing its result as the lowest median real-trip cost among the providers analysed. That qualification matters.

Where the scoring bends

The scorecard raises several other questions.

Included Benefits evaluates eight features. Holafly and Saily each include six and receive 100/100. Airalo includes five and receives 83.3. In other words, the scoring is evidently normalized relative to the top result rather than calculated simply as the percentage of eight criteria met. That is a legitimate scoring approach, but the report does not spell out the normalization formula.

There is a second issue: the eight features are effectively given equal status.

Unlimited data, hotspot support, a VPN, calls/SMS, top-ups, regional plans, global plans and emergency backup data all contribute to the category. Yet their practical value is highly dependent on the traveller. A remote worker may consider tethering more important than several of the other features combined.

Travel Flexibility is also worth watching. Holafly receives credit for allowing an exact trip duration, while Airalo and Saily receive credit for extending an active plan. All three score 50.

Nothing is inherently wrong with that. But Holafly’s exact-duration product design already contributes strongly to its Pricing Efficiency result. The same characteristic therefore influences value in one weighted category and flexibility in another. Readers should understand that when interpreting the final score.

Customer Experience is narrower again.

READ MORE: Mapping the Global eSIM Ecosystem: Market Growth and Drivers

The category combines Trustpilot performance with refund-policy generosity. Those are useful signals, but they are not the whole customer experience. The Index does not measure installation success, average support response time, issue resolution, app reliability, failed activation rates or how quickly approved refunds actually reach customers.

The refund numbers themselves also need context.

Holafly allows a change-of-mind refund request for up to six months, but a full refund under that route requires the eSIM not to have been activated. Saily offers a full refund within 30 days where the eSIM has not been installed or the data plan activated. Airalo gives consumers a 14-day withdrawal right, but that right expires earlier if the eSIM is activated. So 180 vs 30 vs 14 days is a genuine policy difference, but it does not mean an activated eSIM can simply be returned at any point during those windows.

The weakest claim

The most debatable conclusion in the report is this:

“Network quality is no longer the primary differentiator.”

Holafly’s Connection Readiness category measures destination coverage, activation, multi-network support and 5G availability. All three providers receive 100/100. The report then argues that network access has become broadly comparable because leading travel eSIM brands use many of the same underlying mobile operators.

But those indicators do not actually measure network quality.

They do not tell us about latency, routing, packet loss, congestion, network priority, throttling, local breakout, the depth of partner networks in a particular country or how reliably a profile attaches after landing.

“5G available” tells you that 5G can be accessed somewhere within the product footprint. It does not tell you what the user’s 5G experience will be.

Unlimited plans make this distinction particularly clear.

READ MORE: How to Spot a Fake Unlimited Data eSIM and What Real Unlimited Looks Like

Airalo’s default unlimited-data policy currently provides 3GB of unrestricted-speed data per 24-hour period before reducing speed to 1 Mbps, unless a particular package states another threshold. Saily’s current Europe unlimited offer similarly provides 3GB per day without a speed limit followed by unlimited data at up to 1 Mbps. Holafly says unlimited plans have no fixed data cap, but acknowledges that local operators can temporarily reduce speeds under their own fair-use policies; it also tells travellers to check destination-specific hotspot allowances because hotspot usage is not universally unlimited.

Those are material product differences.

The report can reasonably conclude that the three providers have similar connection readiness according to its four chosen indicators. It is much harder to use those indicators to conclude that network quality itself is no longer an important differentiator.

What the market is actually doing

This matters even more because the eSIM market is expanding while the products inside it are becoming less alike.

Trusted Connectivity Alliance estimates that global eSIM shipments reached 605 million in 2025, up 18% year on year, while consumer eSIM profile downloads increased 43%. GSMA, citing GSMA Intelligence, puts global eSIM smartphone penetration at 5% at the end of 2025 and expects it to reach 10% by the end of 2026.

At the same time, the commercial models are diverging.

Roamless, for example, offers pay-as-you-go credits that are consumed per MB and do not expire. Yesim’s Annual Global Unlim Day Pass lets travellers buy packages of unlimited-data days and use those days individually across trips during a 365-day validity period. Ubigi currently sells both fixed-data Europe products and unlimited Europe plans. Saily combines conventional fixed-data options with unlimited plans and has also introduced its higher-tier Ultra offer with monthly data and additional travel benefits.

READ MORE: Yesim Unlim Day Pass: Flexible Travel eSIM Data Options

These are not merely different prices for the same thing.

They are different ways of buying connectivity.

That is why the next generation of value benchmarking probably needs to move away from asking for one universal winner and towards traveller profiles.

A stronger framework could compare light, moderate and heavy data users; occasional holidaymakers versus frequent travellers; people who need tethering; travellers who want a balance that survives between trips; and users for whom measured network performance matters more than the headline amount of data.

It could also publish the destinations and raw calculations used for pricing, distinguish pre-purchase flexibility from in-trip flexibility, and add real network measurements such as latency, routing and packet loss.

If the objective is to determine the best value eSIM across the wider market, the provider sample would eventually need to become wider too.

Conclusion

Holafly has done something useful here.

The real-trip-cost idea is considerably more informative than lining up promotional “from” prices and pretending the cheapest number automatically wins. For the three providers examined, the result is also clear: Holafly scores highest under the Travel eSIM Value Index methodology.

But that qualification — under this methodology — should travel with the score.

Pricing Efficiency carries the largest weighting and naturally rewards Holafly’s exact-day model. Customer Experience is represented primarily through Trustpilot and refund policy. Connection Readiness is treated as evidence for a much broader conclusion about network quality. And the final benchmark contains three providers in a market where the commercial models are becoming increasingly difficult to compare on one axis.

So 91.1/100 is best understood as Holafly’s performance within this particular framework, against Saily and Airalo. It is not a market-wide score against every credible travel eSIM available in 2026.

Holafly could still be excellent value for someone who wants unlimited data and the ability to buy exactly the number of travel days required.

A light-data user may reach a different answer. So might a frequent traveller who wants non-expiring credit, someone buying reusable connectivity for several trips, or a remote worker more interested in latency and routing than whether a plan has a 5G checkmark.

And that is probably the most useful lesson from the Index.

The travel eSIM market is becoming too varied for “best value” to have one universal meaning.

The more useful question now is:

Best value for whom?