eSIM Europe (33 countries) — buy with crypto from $1.99, no KYC

This plan covers the 27 states of the EU and the six places travellers add to them: the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Gibraltar. That is the Europe most trips are made of, and it includes the two borders where a SIM from the EU stops being at home — the Channel and the Swiss frontier. Crossing a border changes nothing you have to do: the phone finds a partner network within a minute or two, and the same allowance keeps counting down.

What it leaves out is the east and the edges. Turkey, Serbia, Ukraine and North Macedonia are not on this plan — the larger Europe plan is the one to look at for them — and neither are Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia, Andorra and Monaco. Check the countries below before a drive through the Balkans or a detour to Andorra.

One thing is unusual: this plan's traffic comes out in the United States, as the table above shows. Websites take you for a visitor from America — prices in dollars, the American catalogue on a streaming service, an extra confirmation from a European banking app — and a national broadcaster's player that works only in its own country will not play. Nothing breaks, but it is better known before it surprises you. The plan is prepaid and carries data only.