Every provider is scored on the same six criteria, out of 5. Price (30%) is computed from our price index across 18 destinations; the other five (network transparency, hotspot and flexibility, fair-use honesty, refunds, support) are scored from each provider's own published policies, with the reason printed beside each score. We compare published information; we haven't bought or tested the eSIMs we review. Aventure SIM is run by the team behind Lotso Travel, so Lotso is assessed on the same criteria in words but gets no overall score and no review markup.
The rubric
| Criterion | Weight | What earns a 5 | What earns a 1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price for real trips | 30% | Median two-week cost within 15% of the cheapest provider | Median cost more than 2.5× the cheapest |
| Network transparency | 15% | Names the local operator on every country page | Never names it |
| Hotspot, top-ups, number | 15% | Unrestricted hotspot, top-ups and a number option | Capped hotspot, no top-up, no number |
| Fair-use honesty | 15% | Publishes a generous daily cap and a usable speed after it | No threshold published, or pages that contradict each other |
| Refund terms | 10% | Long window, cash back to the card | Short window, unused plans only, or credit only |
| Support and app | 15% | Published 24/7 human support and an app | Slow or unstated hours, no app |
The overall score is the weighted average, rounded to one decimal. Scores of 2–4 sit between those descriptions; every review prints the reason for each score in its scorecard.
How the price score is calculated
The price score isn't a judgement. For each of our 18 destinations, our engine finds each provider's cheapest plan that covers a 14-day trip, at two usage levels: light (0.5 GB a day) and heavy (1.5 GB a day, counting only plans that stay at full speed). It divides that cost by the cheapest provider's cost in the same destination, takes the median of those ratios across all the destinations where we could read the provider's prices, and maps it to a score:
| Median ratio to the cheapest | Score |
|---|---|
| Up to 1.15× | 5 |
| Up to 1.45× | 4 |
| Up to 1.9× | 3 |
| Up to 2.5× | 2 |
| Over 2.5× | 1 |
The light and heavy scores are averaged and rounded. Using two usage levels stops the score from punishing unlimited-only providers (Holafly, Airalo, Maya Mobile) for being sold to heavy users, or rewarding fixed-data providers for being cheap only at low use.
One limitation, stated on its review: we could read Ubigi's prices for only 5 of the 18 destinations, so its price score rests on those five.
Where the data comes from
- Prices: each competitor's public country page, read by hand on 31 October 2026, every plan shown, in US dollars, with the URL stored next to each offer. Where a price couldn't be read or was shown only in another currency, we left it out rather than estimate. Lotso Travel's prices come from its production catalogue, filtered the way lotsotravel.com filters what it sells, at the public price an anonymous visitor sees (Lotso charges referred customers less; we don't use that).
- Policies: refund, support, fair-use, hotspot and top-up rules, read from each provider's own help centre, terms or plan pages on 1 November 2026 and linked from every scorecard. When a provider's pages disagree, we quote both and score the less generous one.
- Coverage and route facts: national parks, governments, mobile operators and dated reports from local trek operators, named and dated on each guide.
- Satellite devices: makers' US pages and dated third-party breakdowns where a maker doesn't print prices (Garmin), named on the page.
All of it lives in typed data files in the site's code (products.ts, prices.ts, satellite.ts), and every table, scorecard and comparison renders from those files. A price changes in one place and changes everywhere.
What we don't do
- We don't claim to have tested an eSIM unless we did. Every review says "we compared published prices and policies".
- We don't publish star ratings or Review markup for a product we own.
- We don't take affiliate commissions. No link on this site earns us money.
- We don't rank Lotso first by default. It's ranked by the same rule as everyone else, which puts it first in Europe and the UK and near the bottom in Nepal, Tanzania and Canada.
- We don't change the "updated" date unless the content changed. The updates page lists what changed and when.
How we handle our own product
Lotso Travel is run by the team behind this site, which competes with every provider in our tables. To keep that from bending the comparisons:
- Lotso's data comes from the same file and goes through the same engine as everyone else's.
- Every page that mentions Lotso carries a disclosure box and says the relationship in its own words, and Lotso rows are labelled "Ours" in every table.
- Lotso's review lists its weaknesses first-class: data only, no network named, no app, vague refund terms, slower support, and some of the highest prices in our index.
- Where a competitor is the better buy, including Maya Mobile against Lotso in Nepal, we say so on the page where it matters.
Update cadence and corrections
Prices move weekly. We refresh the price index as a dated snapshot rather than editing numbers quietly, and the date on the index, every scorecard and every comparison says which snapshot you're reading. Policies are re-read when we refresh prices, and whenever a reader tells us something changed.
If something here is wrong, email the editor (contact details on his page) with the page and your source. We correct errors that favour Lotso as fast as ones that don't, and log the fix on the updates page. Who we are and how the site is funded: about; the editor: Mahmoud Halat.