Muhammad MudassarFounder and editor, eSIM Watchdog
Muhammad Mudassar
I have been to more than 52 countries and paid too much for mobile data in most of them. eSIM Watchdog is the site I wanted on every one of those trips.
- 52+countries visited
- 236,811plans tracked
- 215destinations covered
- United Kingdombased
- 2017Ambassador of Peace, Tangier
Profile last reviewed September 2026
A spreadsheet that got out of hand
The first time I landed somewhere and turned my phone off airplane mode without thinking, the bill taught me a lesson I did not forget. After that came the airport SIM kiosks, the queue, the passport photocopy, the plan that sounded generous until the fair use policy kicked in on day two.
Somewhere past the twentieth country I started keeping a spreadsheet. Not of places, of prices. What a gigabyte actually cost once I was standing in the arrivals hall, as opposed to what the advert promised. The gap was enormous, and it had nothing to do with quality. The same wholesale data was being resold at four times the price under a nicer logo.
Then I started checking the comparison sites, and found the second problem. Most of them rank whoever pays the most. The site that told me which eSIM was cheapest was being paid to say it. That is the whole reason eSIM Watchdog is built the way it is: the ranking is a calculation, not an opinion, and I cannot overrule it. Neither can anyone who pays us.
The parts a person still has to do
The prices are pulled automatically from provider catalogues and sorted by real price per gigabyte. That part is deliberately out of my hands. What is in my hands:
- Deciding who gets listed. A provider joins the comparison when their catalogue can be read reliably and their terms are clear. Listing is free and cannot be bought, and providers who wanted to pay for placement have been turned down.
- Checking the facts around the prices. Which networks a plan actually roams onto, whether a country demands SIM registration, whether the airport kiosk is a real alternative. Where I could not verify something, it is not on the page.
- Reading the fine print. Fair use limits, throttling after a daily cap, whether a plan can be topped up or dies when it runs out. That detail decides whether a cheap plan is genuinely cheap.
- Moderating reviews. Every user review is read by me. Providers cannot buy, edit or delete them.
- Publishing corrections. When a number here is wrong, it gets fixed and the timestamp shows it.
52 countries, mostly on cheap data
I am not a telecoms analyst. What I have is a long run of landing in unfamiliar places and needing a working connection in the first ten minutes, which turns out to be the thing most eSIM reviews miss. A plan that benchmarks well means nothing if activation fails at passport control, if the QR code needs the wifi you do not have yet, or if support answers in three days.
That is the lens I bring to this site. Not which plan looks best on paper, but which one behaves when you are tired, roaming, and slightly lost.
I live in the United Kingdom, and eSIM Watchdog is run from here as part of Wildcard Marketing Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 13514431.
Ambassador of Peace, Tangier, November 2017
In 2017 I worked on the second International Festival of Ibn Battuta in Tangier, four days in November built around the explorer who was born there and walked further than anyone of his century. The Moroccan Association of Ibn Battuta ran it, under the theme Travellers, Ambassadors of Peace. I built the festival's website and its mobile apps, ran the social media that filled the streets, and organised a team of thirty volunteers across the venues: the Ahmed Boukmakh Cultural Centre for the opening and the conferences, the boulevards of the city centre for the carnival, and a hotel ballroom for the last night.
At the closing gala on 11 November the association named me an Ambassador of Peace. The title was given that week to a small number of people the festival felt had done something for its idea of travel as a way of making strangers less strange.
I mention it here for one reason. This site asks you to trust a person you have never met about which seller to give your money to. The least I can do is show you what I have actually done with the belief behind it: that people who travel properly come home less afraid of each other, and that the phone in your pocket, working from the moment you land, is a bigger part of that than it sounds.
How this site makes money, and what that cannot change
Some links here earn a commission when you buy through them. That pays for the site and it is disclosed on every page where it applies. What it does not do is move a single row in a table. The order is computed from price per gigabyte before anyone knows who is paying, and providers who pay us sit below providers who do not whenever the maths says so.
If you ever find a ranking on this site that you cannot reproduce from the numbers shown next to it, that is a bug and I want to hear about it. The ranking method and the affiliate disclosure are both public in full.
- YesCommission on some purchases, disclosed on every page where it applies
- NoPaid rankings, paid reviews, or paid editorial placement, ever
- NoProvider influence over user reviews: they cannot buy, edit or delete them
- YesProviders who pay us sit below providers who do not, whenever the maths says so
Tell me when I get it wrong
Prices move, providers change their terms, and countries rewrite their SIM rules. If something here is out of date or simply wrong, email hello@esimwatchdog.com and it gets checked. Corrections are published rather than quietly patched, and the price timestamp on every page shows the last verified check.
You can also reach me through the contact page, or read more about the company on the about page.