Muhammad Mudassar

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.

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.

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.