AMERICAN eSIM & Roaming Statistics 2026
Sourced, citable figures on travel eSIM pricing, coverage, and real-world speed across Americas. Updated quarterly. Open data, CC BY 4.0.
Price per GB
As of July 2026, the median price of travel eSIM data lands at $4.04/GB, against a mean of $5.94/GB, across an 11-provider panel and 26 countries.
The cheapest destination in this panel is United States ($1.35/GB), the most expensive is Belize ($16.07/GB), a ratio of 1 to 11.9 depending on the destination.
Drift Americas's own catalog runs below the panel median, at $3.60/GB against a market average of $7.90/GB.
Cost of mobile data by market
Across Americas, the price of 1GB of mobile data ranges from $1.35 to $16.07, a 11.9x spread between the cheapest and most expensive markets tracked.
The median price across the region sits at $4.04/GB, closely aligned with the eSIM travel panel median.
Unlimited plans, decoded
Of 44 "unlimited data" eSIM plans surveyed across 18 resellers, 27% publish no quota figure at all before purchase.
Among plans that do disclose a limit, the median daily quota before throttling is 3 GB/day.
Once the quota is used up, throttled speed ranges from 128 kbps to 2 Mbps, with 1 Mbps as the typical value: enough for messaging, rarely for video.
Measured per truly usable GB, the cost of an "unlimited" plan ranges from $0.33 to $2.25/GB, a 1 to 7 spread.
Device compatibility
Weighting each region's smartphone market against official manufacturer eSIM device lists puts North America at an estimated 76.3 to 82.2%, the highest compatibility of any region we track.
South America lands at an estimated 44.2 to 57.7%, in line with our own Mexican study (50 to 60%): a gap of roughly 18.6 to 38 percentage points between the two halves of the continent.
Since the iPhone 14 (2022), Apple has sold no US model with a physical SIM tray at all: in the United States, eSIM is not an option, it is the only one.
The wider eSIM market
By late 2025, only 5% of smartphone connections actively used an eSIM, a share expected to reach 10% by the end of 2026 and to overtake the physical SIM before 2030.
Consumer awareness of eSIM rose from 25% to 60%, yet only 8% first learn about it from their carrier.
Juniper Research forecasts 1.5 billion eSIM-enabled devices in 2026, up 30% year on year.
GSMA projects 76% of smartphone connections will be eSIM by 2030.