Bulgaria eSIM and SIM cards: one provider sets the whole price floor

A cheap country, and the data is cheap too

Bulgaria is one of the least expensive places in the EU to eat, sleep and travel, and its mobile data is priced in line with that — provided you buy at the top of the range.

The best per-gigabyte rate we can find for Bulgaria is $0.72, on Airalo's 50 GB plan at $36 over 30 days, read off Airalo's own site. Poland and Croatia sit at $0.70 on the equivalent Airalo plan, and Romania is worse at $1.10. Bulgaria is squarely mid-table for the region rather than an outlier in either direction.

The catch is not the price. It is that the cheap rate lives in one plan from one provider, and everything else here is a good deal more expensive per gigabyte.

What EU roaming is worth here

Bulgaria is in the EU roaming area. An EU or EEA contract gives you your domestic data allowance across the country with no surcharge, subject to your operator's fair-use cap. Given the pricing above, it is worth roughly what it is worth anywhere else in the region — Bulgaria is neither a bargain nor a trap. What you are being spared is the bottom of the ladder, where a gigabyte bought in a 1 GB packet costs $4.

UK contracts are the exception to verify, since operators split on whether to keep EU roaming free after Brexit. Non-European visitors are in the market, and so is anyone on a long stay — Bansko in particular attracts people who come for a season rather than a week, and EU fair-use rules are not written for that. Past a month or so, a Bulgarian prepaid SIM becomes the sensible answer regardless of where your contract was issued.

Vivacom and A1: an actual two-horse race

Most countries in this region have one clearly recommended network and a couple of also-rans. Bulgaria genuinely has two.

Vivacom has the fastest 4G and 5G data speeds in the country and broad nationwide coverage, which makes it the default recommendation. A1 Bulgaria is competitive, and our data describes both as excellent for tourists. Yettel Bulgaria is the third.

An earlier version of this page said every mainstream eSIM provider here — Airalo, Nomad, Saily, Holafly, eSIM Go and eSIMCard — runs on both Vivacom and A1, and told you to stop thinking about network selection because of it. That was not established. Airalo, Saily, Nomad and Holafly publish no host network for Bulgaria or for any other country. The three Bulgarian operators this page once put against Holafly's rows came from our own older data, not from Holafly, whose country pages name nobody. The practical advice survives the correction — network selection is not something a travel eSIM buyer in Bulgaria can act on — but the reason is that nobody will tell you, not that everyone is on everything.

5G is live in Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas. The national average speed is around 38 Mbps — the slowest of the EU countries on this list, though comfortably enough for maps, video calls and everything a tourist does with a phone.

Two seasons, two Bulgarias

Bulgaria has an unusual shape as a destination: a summer country and a winter country that barely overlap.

The summer country is the Black Sea — Varna, Burgas, the resort strip. Our data notes that the Black Sea coast is well covered during tourist season, and that qualifier is doing real work. Seasonal capacity is a thing operators manage deliberately, and coverage described as good in August is not a claim about February. If you are going out of season, expect the network to be quieter and the coverage to be adequate rather than lavish.

The winter country is Bansko, and mountains are mountains. A ski town sits in a valley with lifts running up terrain that blocks signal by construction. Bansko has become a genuine hub for remote workers, which is a strong indication that connectivity in the town itself is solid, but nobody should extrapolate from the town to the upper pistes. If your work depends on being online, that is a question for your accommodation, not your eSIM.

In between sit Sofia and Plovdiv, both with live 5G and both entirely unremarkable from a connectivity standpoint. Plovdiv in particular is the easy part of any Bulgarian trip.

The gaps in the ladder are the story

Provenance decides this argument, so it is worth stating first. The Airalo rows below were read off Airalo's own site on 13 August 2026 and the Nomad rows off Nomad's on 17 August 2026. Only the Saily and Holafly rows are indicative, carried over from existing listings rather than a recorded checkout. Where a verified row and an indicative row disagree, plan against the verified one. Note also that the same allowance sells at several durations for different money, so each row names its window.

An earlier version of this page said Nomad sold nothing above 10 GB here and that the entire top of the market therefore belonged to Airalo. Nomad's Bulgarian range has since been read at its own checkout, and it runs to 20 GB and 50 GB as well as four unlimited windows. Airalo still has the floor — its verified 50 GB at $36 is $0.72 against Nomad's $45 and $0.90 — but it is no longer the only seller up there, and at 20 GB the two are level at $20.

The same read moved Nomad's smaller plans the other way. Its 3 GB month is $9, not the $7 this page used to print, which leaves it at nearly twice Saily's verified $4.99 rather than under it. Its 10 GB month is $16, where this page had $14. So Airalo, not Nomad, is the one to buy at 10 GB, and by more than we thought: a verified $12 over 30 days, or $11 if a 7-day window is enough.

Where Nomad now wins outright is unlimited. Its verified windows are $11 for three days, $18 for five, $25 for seven and $33 for ten, and each of those undercuts Airalo's $11.50, $18.50, $27 and $34.50. Holafly's tiers — a verified $11.90 for three days, $20.50 for five, $27.50 for seven, $36.50 for ten, $50.50 for fifteen and $73.90 for thirty — are dearer than both at every window they share. This page previously listed a 25-day Holafly plan at $68.90; Holafly sells 25-day plans nowhere, and that price was never read off its site. Beyond ten days, Holafly and Airalo are the only sellers.

The bottom line

EU or EEA contract on a normal holiday: buy nothing. This is the answer for most visitors and it dodges a genuinely poor market.

Non-EU visitor, one to three weeks anywhere in Bulgaria: Airalo's verified 10 GB at $12 over 30 days. It is large enough for the trip and it undercuts Nomad's verified $16 for the same allowance.

Heavy user, or a month in Bansko: Airalo's verified 50 GB at $36 over 30 days, which is both the largest capped plan sold here and the cheapest gigabyte in the country at $0.72. Its 20 GB at $20 does the same job for less money if 50 GB is more than you will ever open. Holafly's unlimited windows are the alternative if you would rather not think about it. And if you are staying a season, buy a local SIM instead — Bulgarian airport SIMs run about $9, passport registration is required, and for a long stay the local product will beat anything on this page.

Our cheapest eSIM comparison shows how Bulgaria's pricing sits against the rest of the market, and how we test explains what separates a verified row from an indicative one.