Canadian SIM or travel eSIM: the actual numbers

The context that shapes every option

Canada has some of the world's most expensive domestic mobile plans. That is not a complaint about tourists specifically — it is the market residents live in, and it sets the floor under everything a visitor can buy. Expect to pay more per gigabyte here than in most of Europe, whichever route you take.

The upside is that buying is easy. No ID is required for a Canadian prepaid SIM, so an airport kiosk purchase is a genuine walk-up transaction rather than a passport-scanning exercise.

Local SIM: about $25, and coverage is the reason to bother

Four carriers appear in our data: Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, Telus, and Freedom Mobile as the budget option with more limited coverage. An airport SIM runs about $25, with no ID needed.

You will also see budget sub-brands on the shelves — Fizz Mobile in Quebec, Koodo as a Telus subsidiary, and Lucky Mobile. Our source does not tell us how their tourist terms compare, so we will not pretend otherwise.

Rogers, Bell and Telus together cover 99% of Canada's populated areas, and Bell and Telus share rural tower infrastructure under a reciprocal agreement. Rogers has the widest 5G footprint. For the Rocky Mountains, any of the Big 3 covers the main tourist routes. The national average speed is 48 Mbps.

Where nothing covers you: remote wilderness far from population centres, the northern territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), remote northern Quebec and Ontario, and backcountry hiking routes inside the Rocky Mountain national parks. No SIM or eSIM fixes those. If your trip goes there, the answer is a satellite messenger, not a better carrier.

eSIM: cheap to start, not cheap to scale

Airalo's Canada rows below were read from its own site on 13 August 2026, Saily's on 16 August 2026 and Nomad's on 17 August 2026. Holafly's figures are indicative, on a real storefront we have not yet read. eSIMCard's have been withdrawn — we read its site on 18 August 2026 and the figures we held were wrong. eSIM Go sells wholesale to resellers and publishes no consumer price — checked on esim-go.com on 18 August 2026, where there is no basket, no checkout and no per-country page — so its rows cannot be bought or ever verified. See our eSIM Go page.

Saily's Canadian prices are new to this table in the sense that matters: we had been carrying indicative figures for it, and reading its own site on 16 August moved them sharply upward. It is now the dearest capped seller in this table above 5 GB. Per gigabyte that works out at $3.10 and $2.20 on its two largest plans, against $2.30 and $1.85 for the equivalent verified Airalo ones. Treat Saily as a small-plan option in Canada or not at all.

Two more things stand out. First, the cheapest per-gigabyte rate anywhere in this dataset is $1.38, on Nomad's verified 50 GB plan at $69, against $1.68 for Airalo's verified 50 GB at $84. An earlier version of this page put the floor at $1.50 a gigabyte on Nomad's 20 GB month; that figure was never checked. In several European markets we cover, the equivalent rate is under a dollar. Canada is simply a dearer place to buy mobile data.

Second, unlimited is competitive here in a way it usually is not. Holafly's 30-day unlimited at $67.90 sits below Airalo's verified Canada Mobile 50 GB at $84.00, a dollar and ten cents below Nomad's verified 50 GB at $69.00, and below Airalo's own unlimited month at $86.00. If you genuinely expect to use more than about 40 GB in a month, unlimited wins on price. The catch is hotspot: Holafly does not support tethering, so a laptop-dependent traveller cannot take that deal.

Canada Mobile, Canada Mobile Plus, and the gap between them

Airalo sells Canada under three package names. Two of them, Canada Mobile and Canada Mobile Plus, sell the same capped allowances at consistently different prices. (The third, plain Canada Mobile, is the unlimited ladder — $19 for three days up to $86 for thirty.)

Same data, same duration, up to 63% more money. All eight of those figures are verified. What the premium buys is not stated by Airalo — it publishes the names and the prices and nothing about how the packages differ — so we will not tell you that Plus is faster or better covered, because we do not know that. What you can do is read the package name before you pay: if the app is offering 10 GB over 30 days for $31, that is Canada Mobile Plus, and Canada Mobile sells the same 10 GB over the same 30 days for $23 as a separate listing.

Verdict by trip type

Short city trip, Toronto or Montreal. An eSIM. Saily's verified $5.29 for 1 GB over 7 days for a light week, or Nomad's verified $8 for 3 GB over 30 days if you would rather have room, or Holafly unlimited if you are streaming and do not need to tether.

Two weeks or more. The per-GB maths favours a bigger plan rather than a local SIM at $25 with unknown allowance. Nomad's verified 20 GB at $31.00 or Airalo's verified Canada Mobile 20 GB at $37.00 are the sensible tiers.

Rockies, Banff, driving the interior. A local Big 3 SIM. Bell and Telus share rural towers, Rogers has the widest 5G, and all three cover the main tourist routes — but a local SIM puts you on the full home network rather than a wholesale slice of it.

Full Canadian coverage detail and the complete provider list live on the Canada hub.