How we test and what we earn

What we actually verify and how

Every page carries the date of its last check in the visible text, not just in a schema field nobody reads. If a date looks old, the numbers are old, and you should assume a price has moved.

What we have not done the part most sites leave out

We have not run speed tests across Italy with five eSIMs in five handsets. Nobody producing a page at this scale has, and the ones who imply otherwise are usually showing you one screenshot from one cafe in Trastevere.

So we do not print speed numbers we did not measure, we do not claim a plan "held 5G on the Pordoi pass" unless we watched it happen, and we do not invent test dates. Where coverage information comes from operator maps, the Opensignal report and aggregated traveler accounts, the source line on that page says so, every time.

What we do instead is verify the things that can be checked properly from a desk and that almost nobody bothers with: which network each brand actually publishes, what the fair-use text really says, whether a review score exists at all, and what a local SIM costs in euros rather than in vague terms. On Italy those turn out to matter more than a speed test taken on a different day in a different district, because the interesting variation here is between networks and between price tiers, not between brands.

As we run our own tests they will appear here with dates, and they will replace the aggregated material rather than sitting beside it.

How this site makes money with the rates written down

Affiliate commissions through the Travelpayouts network, and nothing else. No display advertising, no sponsored posts, no paid placements, no guest articles. A provider cannot buy a position in any table here, and none has ever asked.

Commission never changes your price. It is paid by the provider out of its own margin, and the rate is identical whether you arrive from this site or from a competitor's.

The disclosure that does not flatter us our top pick pays the most

Here is the reasoning, so you can judge it rather than take it.

The argument for Yesim is a fact, not a preference. It is the only travel eSIM we can link whose own Italy page names TIM, Vodafone and WindTre. Airalo names one of three. Saily and GigSky name none. That is checkable in thirty seconds on their own websites, and if it stops being true we will change the pick.

It also happens to be the cheapest 30-day 5GB here at $11.15, and the cheapest 1GB at $2.90. So the pick is defensible on price as well as on transparency, which is the only reason we were comfortable making it.

And we publish the case against it on its own page. Yesim has the smallest Trustpilot base of the four, 2,942 reviews against Airalo's 41,885, and its profile was suspended during a fake-review cleanup earlier in 2026 before the score was restored. We publish no cap for its unlimited plans because it publishes none, and we tell you not to buy them. All of that is on the review page, not hidden here.

If that is not enough for you, the honest alternative is right there: GigSky is 80 cents cheaper at 10GB and lets you test 500MB free first. On a city trip we would not argue with anyone who took it.

How the ranking is decided in order of weight

1. Does the brand publish which network you get? On Italy this is the first question, because the difference between TIM and everyone else decides whether a mountain day works. A brand that publishes nothing cannot be the top pick on this site.
2. Price at the sizes people actually buy, which is 5GB and 10GB over a month, not the headline entry price and not the 50GB nobody purchases.
3. Whether the fair-use cap is published, and what it is. An unpublished cap is treated as a mark against the plan, not as a neutral absence.
4. The review record, read for its size and its recurring complaint rather than for the number alone. A 4.3 on 2,942 reviews and a 4.3 on 6,217 are not the same claim.
5. Commission rate: not at all. It is disclosed in the table above and in the section before this one, and it does not enter the ordering. The evidence that this is true is that we tell long-stay travelers to buy a €7.99 local SIM we earn nothing from, on the home page, above the fold on the section that matters most.

When we are wrong and how that gets fixed

Prices move monthly, operators change tariffs constantly, and brands quietly add or remove network partners without announcing it. Everything here carries a date for that reason.

If you find a price that has changed, a network claim that no longer matches the brand's page, a shop or airport counter that has closed, or a coverage experience that contradicts our table, especially from the Dolomites, the Cinque Terre trails, the Sardinian interior or the Swiss border, tell us. Verified corrections ship in the next update and we note what changed.

We also correct ourselves without being asked. This network of sites previously described Yesim's Trustpilot rating as suspended; it was, and it has since been restored, and the wording here reflects the current state with the history attached rather than either version alone.