Skip to content
RoamingAdvice
Roaming Savings Calculator · Roaming Advice Research Team

How much will you save?

Pick your carrier, destination, trip length, and how much data you use. We'll compare your carrier's roaming pass to the cheapest verified eSIMs.

Your savings

Calculate your exact savings

Pick your carrier, destination, trip length, and data usage.

1Your carrier
2Destination
3Trip length
4Data usage
You save
$74.60
on a 7-day trip to Japan
AT&T · 7d
$84.00
Best eSIM · moderate usage
$9.40
The real numbers

What roaming actually costs in 2026

Three carriers, three different ways to charge you too much.

AT&T
$12/day
International Day Pass

Charged any day your phone registers on a foreign network — including background app syncs. No daily cap. 2GB at high speed, then at reduced speed.

T-Mobile
$0–$10/day
Magenta free / International Pass $10/day

Free tier is capped at 128kbps — 2G speeds. Adequate for text. Useless for navigation or photos. Go5G Plus includes 5GB high-speed free. $10/day International Pass unlocks full LTE.

Verizon
$12/day
TravelPass

5GB at LTE, then drops to 3G. Auto-enrolls unless you opt out. One background notification on day one: $12 charged.

The math

The 7-day trip cost breakdown

Same trip, same data, three carriers vs a travel eSIM.

7-day Europe trip cost comparison — carrier roaming vs eSIM, verified May 2026
OptionDaily Rate3 Days7 Days14 Days
AT&T Day Pass$12$36$84$168
Verizon TravelPass$12$36$84$168
T-Mobile Intl Pass$10$30$70$140
Travel eSIM$1.29$9$9–$18$9–$18

Travel eSIM price is fixed per plan — not per day. 14-day trip costs the same as 7-day if data lasts.

Why eSIM wins

Why an eSIM saves 80%+ over your carrier

Carriers charge per day because they can. There is no technical reason international data should cost $12/day — local SIM cards in Europe sell for $1–$2/day wholesale. Your carrier marks up that cost by 600–1,400% and calls it a “Day Pass.”

A travel eSIM buys that same local access directly. eSIM providers connect to the same European networks AT&T uses — Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone — but charge you the wholesale rate, not the retail markup. The data is identical. The network is identical. The price is not.

For a 7-day Europe trip: AT&T charges $84. A travel eSIM costs $9. That is an 89% reduction on a single trip. A 14-day trip widens the gap further — the eSIM price stays flat while the carrier bill doubles.

AT&T 7-day Europe$84
Verizon 7-day Europe$84
Travel eSIM 7-day$9–$18
Your savings$66–$75
The math

How we calculate this

Carrier cost
Daily international rate multiplied by trip length, taken from each carrier's official page.
AT&T $12/day × 7 = $84.00
eSIM cost
Lowest verified provider price for the destination, scaled by your data usage tier.
Travel eSIM $9.40· 10GB · 30 days
Your savings
Carrier cost minus the recommended eSIM. The difference is what you keep.
$84.00 − $9.40 = $74.60
Other carriers

Browse carrier guides

Why trust this calculator?

All carrier rates are pulled from official carrier websites and re-verified monthly. eSIM prices come from providers we've purchased and tested ourselves. The savings calculation is simple subtraction — no tricks, no inflated numbers.

FAQ

Roaming cost questions, answered

How much does international roaming actually cost per day?

AT&T charges $12/day via International Day Pass. Verizon TravelPass costs $12/day with a 5GB LTE cap, then reduced to 3G. T-Mobile Go5G Plus includes 5GB of high-speed internationally at no extra charge. T-Mobile's $10/day International Pass covers additional LTE access. T-Mobile Magenta includes free data at 2G speeds — usable for maps, not much else. These fees apply any day your phone connects to a foreign network, including background app activity.

Why does the calculator show a 7-day trip costing $84 with AT&T?

AT&T's International Day Pass is $12 per day. Seven days at $12 equals $84. There is no weekly cap — each day costs $12 regardless of how much data you use. A travel eSIM for the same 7-day Europe trip costs $9–$18 total, not per day.

Does Verizon TravelPass charge you even if you barely use your phone?

Yes. Verizon charges TravelPass any day your phone registers on a foreign network — including background app syncs, push notifications, and automatic iCloud or Google backups. One notification in the morning triggers the full $12 charge for that day. Disabling data roaming on your Verizon line before landing prevents this.

How accurate are the eSIM prices in this calculator?

eSIM prices come from providers we purchase and test directly. Provider prices are verified monthly from their live checkout pages. The calculator uses the lowest available plan for your selected destination. Prices can vary by region — a Europe-wide plan may differ from a single-country plan for the same destination.

What does 80%+ savings actually mean in practice?

For a 7-day Europe trip: AT&T costs $84, a travel eSIM costs $9. That's $75 saved — an 89% reduction. For a 14-day trip: AT&T costs $168, the eSIM still costs $9–$18. The savings percentage grows with trip length because the eSIM price is fixed while the carrier charges per day.
Stop overpaying for international data.
Two minutes to check your savings. No signup, no email.