Most eSIM apps want you to buy a new plan before every trip, then watch the leftover data expire the week you get home. Yesim’s answer is a wallet. You load a balance once, install one eSIM, and it bills you at the local rate in whichever of 170-plus countries you land in. Nothing expires. Nothing needs reinstalling.
That alone makes it worth a look. What makes it genuinely different from Airalo, Holafly, Saily and Nomad is the second product sitting alongside the data: virtual phone numbers that receive SMS, from €6 a month, for signing up to WhatsApp, Telegram, Google, PayPal and about forty other services without handing over your real number.
Both are good. One rule in the small print is not, and we’ll get to it.
Yesim Promo Codes: 10% Off First Purchase
Yesim runs public codes rather than a single permanent one, and they stack with the referral credit rather than replacing it.
| Promo Code | Discount | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| YESIMSPECIAL10 | 10% off | First purchase, new customers |
| LOCALS | Locals Insider reader code | Apply at checkout |
Enter LOCALS at checkout as our reader code; if it doesn’t apply to your plan, fall back to YESIMSPECIAL10 for the 10% new-customer discount. No expiry dates are published for any of them, so check the total on the checkout screen before paying — discounts show as Ycoins credited to the account.
The referral program is the more interesting one if you travel with other people. Each friend who buys earns €5 for them and €5 for you, and every five friends triggers an extra €50 bonus, for a maximum of €75. No code needed.
Yesim Pay & Fly: one eSIM balance for 170+ countries — 10% off with LOCALS
Top up once, install the eSIM once, and pay local rates wherever you land. Unused balance carries over to the next trip instead of expiring — and virtual numbers for SMS verification start at €6 a month.
- €0.92/GBPay & Fly rates from
- 170+Countries, one eSIM
- No expiryBalance carries over
- 4.3/5Trustpilot, 2,990 reviews
Buy now, install later: the eSIM profile counts as activated once installed, which ends the 30-day refund window.
What Is Yesim, and Who Runs It?
Yesim launched in 2019 inside Genesis Group AG, a Swiss telecoms infrastructure company based in Baar, founded by Dmitri Verbovski and Max Pankratov. It is an official GSMA member and aggregates more than 800 carriers and roaming brokers rather than owning any network itself — which is standard for the category, and the reason coverage can be excellent in one country and ordinary in the next.
One number worth treating carefully: the homepage claims 4 million+ users, while trade coverage reported Yesim passing one million users during 2025. Both can be true if growth has been steep, but it is a gap worth noticing in a market where every provider quotes its own headline figure.
Yesim Travel Rewards & Offers: Earn Ycoins on Hotels, Transfers and Tours
After your first purchase with our promo code, where you get 10% off, you can start earning Ycoins and getting more out of the account. Book an airport transfer through KiwiTaxi and you get 10% of what you spend back in Ycoins.
For example, book experiences with GetYourGuide and it’s 6%, hotels and tours with Trip.com 5%, car hire with Discover Cars 4%. You can also earn by inviting friends — €5 for each one who buys, €5 for them, and an extra €50 once five have signed up.
All of these Yesim deals goes into the same balance you use for data, so a €90 transfer gives you back €9, which in Spain buys another six gigabytes. Just check the partner’s price before you book, because 10% back on an expensive fare isn’t really a saving.
Yesim Pay & Fly
This is Yesim’s actual differentiator, and no major competitor offers the same shape.
Instead of buying a country plan, you top up a balance. Install the Pay & Fly eSIM once, and from then on it charges you the local per-GB rate wherever you are. A €20 balance in Spain, at €1.50 a gigabyte, is 13.33 GB. Fly to Turkey the same week and the same balance bills at €3.00 a gigabyte instead. Nothing re-installs, nothing expires, and unused money sits in the account until the next trip.
Rates start at €0.92/GB across 170+ countries. A sample of what the per-gigabyte pricing looks like:
| Country | Pay & Fly rate |
|---|---|
| Spain | €1.50/GB |
| Turkey | €3.00/GB |
| Portugal | €3.50/GB |
The suggested starting balances:
| Top-up | Yesim’s guidance | Roughly covers |
|---|---|---|
| €15 | Short trips, maps and messaging | 6–8 short trips |
| €35 | Week-long trips, social and browsing | 2–3 week-long trips |
| €75 | Long or multi-country travel | A year of travel |
Who this suits: anyone doing three or more countries a year, long layovers, or short city breaks where you need navigation and a ride app rather than streaming. Yesim’s own rule of thumb — 1 GB is about 30 hours of navigation, 50 hours of messaging, or 3 hours of streaming — is honest enough: Pay & Fly is a utility plan, not a Netflix plan.
Who it doesn’t: if you are sitting in one country for a fortnight using data heavily, a local plan or an unlimited daily pass will cost less per gigabyte. Pay & Fly buys convenience, not the lowest unit price.
What Yesim costs
The three plan types
| Pay & Fly170+ countries, pay per GB from your balance | €0.92/GB |
| Unlim Day Pass83 countries, unlimited data by the day | €2.48/day |
| Global Plus146 countries, one package | €2.72/GB |
Pay & Fly: what a gigabyte costs
| Spain | €1.50/GB |
| Turkey | €3.00/GB |
| Portugal | €3.50/GB |
Country eSIMs, daily rates from
| Thailand | €1.40/day |
| United States | €1.50/day |
| Japan | €1.83/day |
| United Kingdom | €1.90/day |
| Germany | €1.90/day |
| Turkey | €1.90/day |
| Vietnam | €1.90/day |
| China | €2.10/day |
| Egypt | €2.30/day |
| United Arab Emirates | €2.93/day |
| Cape Verde | €6.16/day |
| Cuba | €26.00/day |
Pay & Fly top-up tiers
| Light travelerShort trips · maps & messaging | €15.00 | 6–8 short trips |
| Regular travelerWeek-long trips · social & browsing | €35.00 | 2–3 week-long trips |
| Frequent travelerLong or multi-country trips | €75.00 | A full year of travel |
Travelling from the US? Yesim prices and bills in euros, so the dollar figures here are a conversion, not the price on your statement. Your card issuer sets the rate on the day and many US cards add a foreign transaction fee of 1–3% on top — a card with no FX fee is worth using. Charges appear from a Swiss merchant, which can trip fraud alerts: let your bank know, or expect to approve the first one. Converted at €1 = $1.1125, 28 October. Yesim’s own prices are set in euros and change by destination.
The Other Plans: Day Passes, Global and Country eSIMs
| Plan | Coverage | From |
|---|---|---|
| Pay & Fly | 170+ countries | €0.92/GB |
| Unlim Day Pass | 83 countries | €2.48/day |
| Global Plus Package | 146 countries | €2.72/GB |
| Country eSIMs | 180+ destinations | See below |
Daily country pricing, as listed on the site:
| Destination | From |
|---|---|
| Thailand | €1.40/day |
| United States | €1.50/day |
| Japan | €1.83/day |
| Turkey, UK, Germany, Vietnam | €1.90/day |
| China | €2.10/day |
| Egypt | €2.30/day |
| United Arab Emirates | €2.93/day |
| Cape Verde | €6.16/day |
| Cuba | €26.00/day |
Cuba is not a typo. It is the single most expensive eSIM destination in almost every provider’s catalogue, and it is a useful reminder to check the rate before you fly rather than after you land.
Hotspot and tethering are included, SwitchLess moves you automatically to the fastest available network including 5G, and iOS users get a built-in VPN — Android users do not.
Yesim Virtual Numbers: A Second Phone Number Without a Second SIM
This is the part that has nothing to do with travel and may be the reason you sign up.
For €6 a month, you rent a real mobile number that receives SMS, inside the Yesim app or on the website. No physical SIM, no eSIM slot used, no ID verification or KYC. Numbers are available for specific services, and the catalogue runs past forty of them:
WhatsApp · Telegram · Signal · Instagram · Facebook · TikTok · Google · Apple · PayPal · Amazon · Airbnb · dating apps — all at €6 a month, with longer subscriptions available and auto-renewal to keep the account connection alive.
The practical uses are obvious once you see them. Signing up to a service that demands a number you’d rather not give it. Registering for something in a country where you don’t hold a local line. Keeping a work contact separate from a personal one. Running a business registration abroad without routing it through your own mobile.
Yesim says more than 40,000 users have taken virtual numbers since 2019. Two honest caveats: a rented number is only yours while the subscription runs, so letting it lapse can lock you out of any account tied to it; and some platforms actively block numbers from virtual ranges, which is the most common complaint on Trustpilot about this product — verification SMS that never arrive. Treat it as excellent for secondary accounts and risky as the only number on an account you can’t afford to lose.
Reviews and Ratings: Does Yesim Have a Good Reputation?
| Platform | Score | Volume |
|---|---|---|
| Trustpilot | 4.3 / 5 | 2,951 reviews |
| App Store & Google Play | 4.7 | 60,000+ ratings |
On Trustpilot, 76% are five-star and 11% are one-star — a slightly more polarised spread than Holafly’s, which sits at 4.7 across 103,000 reviews. Yesim replies to 92% of negative reviews, usually within a week.
What reviewers praise: setup speed, the app itself, support that genuinely answers in minutes across 22 languages, and the flexibility of paying only for what you use.
What reviewers complain about: throughput in congested areas, with the US East Coast and Thailand named repeatedly; payment failures at checkout with certain cards and countries; and refunds. That last one deserves its own section.
The Catch: Read the Refund Rule Before You Install
This is the single most important thing in this review.
Yesim refunds unused, unactivated plans within 30 days — but installing the eSIM profile counts as activation. Install it at home to get the setup out of the way before a trip, change your plans, and you may have no refund route at all. Independent German review site esim-urlaub.de flags this as Yesim’s main drawback, and it matches the pattern of refund complaints on Trustpilot.
Second rule: refunds of €10 or less are returned as Ycoins, in-app credit rather than money back to your card. Fine if you’re a repeat traveler. Annoying if you tried Yesim once and want out.
What to do about it: buy the plan, but don’t install the profile until you actually need it. Yesim’s Activate Later option holds the plan for 12 months, which is the correct way to use the service — and worth knowing before you tap install on the sofa the night before you fly.
The fair use position is softer than most: Yesim states no fixed high-speed threshold on unlimited plans, but the terms allow it to restrict excessive use, and speeds can drop under heavy load. Some third-party trackers report throttling to 3G after roughly 1 GB a day on certain unlimited plans. If guaranteed unlimited speed matters more than price, that is Holafly’s territory, not Yesim’s — and the LOCALS code works there too.
Yesim vs Airalo, Holafly, Saily and Nomad
| Provider | Model | Entry price | Standout | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yesim | Pay-per-GB wallet, day passes, country plans | from €0.92/GB | One balance, 170+ countries, never expires; virtual numbers | Install = activation for refunds |
| Holafly | Unlimited data, daily | from $3.90/day (Europe) | Truly unlimited, 200+ destinations | Costs more for light use |
| Airalo | Fixed data bundles | from ~$4 | Largest catalogue, best known | Data expires with the plan |
| Saily | Fixed data bundles | from $1.99 | Cheapest entry, NordVPN-backed security tools | Smaller network depth |
| Nomad | Fixed data bundles | low per-GB on large plans | Good value on bigger bundles | Fewer regional options |
The split is clean. Holafly if you stream and hotspot and refuse to watch a meter. Saily or Nomad if you want the cheapest gigabyte for one trip. Airalo if you want the broadest catalogue and don’t mind data expiring. Yesim if you travel often, hate losing leftover data, and want one profile that works everywhere without being reinstalled — plus a virtual number nobody else in this list offers.
If your travel is mostly within one continent, our comparison of the best eSIMs for Europe sets Yesim against the five providers that matter there; for longer routes, the best global eSIMs for international travel covers the same ground worldwide. Every current discount across all of them sits in our eSIM promo codes roundup, updated as the codes change.
Worth knowing if you bank with them: Revolut now sells eSIM data inside the banking app, which is the one route that needs no extra app at all.
Yesim Reviews: What Do Users Say?
| Platform | Score | Volume |
|---|---|---|
| Trustpilot | 4.3 / 5 | 2,990 reviews |
| App Store & Google Play | 4.7 | 60,000+ ratings |
On Trustpilot, 76% are five-star and 11% are one-star — a sharper split than Holafly’s, which sits at 4.7 across 103,000 reviews. Yesim replies to 94% of negative reviews, usually within a week.
What reviewers praise: how quickly it sets up, with plenty of travelers activating before landing and having signal as they taxi to the gate; support that answers in minutes across 22 languages; and the flexibility of paying only for the data you use. Repeat customers are common, which counts for more than any single review.
What reviewers complain about: price, from travelers who found a local SIM cheaper; throughput in congested areas, with the US East Coast and Thailand named repeatedly; and throttling, where one reviewer reports speeds dropping to 50 kbps after a daily limit on a plan sold as unlimited.
What We Say? Our Yesim Review
Yes, for frequent travelers — with one rule attached.
Pay & Fly is the most sensible thing anyone has done with travel data in a while. One eSIM, one balance, no expiry, local rates in 170-plus countries. If you take three or more trips a year, or your travel is the unpredictable kind where the next destination isn’t decided yet, it removes an entire category of admin. The virtual numbers are a genuine bonus and the main reason to keep the app installed between trips.
Skip it if you want guaranteed unlimited speed on a long stay in one country, or you’re buying a single eSIM for a single holiday — Saily or Nomad will cost you less for that.
And whatever you do, don’t install the profile until you need it. Buy now, activate later, keep the refund window alive. That one habit turns the worst thing about Yesim into a non-issue.
