# Travel eSIM Rules: What a Country Does to Your Phone

Source: https://esimrules.com/
Author: Nadezhda Semenova — Entrepreneur, co-founder of the travel service Trippy (https://esimrules.com/about/)
Updated: 2026-09-13

> Travel eSIM rules country by country: what the local regulator does to your phone. 204 countries mapped, 11 traps confirmed against primary sources.

## How every country here is checked

Start with the country. The catalogue holds 204 of them, and each one falls into one of three states: mapped, checked, or published. Mapped means we can serve it. Checked means we have run the regulatory probe and know whether a trap exists. Published means a guide is live, sourced and dated.

Ten countries are checked and carry a confirmed trap, sorted into three kinds of rule. All ten have a written guide behind them, each dated against the document it was read from. Türkiye was the first. [The Turkey eSIM page](/destinations/turkey/) covers the packages, the pre-flight checklist, and what to do the moment you land.

[Bangladesh](/rules/bangladesh-imei-registration/), Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan and [Egypt](/destinations/egypt/) sit in the same device-registration group as Türkiye. Oman and the [United Arab Emirates](/destinations/united-arab-emirates/) block calls over messaging apps. [Thailand](/destinations/thailand/) and the Philippines cap how many lines one passport can hold. Every one of the ten now rests on a document we read at the regulator. Qatar sat in the VoIP group and left it: its regulator says in writing that no such rule exists — [the catalogue](/destinations/) says exactly which is which, per country, with no guesswork about the rest.

A regulator blocked roughly 52 eSIM sellers' websites across three decisions between July and September 2025. That block never touched the connection itself. [The mechanism and the dated blocklist are on their own page](/destinations/turkey/esim-ban/).

Stay past 120 days and a separate device-registration regime can apply. It’s tied to the phone, not the eSIM. A two-week trip never reaches it. [The fee and the open question are covered here](/rules/turkey-imei-registration/).

A physical tourist SIM is a different product, bought in person against your passport. [That counter process has its own page](/destinations/turkey/tourist-sim-rules/).

[The Airalo review](/reviews/airalo/) covers what actually breaks once you’re using a plan — installs, refunds, how fast support answers.

Every one of those pages exists for the same reason. A traveller hit the rule first and asked about it after. This site answers in that same order.

## What this site is for

Most eSIM sellers open with a rate table. A country’s rules get a footnote, if they get mentioned at all. This site works the other way. It opens with what a country’s regulator, network or ID system actually does to your phone. We check every claim against a primary source and date it on the page. The eSIM package comes second, once you know what applies to your trip.

The traps this site tracks aren’t rare edge cases. A regulator blocks eSIM storefronts. A country caps phone lines per passport. A device-registration clock outlives most trips. A seller’s homepage has no reason to mention any of that. A guide built to route you past it does.

The catalogue lists every country we can serve, and it never pretends a listing is a guide. A flag with no guide behind it says so on the row. Ten countries carry a rule we track, and all ten rest on the regulator’s own document — and ten of them have a written guide; forty-four more have been read for the opposite reason — we went through the law there and it does not break your phone. Every one joins the same way: the rule first, the source dated, the product page after.

## How we work

A number carries its date and its source right next to it, not in a footnote. The device-registration fee on the IMEI page, for one example, is cited with the Official Gazette notice that set it. A community report is quoted with a handle, a subreddit and a date. It stays a witness, not a fact this site adopts as its own.

Where two sources disagree and there’s no third to settle it, the disagreement gets published. It doesn’t get averaged away or guessed at.

Every regulatory page here says who a rule reaches, first. A rule written for a resident renewing a device registration has nothing to do with someone on a two-week holiday. The page says so up front, instead of leading with the worst case.

Buying a plan through a link here may pay us a commission, or you may end up paying us directly. Either way, that doesn’t change which page you land on first. It doesn’t decide which rule gets reported either. The same test applies to every number on this site, not only the ones about Turkey. [The full policy — sourcing, corrections, and how the commercial side works — is here](/editorial-policy/).

## Who writes this

Pages here are written and signed by [Nadezhda Semenova](/about/) — entrepreneur, co-founder of the travel service Trippy, seven years in business. Her profile says what she is and, just as plainly, what she is not: no certification in telecoms, and this site does not trade on pretending otherwise. What stands behind a page is the document we read and the date we read it on. The editorial policy above says how that gets made and corrected.

Pages carrying a fee or a deadline list their own review date. When a source updates a number, we update the page with it, not on a fixed schedule. When a claim doesn’t hold up, it comes off the page, and the foot of that page names the sources it was last checked against and when.