Monaco and Andorra Are on No Europe eSIM Plan at All

A plan covers a list, not a map

Every travel data plan, from any seller, works the same way underneath: it is a set of networks in a set of named destinations. When you buy a plan described as Europe, you are buying access on the networks of the destinations printed on that plan, and nothing else. The border your phone cares about is the edge of a network, not the edge of a continent.

Small countries almost always run their own networks. A principality of two square kilometres has its own operator, its own licences and its own identity in the system your phone reads when it looks for a signal. Being surrounded by France, or sitting inside Rome, changes none of that. Your phone treats the crossing exactly as it treats flying to another country.

That is why the list matters more than the geography. There are five Europe coverage lists on our shelf, and the small places sort into four groups across them: the ones on every list, the ones only on the wide lists, the ones on a single list, and the ones on no list at all. The group a place falls into changes what you should buy far more than its distance from your hotel.

• On every Europe list, at ordinary prices: Malta, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein
• Only on the wider lists: Gibraltar, Jersey, the Isle of Man, the Åland Islands
• On one list out of five: Guernsey, San Marino, Vatican City
• On no list at all, regional or global: Monaco, Andorra, the Faroe Islands, Greenland

Monaco is a separate country to your phone, and priced like one

Monaco is the clearest case, and the one people get caught by most, because the trip that reaches it almost never starts there. You land at Nice, you stay on the French side, and Monaco is an afternoon: the palace, the casino square, the harbour, the climb back up to the station.

Monaco appears on none of the coverage lists we sell. Not the cheapest Europe list, not the widest, not either of the unlimited ones, and not either global list. A plan bought for France, or for Europe, does not name Monaco, so nothing is promised the moment you cross. There is exactly one way to have data inside the principality on purpose, and that is a plan bought for Monaco itself.

That plan is the steepest thing on our shelf. A month of data that costs a few dollars in France costs ten times as much in Monaco at the smallest monthly size, and the multiple widens as the size grows: at the largest size it is more than sixteen times the French price. There is no unlimited option, no week-long option, and no small weekly starter. Half of what exists for Monaco is priced by the day.

So the practical answer depends on how long you are inside those two square kilometres. For an afternoon, most visitors are better off treating Monaco as a place they walk around without data, with everything loaded before they get off the train, because the French plan they already hold covers Nice, Eze, Menton and the whole coastal line either side. For a working day, a race weekend or anything longer, the single-day Monaco plan is the cheapest door into the country, and it is the one to buy before you arrive rather than after.

• Not on any coverage list we sell, regional or global
• Ten times the French price for the same monthly data, and more than sixteen times at the largest size
• No unlimited plan and no seven-day plan exist for Monaco
• Beausoleil, one street uphill from Monte Carlo, is France and is covered by a French plan
• Download maps, tickets and reservations before you cross if you are only there for the afternoon

The four destinations no regional plan reaches

Monaco has three companions in that last group, and they have nothing in common except the consequence. Andorra, the Faroe Islands and Greenland are each sold as their own destination and each sits outside every regional and global list on the shelf.

Andorra is the one that catches winter travellers, because two of the largest ski areas in the Pyrenees are inside it and the drive up from Barcelona or Toulouse takes a few hours. A week of light use costs the same there as it does in Spain, so a small plan is no penalty at all. It is the larger sizes that move: the ten and twenty gigabyte plans run close to four times the mainland price, which is the wrong end to be caught at if a group is sharing one connection in a chalet.

The Faroe Islands are the opposite shape. Coverage is the only thing missing: prices sit within a dollar of ordinary European levels at the small sizes, and the islands have an unlimited option, which Monaco does not. If your North Atlantic itinerary runs Copenhagen to Torshavn, you need a second plan, but it costs about what a second plan anywhere in Europe costs.

Greenland is expensive on any shelf, ours included, and it is the one place in this guide where the gap is large enough to plan around. The smallest monthly plan runs close to seven times the Danish price and the ten gigabyte plan more than ten times. Most Greenland plans cannot be topped up either, so running out means buying again rather than adding to what you hold. Buy for the trip you have actually booked, not for the trip you might extend.

• Andorra: ordinary price for light use, close to four times the mainland price at the larger sizes
• Faroe Islands: ordinary prices, no regional list, unlimited available
• Greenland: close to seven times the Danish price at the smallest monthly size, and most plans cannot be topped up
• Monaco: the steepest of the four, and the only one with no weekly or unlimited option

Jersey and Guernsey: an hour apart, nearly three times the price

The Channel Islands are not the United Kingdom as far as your phone is concerned. They run their own networks, they are listed as their own destinations, and a plan bought for the UK does not name them. The same is true of the Isle of Man. People discover this on the short hop from Southampton or Gatwick, usually at the airport, usually too late to do anything about it.

Jersey is the easy one. It sits at mainland European prices right across the range, a dollar higher at just one size, it has an unlimited option, and it even has a cheap single-day plan, which is the right shape for a day trip. Guernsey, forty kilometres away and an hour by fast ferry, is a different product entirely: nearly three times the Jersey price for the same monthly data, no ten gigabyte step at all, no unlimited plan and no day plan. Its cheapest door is a small weekly plan at half again what Jersey charges.

Coverage splits them too. Jersey and the Isle of Man both sit on the two widest Europe lists and on the widest global list. Guernsey sits on exactly one list out of the five, the wider one that does not carry Morocco, and on no global list at all. So the island you can see from the other island is the one your regional plan is least likely to include.

That produces the only case in this guide where upgrading the regional plan beats buying the local one. Moving from the cheapest Europe list to one of the widest costs about seven dollars more at the smallest monthly size, and it buys you Gibraltar, Jersey, the Isle of Man, Åland, Serbia and North Macedonia as well. A Guernsey plan on its own costs about twice that upgrade. For every other island on this page the local plan is cheaper than the upgrade; for Guernsey it is the reverse, at every size the two share.

• A UK plan does not name Jersey, Guernsey or the Isle of Man
• Jersey: mainland prices, unlimited available, cheap single-day plan
• Guernsey: nearly three times Jersey for the same monthly data, no ten gigabyte step, no unlimited, no day plan
• Guernsey is on one Europe list out of five and on no global list
• Guernsey is the one place where widening the regional plan is cheaper than buying the island plan

Vatican City and San Marino are cheap, and still separate

Both are enclaves inside Italy. Both are sold as their own destinations. Both are priced almost exactly where Italy is: the same at the small monthly sizes, and Vatican City matches Italy even at the largest size we sell. If you were expecting the Monaco pattern, this is the counter-example that kills it. Vatican City is a fraction of Monaco in area and it costs a tenth as much for the same data.

Coverage is the catch instead. Neither enclave is on the cheapest Europe list or on either of the widest ones. They appear on a single list, the thirty-five destination unlimited one, which happens to be the only list on the shelf that reaches Moldova and the only one that leaves France out. So a traveller who bought the ordinary Europe plan is not covered in either place, and a traveller who bought the one list that covers them may not be covered in France.

In practice this rarely needs solving, because nobody spends their trip inside the walls. Your hotel, your dinner, the taxi from Fiumicino and the bar in Borgo Pio are all Italy, and Rimini is Italy on the way to San Marino. Buy the plan that covers the country you are sleeping in, and treat the enclave as an hour or two without a promise rather than a destination that needs its own purchase.

• Both are priced at Italian levels, not at Monaco levels
• Both are on one Europe list only, the unlimited one that leaves France out
• Neither is on the cheapest Europe list nor on either of the widest
• Almost every visitor is in Italy for the rest of the trip, which is the plan that matters

Gibraltar, Åland and the islands that ride the wide lists

A middle group is covered, but only if you bought widely enough. Gibraltar sits on five of the coverage lists, both global ones, the two widest Europe ones and one of the two unlimited ones, but not on the cheapest Europe list, which is the one most people buy for a Spanish holiday. The walk across the runway from La Linea is one of the most common day trips in southern Spain and one of the most common ways to leave a coverage list without noticing.

The Åland Islands sit between Finland and Sweden, run their own network and appear on the two widest Europe lists and the widest global one. Prices there start at ordinary levels and climb with size: the ten gigabyte plan is more than twice the Finnish price and the twenty is close to two and a half times. The Isle of Man behaves the same way on coverage, with a milder premium, and it is the only place in this group where the fastest network listed is 4G rather than 5G.

For all three the arithmetic runs the other way from Guernsey. Their own plans cost less than the gap between the cheapest Europe list and the widest, so if one of these is a single day of a larger trip, the cheap regional plan plus a small local plan is the cheaper build. Widen the regional plan only if two or three of them are on the route, or if Serbia or North Macedonia are as well.

• Gibraltar: on four lists, but not the cheapest Europe one
• Åland: on the two widest Europe lists, with prices that climb at the larger sizes
• Isle of Man: same coverage as Jersey, mild premium, 4G as the top speed listed
• A single day in one of these is cheaper as a local plan than as a wider regional plan

The small places where nothing changes at all

It would be easy to read this far and conclude that small means excluded or expensive. It does not. Malta, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein are on every Europe list and on both global lists, and all three are priced like France, Italy or Spain at the sizes most people buy, with Luxembourg and Liechtenstein a few dollars higher only at the largest. Liechtenstein is under a third the size of the Isle of Man and costs what Germany costs.

The same holds outside Europe. Macau is tiny, sits under its own name in the system, and is on the Greater China list, on three of the five Asia lists and on both global lists, at ordinary prices. Hong Kong is the same. A traveller doing the ferry hop from Hong Kong to Macau is covered by anything that carries either, which is almost everything.

What actually separates the two groups is the local market rather than the size of the country. Malta lists three networks, Luxembourg three, Hong Kong four or five. Monaco, Andorra, Gibraltar, Jersey, the Faroes, Greenland and Åland each list one. But that is a pattern, not a rule, and the exception is sitting in the middle of this guide: Guernsey lists two networks and is one of the dearest places on the page, while Jersey lists one and is one of the cheapest.

• Malta, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein: every list, mainland prices
• Macau and Hong Kong: covered by the Greater China list, all three Asia lists and both global lists
• Places with several competing networks tend to price like the mainland
• The pattern is not a rule: Guernsey has two networks and prices high, Jersey has one and prices low

France, on another continent’s coverage list

There is a second version of this trap, and it catches people who are certain they have done the research. Several French territories are France in every sense that matters for a passport, and none of them is on a Europe coverage list.

Reunion sits on the Africa list. Martinique sits on the South America list. Guadeloupe and French Guiana sit on the Caribbean lists. A plan bought for France, or for Europe, does not name any of them, and a traveller flying Paris to Pointe-a-Pitre is changing continents as far as the coverage list is concerned even though the flight is domestic.

The fix is the same in each case and it is a habit rather than a product: buy for the territory you are standing in, not for the flag on the building. If the plan does not print the name of the place you are going, it does not cover it, however the map is coloured.

One network, and what that means when the signal is poor

There is an honest drawback to the smallest destinations that has nothing to do with price. In most of them our network data lists a single operator, which means there is no second network to fall back on.

At home, when a signal is weak, the fix people reach for is to switch networks by hand in the phone settings. In Monaco, Andorra, Gibraltar, Jersey, the Faroes, Greenland and Åland there is nothing to switch to, so the useful moves are narrower: toggle airplane mode to force a fresh search, move a few streets, or step out of the valley or the underground station you are standing in. Monaco in particular is built in stacked layers, with lifts and tunnels between them, and coverage behaves the way it does in any dense vertical city.

Greenland is the extreme case and deserves a sentence of its own. Coverage there follows the inhabited coastline, so towns are served and the ice sheet and the water between settlements are not. That is not a plan you can buy your way out of, and any boat or trek itinerary should be planned as though there will be hours with no signal at all.

The two-minute check before you pay

All of this reduces to a habit that takes about as long as reading a menu. Write down every place you will physically stand in, day trips included, then read the coverage list on the plan rather than looking at the map. If a place is not printed on the list, assume there is no data there and decide what that is worth to you.

Then price the two builds honestly. For most trips the answer is the cheapest regional plan for the bulk of the route plus one small local plan for the leg it does not reach, because a country plan for a single small destination costs less than upgrading an entire regional plan. Guernsey is the exception, where widening the regional plan is both cheaper and more useful. And if the small place is genuinely an afternoon, the third option is real: load your maps, tickets and reservations before you cross, and spend the afternoon without data on purpose.

One last piece of timing. Match the plan step to the trip you booked rather than to the price you like: a single-day plan for a day, a weekly one for a week. On most of this page the difference between a week and a month is a dollar or two, and on the expensive destinations it is the difference between buying once and buying twice.

• List every place you will stand in, day trips included
• Read the coverage list on the plan, not the map
• If the place is not named on the list, plan for no data there
• Cheap regional plan plus one local plan beats a wider regional plan, except for Guernsey
• Match the plan length to the trip length, and buy before you cross the border rather than after