USA & Canada Travel eSIM

You need an eSIM-capable, carrier-unlocked phone: an iPhone XS or newer, a Pixel 3 or newer, or a recent Samsung Galaxy S, Z or A-series flagship. Dial *#06# — if an EID number is listed alongside the IMEI, the phone has an eSIM.

See the full compatibility list.

Ones whose coverage list carries both US and CA. In practice every plan here carries a third entry as well — a Hawaii tag or a Mexico rider — because that is simply how the North American plan families are built. The coverage panel on each plan names whatever it includes.

Because our supplier tags Hawaii under a code of its own rather than folding it into the United States. That is unusual and worth knowing: a product can claim the US and still stop short of Honolulu. On this page the tag is generally present — check the panel — and the Hawaii plans sit separately too.

Not unless a plan names it outright. Puerto Rico holds a separate country code and gets left out of most products badged for the United States — the Puerto Rico plans sit on their own page, and this is the gap that catches more travellers than any other.

Yes — a single balance covers the whole trip. Driving Seattle to Vancouver, or Detroit to Windsor, swaps the carrier your handset is registered with and alters nothing else about what you have left.

The short-hop ones: Detroit–Windsor, Buffalo–Niagara Falls, Blaine–Surrey, and the Vermont and Maine crossings into Quebec and New Brunswick. All are routinely done as day trips, and all put a phone on the other country's network within minutes.

Thin, and the same for any operator. Canadian coverage clusters within a couple of hundred kilometres of the border, with long empty stretches on the Trans-Canada through northern Ontario and essentially nothing across most of the territories. The US mountain west and the Great Basin have their own long gaps. Download offline maps before any long drive.

Around the metros of both countries, on plans badged for it, assuming the handset is band-compatible. Beyond that it is LTE, and on any road trip across either country LTE is what you will spend the overwhelming majority of your hours connected to.

Alaska is under the US code and the Yukon under CA, so both are covered where there is a network at all — which along the Alaska Highway means the settlements, not the distances between them. Plan for offline stretches measured in hours.

None at all. Prepaid mobile carries no identity requirement in either country to begin with, and a roaming profile would fall outside such a rule regardless. Nothing to sign and nowhere to present yourself.

For a trip that genuinely crosses, yes — it saves a second QR code and stops data stranding on the leg you finished. Staying on one side? United States and Canada each have their own page, and the Canadian one repays a look before you commit.

On any plan badged for hotspot use, with shared traffic drawn down at the same rate as anything else.

Whichever partner carrier is strongest where you are standing, which is why this page names no operator. Both countries run three large national carriers, and the profile attaches to one of those rather than to some regional reseller.