Last updated on 5 September 2026
On September 5, 2026, POVNOMAD queried the German Google Suggest API twice (client=firefox, hl=de, gl=de). This is a German-market study: every figure below reflects searches on Google’s German-language interface and describes what German travelers search for, not global demand. The first survey covered 90 travel countries with four phrasings each — “esim <country>”, “… u”, “… unbegrenzt” (… unlimited), “… 5g” — for a total of 360 queries and 1,314 suggestion rows, 1,175 of them unique. The second survey queried eight topic seed terms with 27 variants each (blank, plus the letters a through z): 216 queries, 1,401 suggestion rows, 1,289 unique.
What gets analyzed here is what Google suggests on its own, before anyone finishes typing — a look at the real phrasings German travelers use, without a survey and without a panel. This study complements the POVNOMAD price study: that one covers what a week of unlimited data actually costs; this one covers what people search for before they buy it at all.
For context: in its March 2026 report, GSMA Intelligence projects that consumer eSIM adoption will double in 2026 — and double again in 2027. That’s a global figure with no Germany-specific breakdown, so it isn’t a market number for this article. But when a technology is moving into the mass market at that pace, it’s worth looking at the exact words people use to search for it.
Data as of: September 5, 2026.
Key findings
- As of September 5, 2026, German-language eSIM search demand exists for all 90 travel countries queried — not a single country came back with zero Suggest results.
- 69 of 90 countries show demand for unlimited data; in 39 of them, “unbegrenzt” (unlimited) or “unlimited” already appears in the unseeded base query “esim <country>”, with no extra letter needed to trigger it from Google.
- The most common word paired with a travel eSIM is “vergleich” (comparison), at 66 of 752 unique base suggestions, ahead of “erfahrung(en)” (review(s)) at 51 and “kaufen” (buy) at 35.
- Airalo appears in organic search suggestions more than twice as often as Holafly — 42 mentions versus 20. That’s search frequency, not a quality judgment.
- For “England” and “Dubai”, demand for unlimited data exists only under the colloquial name, not under the official state names “Großbritannien” (United Kingdom) and “Vereinigte Arabische Emirate” (United Arab Emirates).
- Germany’s three home carriers — Vodafone, Telekom, and o2 — together account for 54 mentions in the base query, more than “unbegrenzt” (unlimited) and “unlimited” combined, at 41.
- “Roaming” and “esim <country>” are two separate search patterns: 38 of 258 roaming suggestions are usage and cost questions about neighboring countries, while the country queries target destinations and purchase intent.
Methodology and conflict of interest
Conflict of interest, upfront. POVNOMAD sells travel eSIMs, and therefore has a financial interest in a study about demand for exactly this product. That’s why this disclosure sits at the beginning of the methodology section, not the end. And it’s why we’re publishing not just the findings, but the raw data they’re drawn from, along with the exact query parameters. If you don’t want to take our word for it, you don’t have to: the dataset can be independently verified.
Data basis. Country survey: 90 travel countries, four phrasings each, 360 queries, 1,314 suggestion rows, 1,175 unique. Topic survey: eight seed terms — “esim”, “esim unbegrenzt” (esim unlimited), “esim unlimited”, “unbegrenztes datenvolumen” (unlimited data), “internet im urlaub” (internet on vacation), “esim oder sim karte” (esim or sim card), “esim erfahrungen” (esim reviews), “roaming” — with 27 variants each (blank, plus the letters a through z), 216 queries, 1,401 suggestion rows, 1,289 unique. Survey date for both runs: September 5, 2026.
Which 90 countries — and why that’s disclosed. How a country list gets assembled determines how much weight a survey can bear, so no dressing this up: there is no formal, pre-written selection criterion for the 90 travel destinations. The list covers common German-speaking travelers’ destinations and was fixed before the analysis, but it wasn’t drawn using a documented procedure. Rather than gloss over that, the full list is in the open dataset (the “abfrage” [query] column of the country survey) — so what’s in it and what’s missing can both be checked. What that mainly reveals: the list isn’t identical to the POVNOMAD catalog — it also includes destinations with no unlimited offer of our own. That’s what produces the eight catalog gaps further down; a list assembled to serve our own interest would likely have left those countries out.
The methodological rule: seeded versus organic. This is the methodological backbone of the study. Some queries were “seeded”: to “esim thailand”, we appended a “u”, the word “unbegrenzt” (unlimited), or “5g” on a trial basis, to check whether Google has any suggestion at all for that combination. A hit on one such single query is a pure existence proof — it shows that the search occurs, not how much it occurs relative to other countries. For frequency comparisons between countries, therefore, only the unseeded base query “esim <country>” on its own counts — 752 rows.
One exception worth naming. A different reading applies to the topic survey. A single seeded country query is one sample point. A complete a-to-z pass for a seed term — all 26 letters plus the blank variant — is, by contrast, an attempt to capture as exhaustively as possible the suggestion vocabulary Google has for that term. Share figures within such a pass (for example: of 199 unique suggestions, 55 carry a domestic marker) are therefore methodologically different from a ranking between individual existence tests: they describe the composition of a fully combed suggestion space, not the frequency of real search queries. Wherever such shares appear below, the seed term and the total count are named alongside it.
What Suggest doesn’t show — and the strongest objection. The Google Suggest API does not provide search volumes. It doesn’t show how often a term is typed, only whether and in what order Google suggests it. This study therefore contains no figure of the form “searched X times a month” — we don’t have numbers like that. The sharper objection goes further, and we’ll state it ourselves: this is Google’s autocomplete algorithm, not a demand measurement, and conflating the two would be a mistake. That objection is valid. Suggest shows what people type, not what they subsequently click on or buy. How Google weights suggestions — popularity, recency, localization, filter rules — is not disclosed, and suggestions are also removed according to Google’s own policies. What’s analyzed here, then, is a filtered slice of typing behavior, not a raw log of demand — every statement below describes what is visible in Google’s suggestion space, and nothing more.
Context relative to existing studies. Research on traveler eSIM use already exists: in July 2026, Kaleido Intelligence published a survey with, by its own account, more than 5,000 participants across 20 leading travel markets, covering more than 15 questions on purchase reasons, spending, and buying preferences. That’s a different approach to the same field: surveys collect self-reported answers, while this study analyzes observed typing behavior. We aren’t aware of a comparable Suggest analysis for the German eSIM market — which doesn’t mean none exists; a negative can’t be proven.
Open dataset. The full dataset, with 2,690 data rows (columns: erhebung [survey], abfrage [query], vorschlag [suggestion]), is available as a CSV: povnomad.com/esim-nachfrage-studie-2026-daten.csv. The data is free to reuse; POVNOMAD asks that you credit the source.
Reproducibility — and one thing we didn’t check. The survey needs no special infrastructure: the same API, the same parameters, one afternoon. Anyone who reruns it on a later date will likely see a different picture — Suggest is a snapshot of a single day. One question we didn’t answer: whether Suggest results already fluctuate within the same day was not tested; there was no control run at a different time. This study assumes stability within a single survey run without being able to prove it.
Organic topic distribution: what Germany searches for alongside eSIM
The table below analyzes only the 752 unique suggestions from the unseeded base query “esim <country>” (as of September 5, 2026). It counts how many of these suggestion rows each term appears in.
| Companion term | Occurrences in 752 suggestions |
|---|---|
| vergleich (comparison) | 66 |
| Home carriers total (vodafone 27 · telekom 19 · o2 8) | 54 |
| erfahrung(en) (review(s)) | 51 |
| airalo | 42 |
| unlimited/unbegrenzt total (unlimited 32 · unbegrenzt 9) | 41 |
| kaufen (buy) | 35 |
| holafly | 20 |
| prepaid | 13 |
| urlaub (vacation) | 4 |
| hotspot | 1 |
| 5g | 1 |
Data as of September 5, 2026. That makes “vergleich” (comparison) the single most common word paired with a travel eSIM search, ahead of the home carriers combined and ahead of “erfahrung(en)” (review(s)) — and clearly ahead of “kaufen” (buy) at 35. Comparing and reading reviews are therefore at least as present in search behavior as purchase intent. That says nothing about time sequence: Suggest provides no sequence data, only how often a term appears within the same 752 rows. Part of the robustness here is that the three top values — 66, 54, and 51 mentions — sit close together: 8.8%, 7.2%, and 6.8%. Their order could come out differently on another date; the gap down to “kaufen” (buy) is more stable.
That comparison-shopping happens before purchase isn’t an eSIM-specific quirk — retail data from the same year backs this up: according to a study by IFH Köln (IFH Köln — a German retail research institute) from June 17, 2026 (sample: 1,000 consumers in Germany), more than one in two people — 59 percent — deliberately plan or compare purchases in advance. This is an analogy from general shopping behavior, not an eSIM-specific measurement.
The line for home carriers stands out: Vodafone, Telekom, and o2 together account for 54 mentions — more than “unbegrenzt” (unlimited) and “unlimited” combined, at 41. Many Germans apparently search for a travel eSIM with their own contract provider first, before landing on a specialized provider. Airalo (42) outranks Holafly (20) in the suggestions.
Top countries by suggestion count
Counted across all four queries per country — base, “u”, “unbegrenzt” (unlimited), “5g” — the following are the top countries by number of suggestions (as of September 5, 2026):
| Country | Suggestions across all 4 queries |
|---|---|
| Thailand | 30 |
| Japan | 27 |
| Turkey | 25 |
| China | 25 |
| USA | 24 |
| Vietnam | 22 |
| Taiwan | 22 |
| Bali | 22 |
| Egypt | 21 |
Data as of September 5, 2026. East Asia dominates the top of the list: Thailand, Japan, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Bali account for six of the top nine spots. That could be tied to travel season — early September is generally considered shoulder-season travel time toward East Asia. The available data can’t confirm that; a repeat survey in February would either support or refute the hypothesis.
The ranking comes purely from the number of suggestions, not from any assessment of travel popularity. A country can generate many suggestions because users try many phrasings — “esim thailand kaufen” (esim thailand buy), “esim thailand vergleich” (esim thailand comparison), “esim thailand unbegrenzt” (esim thailand unlimited) — not necessarily because more people travel there. The table shows linguistic variety, not a travel ranking.
The 39 countries with organic demand for unlimited data
This group is the core of the analysis, so it’s listed here in full rather than just as a number. In these 39 countries, “unbegrenzt” (unlimited) or “unlimited” already appears in the unseeded base query (as of September 5, 2026):
Egypt, Aruba, Australia, Bahrain, Curaçao, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Dubai, England, France, Greece, Guatemala, Hawaii, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Croatia, Maldives, Malta, Morocco, New Zealand, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Austria, Oman, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Seychelles, Spain, Sri Lanka, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey.
With the seeded existence tests added, the number of countries showing an unlimited-data signal rises from 39 to 69 of 90 — not a contradiction, but exactly the distinction the methodological rule draws: 39 show the signal on their own, another 30 only when asked for specifically.
Colloquial names beat official names: England and Dubai
21 of the 90 countries queried show no unlimited-data signal at all, not even in the seeded existence tests: Alaska, Argentina, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland, Jamaica, Jordan, Cambodia, Qatar, Colombia, Cuba, Romania, Zanzibar, Senegal, Czech Republic, Hungary, UAE, Cyprus.
Two names in that list deserve a second look: the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. Queried by their official state names, Google returns no unlimited-data signal for either. Query instead “esim england unbegrenzt” (esim england unlimited) or “esim dubai unbegrenzt” (esim dubai unlimited), and the demand very much exists — which is why both also appear on the list of 39 countries with organic unlimited-data demand, just under their colloquial name.
The contrast is the finding; the explanation for it is an interpretation. It’s a plausible one: travelers apparently type the way they speak, not the way an official registry names a state — “England” instead of “United Kingdom”, “Dubai” instead of “United Arab Emirates”. For any category structure built around search behavior, that’s more than a footnote: the official state name can be semantically correct and still be the wrong term from a search standpoint.
Roaming and “eSIM country” are two different search patterns
The seed term “roaming” yields 258 unique suggestions. 38 of them — a notable share, not a majority — are usage or cost questions: “roaming ausschalten” (turn off roaming), “roaming einschalten” (turn on roaming), “roaming kosten” (roaming costs), “was ist roaming” (what is roaming). The countries in these suggestions are neighboring countries: Switzerland, England, Netherlands, Norway, Turkey. A noticeable share of roaming searches, then, isn’t about buying anything, but about understanding and switching off a feature — and about nearby destinations.
The “eSIM or SIM card” decision phase shows a different picture: 84 unique suggestions, mostly tied to specific countries — Thailand, Egypt, USA, Australia, South Africa, Japan, Sri Lanka. The technology question, then, isn’t asked generically, but decided per destination.
Two search patterns for the same underlying need, then: roaming search, with its visible share of administrative and cost questions about neighboring countries — and “esim <country>” as a purchase-and-decision topic centered on destinations. Optimizing for “roaming” targets a different search intent than optimizing for “esim <country>”.
Further findings from the topic survey
Some region-level phrasings are documented as genuine Suggest results, even though POVNOMAD and most competitors organize their catalogs exclusively by individual country: “esim asien unbegrenzt” (esim asia unlimited), “esim balkan unbegrenzt” (esim balkans unlimited), “esim karibik unbegrenzt” (esim caribbean unlimited), “esim amerika unbegrenzt” (esim america unlimited), “esim europa unbegrenzt datenvolumen” (esim europe unlimited data), “esim weltweit unbegrenzt” (esim worldwide unlimited). These phrasings exist — that’s all the finding says; how often they occur relative to country queries can’t be inferred from seeded hits. What can be stated: this demand is phrased at the regional level, and a country-only page doesn’t answer it directly.
Flexibility shows up as a search motive: “esim unbegrenztes datenvolumen monatlich kündbar” (esim unlimited data, cancellable monthly) and “esim unlimited monatlich kündbar” (esim unlimited, cancellable monthly) are documented suggestions. That’s a signal, not a distribution claim — how much weight it carries relative to other searches is unknown. What remains notable is that cancellability shows up as its own concern at all: worry about being locked into a subscription, not just about a high price.
The generic phrase “unbegrenztes datenvolumen” (unlimited data) is predominantly a domestic search, not a travel search. In the complete a-to-z pass for the seed term “unbegrenztes datenvolumen” (unlimited data) (199 unique suggestions), 55 suggestions carry a domestic marker — Telekom, Vodafone, o2, ALDI TALK, freenet, “ohne vertrag” (no contract), “prepaid” — and only 21 carry a recognizable travel marker such as “esim”, “ausland” (abroad), “urlaub” (vacation), or a country name. That’s a share within one pass, not a volume measurement. It suggests: people searching for unlimited data for a trip phrase it concretely as “esim <country> unbegrenzt” (esim <country> unlimited), not generically.
Four individually documented findings round out the picture. “esim thailand mit telefonnummer” (esim thailand with phone number) shows demand for a reachable phone number alongside the data package. “esim türkei gesperrt” (esim turkey blocked) shows that the topic of eSIM providers being blocked in Turkey has reached search behavior. “esim oder sim karte reddit” (esim or sim card reddit) shows that people deliberately seek out third-party sources for the purchase decision, not just provider pages. “beste esim unbegrenzt” (best esim unlimited) is an open comparison query rather than a brand query. Four individual suggestions aren’t a distribution — but they show the words in which the questions get asked.
Catalog match: 31 of 39 countries covered, 8 open gaps
Of the 39 countries with organic unlimited-data demand, POVNOMAD covers 31 with its own unlimited plans, as of the catalog status on September 4, 2026 (99 unlimited travel destinations). For this mapping: England counts toward United Kingdom, Dubai toward United Arab Emirates, and Hawaii and Alaska toward the USA eSIM.
Eight countries with documented organic demand remain a gap in the catalog: Aruba, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Maldives, Oman, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Taiwan. For Sri Lanka and Taiwan, the gap is a deliberate decision due to sourcing conditions, not overlooked demand. For the remaining six, it’s simple: the demand is demonstrable in the base query, and there is currently no offer for it.
Implications for POVNOMAD’s own catalog planning. Frankly, this box has two audiences: readers, and our own product planning. That’s why it’s kept separate from the findings — so it stays visible where the analysis ends and the business interest begins.
The six gaps with no sourcing obstacle are the obvious next candidates for catalog expansion, based on this study and not on an internal hunch. On pricing: in the POVNOMAD price study from the same date, the median price for one week of Unlimited Smart was €9.90, across 95 countries. For Thailand (rank 1) and Turkey (rank 3, tied with China), the Thailand eSIM and Turkey eSIM product pages list current rates.
Limits of the method
This study shows existence and an approximate ranking of what users type — not search volumes. A statement like “country X is searched more than country Y” here rests solely on the number of Suggest results, not on monthly search queries; we don’t have numbers like that. This self-restriction isn’t a weakness of the presentation but its precondition: better one fewer number than one that’s made up.
The survey is a snapshot of September 5, 2026. A seasonal shift is likely: Thailand and Japan sit at the top, a picture that fits a September survey. Whether results already fluctuate within the same day was not tested. The hl=de/gl=de parameters presuppose the German market; no conclusions about other language or sales markets can be drawn from this data. And what Suggest displays is filtered and weighted by Google according to undisclosed rules — what’s analyzed is what’s visible in the suggestion space, not demand itself.
POVNOMAD is itself an eSIM provider and has a financial interest in the subject of this study; the conflict-of-interest disclosure is at the start of the methodology section. The mentions of Airalo and Holafly reflect search frequency in suggestions only, not quality judgments about those providers.
Frequently asked questions
What does Germany search for most alongside a travel eSIM?
The most common companion word in organic search suggestions is “vergleich” (comparison): 66 of 752 unique base suggestions, ahead of the home carriers combined at 54, “erfahrung(en)” (review(s)) at 51, and “kaufen” (buy) at 35 (as of September 5, 2026). Comparing and reading reviews are therefore at least as present in search behavior as purchase intent. The three top values sit close together, so the exact order could shift on a different date.
What’s the difference between seeded and organic search suggestions?
Seeded queries append a “u”, the word “unbegrenzt” (unlimited), or “5g” to a search term on a trial basis, to check whether Google has any suggestion for it at all — they only prove existence. Organic queries are the plain base phrasing, such as “esim thailand” with nothing added; only these (752 rows) are used for frequency comparisons between countries. For the topic seeds, a complete pass from blank through “z” was collected for each; shares within that describe its composition, not search volumes.
Does this study show how often a term is searched?
No. The Google Suggest API provides no search volumes, only the ranking of what users type on the survey date. This study therefore contains no figures such as “searched X times a month”.
Does Google Suggest measure demand at all?
Only indirectly. Suggest shows what people type, not what they subsequently click on or buy. How Google weights suggestions is not disclosed, and Google filters them according to its own policies. This study therefore analyzes what’s visible in the suggestion space, and does not equate that with measured demand.
Which countries show the strongest eSIM unlimited-data demand?
German-language eSIM search demand exists for all 90 travel countries queried; 69 of them additionally show unlimited-data demand, 39 of those organically. The most suggestions go to Thailand (30), Japan (27), Turkey and China (25 each), and the USA (24), as of September 5, 2026.
Why do England and Dubai behave differently from the United Kingdom and the UAE?
Queried by their official state names, Google returns no unlimited-data signal for the United Kingdom or the United Arab Emirates. Under the colloquial names “England” and “Dubai”, however, the demand very much exists. The contrast is the finding; the natural reading is that travelers apparently type the way they speak, not the way a state is officially named.
Is roaming the same search topic as a travel eSIM?
No. Of 258 unique suggestions for the seed term “roaming”, 38 are usage and cost questions about neighboring countries such as Switzerland, England, Netherlands, Norway, and Turkey. “esim <country>”, by contrast, is a purchase topic centered on destinations. Both search patterns address the same underlying need — being online on the go — but with different intent.
How were the 90 countries selected?
There’s no formal, pre-documented selection process — the list covers common German-speaking travelers’ destinations and was fixed before the analysis. It isn’t identical to the POVNOMAD catalog and also includes destinations with no offer of our own; that’s what produces the eight named catalog gaps. The full country list is in the open CSV dataset.
Which countries doesn’t POVNOMAD cover yet, despite demand?
Of the 39 countries with organic unlimited-data demand, POVNOMAD covers 31 (catalog status as of September 4, 2026). Eight remain open: Aruba, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Maldives, Oman, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, and Taiwan. For Sri Lanka and Taiwan, it comes down to sourcing conditions.
Am I allowed to use the data from this study?
Yes. The full dataset, with 2,690 data rows, is available for free reuse: povnomad.com/esim-nachfrage-studie-2026-daten.csv, with credit to povnomad.com and a link to this study.
Reuse and contact
Findings, tables, and the dataset are free to use, with credit to povnomad.com and a link to this study. POVNOMAD is a German eSIM provider and has a financial interest in the subject; anyone who wants to verify the findings doesn’t need to trust us — they need the open dataset.
Data as of: September 5, 2026, Google Suggest API, client=firefox, hl=de, gl=de.
For press inquiries: service@povnomad.com.
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