Whose plan already works
EU and EEA travellers — plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway — have been covered since June 2017 by the EU's Roam Like at Home rule: a home SIM works in France at domestic rates with no roaming surcharge, full stop. UK travellers lost that automatic cover after Brexit; most large UK networks reinstated EU roaming charges, and O2 is the main exception still bundling EU data into a standard UK plan, so it's worth checking your own carrier's current terms rather than assuming. Non-EU travellers, US carriers included, should assume roaming charges apply unless their carrier sells a specific international or EU add-on — the cost varies enormously carrier to carrier. One more wrinkle worth knowing: the regulated wholesale cap that limits what operators can charge each other for cross-border data is being phased down year by year, from around €1.55 per GB in 2024 toward €1 by 2027, so specific roaming-cost figures quoted in older articles may already be stale.
What the airport kiosk actually charges
At Charles de Gaulle, Orange runs kiosks in Terminal 1 and Terminal 2E selling its Orange Holiday Europe prepaid SIM for €39.99 — 30GB of data plus unlimited European calls and texts for 14 days, activated on the spot with a passport check. Bouygues Telecom sells a near-identical airport SIM for €39.90. Both figures turn up independently across more than one source, which is more confidence than most airport pricing gets. The catch is hours: CDG's kiosks run only 6:00 to 21:00, and most SIM counters across the airport close by evening, so a late arrival can find nothing open until morning. Orly's Orange, SFR and Bouygues retail points work the same way. A Relay convenience store or the small Tourisme desk in Terminal 1 can fill the gap when the main kiosks are shut, though stock and English-language support vary by location. None of this changes the headline: guides comparing airport prices against city shops or pre-booked eSIMs consistently find the airport 30 to 100% more expensive for the same plan.
eSIM or physical SIM
The practical difference between the two is paperwork as much as price. A physical SIM — Orange Holiday included — requires passport registration at the point of sale before it activates, whether that's an airport kiosk or a city shop. An eSIM skips that step: install a QR code before departure or the moment you land, and it's live, no counter or ID check involved. Most travel eSIMs, including the well-known international marketplaces, are data-only — there's no phone number attached, so calls and texts run over WhatsApp, iMessage or similar rather than the regular network. That's fine for most trips, but it matters if you need a real French number, for a restaurant that only takes bookings by phone, say, or an SMS verification code from a French service. For that, a carrier-branded product such as Orange's own Travel or Holiday SIM is the option, not a data-only marketplace eSIM. A phone that supports dual SIM or eSIM-plus-physical-SIM can keep a home number live for calls alongside a local data eSIM at the same time, though leaving the home SIM switched on for calls can still trigger separate roaming charges from the home carrier even while data itself runs locally.
Coverage in the centre, the Metro and beyond
All four national networks — Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free Mobile — cover central Paris well on 4G and 5G. Underground is less even: one field-test source reports Orange and Bouygues holding up best in Metro tunnels, SFR's strong surface signal weakening underground, and Free Mobile trailing all three below ground — worth treating as a general steer rather than a guarantee, since it comes from a single source. A more consistently reported complaint concerns train journeys out of the city: signal drops noticeably once trains clear built-up areas, on any network, so day trips into the countryside are worth planning around patchy coverage rather than assuming a constant connection.
What eSIM plans actually cost
Entry-level eSIM data for France is cheap. Airalo's plans are the most consistently documented across comparisons — a 10GB, seven-day plan runs around $15, and a smaller 5GB data-only allowance has been quoted at roughly $12. Holafly's unlimited plans cost more, around $27 for seven days and $73 for thirty, and only make sense for travellers who genuinely burn through data fast; one independent speed test found Holafly throughput dropping sharply once its fair-use limit kicks in, from about 7MB/s down to under 1MB/s after roughly 4.5GB. Cheaper names turn up often in 2026-dated comparisons — Nomad and SimOptions among them — but several of the sites publishing those figures are eSIM resellers with their own products to sell, so treat specific prices from that corner of the internet as a starting point rather than a fixed number. This is a market that reshuffles fast enough that it's worth checking current pricing close to your travel dates rather than trusting a comparison from months ago. A less common but recurring complaint across reviewers: an eSIM occasionally fails partway through a trip, requiring a support request and a reissued profile — annoying, but not the norm.
Which phones can actually use this
Only handsets with eSIM support and an unlocked network slot can install any of these plans — worth confirming before buying rather than after arriving. A dual-SIM-capable phone, whether that's a physical SIM plus an eSIM or two eSIMs, is what lets a home number stay live for calls while a local eSIM handles data, which is the setup most travellers end up wanting once they realise most marketplace eSIMs carry no phone number at all.
Booking before you land
Given all of the above, the order of operations is straightforward: check whether your existing plan already covers France under EU roaming rules, and if it doesn't, buy an eSIM before you fly rather than queue at a kiosk that might be shut on arrival anyway. Two marketplace eSIMs turn up often enough in independent comparisons to name directly below.
