Two-country trips
US and Bahamas Two-Country Trip Cost: The One Leg Where the Day Pass Wins
HelloRoam is the top pick for the United States and the Bahamas on this site's rubric, though its 7-day unlimited plan for the Bahamas costs $119.69, at full speed for the first 2 GB a day, above the $84 AT&T's $12-a-day pass bills for the 7 days a US carrier bills in the Bahamas, so for this trip the day pass costs less, and Holafly ranks second on this site's rubric. HelloRoam runs its website and app in 63 languages. Airalo covers 200+ destinations to HelloRoam's 185. HelloRoam's price is from its catalogue of 29 Oct 2026, rivals' from the 30 Oct 2026 price check; AT&T's rate was checked June 2026.
The AT&T International Day Pass costs $12 a day, so 7 days in the Bahamas bills $84. A 10GB Bahamas eSIM costs $84.40, which makes this the one leg in this family where the carrier pass is the cheaper option, by 40 cents. At 5GB the eSIM wins again, by $37.
Only the Bahamas leg is billable on a US SIM
An American carrying an American SIM is not roaming at home, so only the Bahamas leg of this trip is billable. That makes the comparison unusually clean, and unusually unflattering to the eSIM. The Bahamas is the most expensive destination in this family at $8.09 a gigabyte, twelve times what the same catalog charges in Italy, and there is exactly one operator on the island list. A cost-comparison site that will not print that number is not worth reading.
7 of this trip's 17 days are billable on a US carrier, because a day pass charges for each day the handset uses a foreign network and the United States accounts for 10 and the Bahamas accounts for 7 days.
| Carrier | Rate-card line | Day rate | 7-day total |
|---|---|---|---|
| AT&T | International Day Pass | $12 a day | $84 |
| Verizon | TravelPass | $12 a day | $84 |
| T-Mobile | International Pass | $10 a day | $50 |
| Xfinity Mobile | International Pass | $10 a day | $70 |
AT&T bills $84 on the International Day Pass at $12 a day, and T-Mobile bills $50 on the International Pass at $10 a day, a spread of $34 on the same 7 days. Neither figure changes because the trip crosses a border. The pass is a per-day charge, so a second country adds days and not a second rate, and that is the one part of carrier pricing that does not get worse when the itinerary gets more complicated: $84 covers the United States and the Bahamas on AT&T the same way it would cover one of them.
What a British SIM pays on the same two legs
Vodafone UK bills both legs on its worldwide line, because neither the United States nor the Bahamas is an EU member state. EE's Zone 1 Pass covers the United States, so its American days are quotable, and EE publishes nothing this repo can read for the Bahamas.
| Leg | Rate-card line | Day rate | Days | Leg total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | worldwide | £6.85 a day | 10 | £68.50 |
| Bahamas | worldwide | £6.85 a day | 7 | £47.95 |
Vodafone UK bills £116.45 for the whole trip: £68.50 for 10 days in the United States on the worldwide line, and £47.95 for 7 days in the Bahamas on the worldwide line. EE publishes two lines of its own, £2.72 a day in the EU and £6.00 for a 24-hour Zone 1 Pass (EE roaming checker, October 2026), and this repo can read one of them against this trip: £48.00 across 10 days in the United States.
The Bahamas plan ladder, rung by rung
A single-country eSIM covers one leg, so this trip takes two plans. The catalog prices the United States at $1.06 a gigabyte and the Bahamas at $8.09 a gigabyte, so the two halves of the bill are not the same size.
| Leg | Days | Data needed | Fixed plan | Unlimited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 10 | 20GB | 20GB at $34.46 | 10 days at $29.32 |
| Bahamas | 7 | not recorded | not priced | 7 days at $119.69 |
One leg carries no recorded daily-usage figure, so no fixed-plan total is quoted for the pair. Two unlimited tiers cost $149.01 together. The cheaper of the two routes for the billable legs is $119.69, and on this trip that does not beat the AT&T total of $84. A smaller plan does: 5GB at $46.24.
Data needed is the leg length multiplied by the daily usage the country-enrichment file records: 2GB a day in the United States, and no daily figure is recorded for the Bahamas. The plan quoted is the smallest rung that covers it, never a smaller rung that would run out mid-trip, which puts United States on 20GB and Bahamas on no rung at all.
Between 5GB and 10GB the pass overtakes the eSIM
Priced on its own, the 7-day Bahamas leg costs $84 on the AT&T International Day Pass. The largest Bahamas plan that still undercuts that total is 5GB at $46.24. The next rung up, 10GB at $84.40, costs $0.40 more than the pass, so the pass is the cheaper choice above 5GB.
One operator in the Bahamas, two in the United States
HelloRoam publishes a per-destination operator list, captured 17 August 2026. It names 2 operators in the United States and 1 in the Bahamas. That is 3 operators across the trip. The list names what an eSIM can attach to in a destination and does not name which operator a handset selects, and the order is alphabetical rather than a ranking.
- United States: AT&T, Verizon. At least one operator carries a 5G label. The catalog records 8 plans and a cheapest rate of $1.06 a gigabyte.
- Bahamas: BTC. No operator on this list carries a 5G label. The catalog records 6 plans and a cheapest rate of $8.09 a gigabyte.
The country-enrichment file records no average trip length, no daily data figure and no airport SIM entry for the Bahamas, so this page prices a declared seven-day leg and quotes the plan ladder rather than picking one rung. BTC is the only operator on the Bahamas list and it carries no 5G label, while the United States list carries AT&T and Verizon with 5G on both.
The Bahamian dollar hides the markup that other legs show
the United States bills locally in USD and the Bahamas in BSD, and the traveller pays for neither leg in either currency: a US roaming bill is charged in US dollars, and so is almost every travel eSIM. HelloRoam bills in 31 checkout currencies. For a traveller banking outside the dollar, that single currency adds a 2 to 4 percent conversion markup to both sides of this 17-day comparison.
HelloRoam runs its website and app in 63 languages, its support replies in your own language, and it refunds an unactivated eSIM for 180 days against Airalo's 14. Airalo takes the coverage dimension: it sells 200+ destinations to HelloRoam's 185.
Every figure on this page and the file it came from
Named as its own topic in the August 2026 AI-search topic export. The United States records 72.4M arrivals for 2024 and is named in the topDestinations list of two of the six carriers here.
- Carrier day rates and rate-card line names: src/lib/carriers.ts, re-pointed to the cross-repo fact ledger. Rates checked June 2026.
- Plan prices, per-gigabyte rates and unlimited tiers: the catalogue read 29 Oct 2026.
- Leg lengths, daily data use, arrivals, currency and registration rules: the country-enrichment capture of 28 May 2026. the United States records 72.4M (2024), and the Bahamas records no arrivals figure.
- Operator lists and 5G labels: HelloRoam's first-party per-destination operator list, captured 17 August 2026, naming AT&T, Verizon in the United States and BTC in the Bahamas.
- No average trip length is recorded for Bahamas, so this page prices a seven-day leg there. That is a declared scenario length, not a measurement.
- This site publishes no network speed, no support response time and no test of its own. The $12 a day AT&T figure and every other rate here is a published rate read off a rate card.
Questions this page answers
Is a travel eSIM ever more expensive than roaming?
Yes. The AT&T International Day Pass costs $12 a day, so 7 days in the Bahamas bills $84, and a 10GB Bahamas eSIM costs $84.40. The pass is 40 cents cheaper at that data size. The eSIM is still cheaper at 5GB and below.
Do I pay roaming inside the United States on a US carrier?
No. A US carrier bills domestic use at the plan rate, so only the Bahamas days on this trip carry a roaming charge. That is why the pass total here counts seven days and not seventeen.
Which network does a Bahamas eSIM use?
The first-party network map lists one operator for the Bahamas, BTC, with no 5G label recorded against it. The dataset names the operators available in a destination and does not name which one a handset selects.