You land in Istanbul, install your eSIM, and the first website you open greets you in Dutch. A speed test says you are in Amsterdam. Nothing is broken. This is how almost every travel eSIM works, and once you know why, you can use it instead of being surprised by it.
The short version
A travel eSIM is a roaming SIM. The network in the country you are visiting carries your signal, but it does not connect you to the internet. It passes your traffic through a tunnel to the carrier that issued the eSIM, and that carrier releases it onto the internet from its own gateway, wherever that gateway happens to be. Engineers call this home routing. Your IP address belongs to the exit, not to the place you are standing.
Your own SIM does the same thing abroad. Roam in Thailand on a German contract and your IP address is German.
How rare a local exit really is
One of the carriers we buy from publishes the exit point of every plan, so we counted. In October 2026 our catalogue held 2,800 single-country plans with a published exit. Of those, 133 exit in the country they cover. That is about one in twenty.
Across all 3,184 plans with a published exit, regional ones included, the traffic leaves from a handful of hubs:
| Where the traffic exits | Share of plans |
|---|---|
| United Kingdom, France or the Netherlands | about 45% |
| Singapore | about 27% |
| United States | about 13% |
| Elsewhere in Europe | about 6% |
| Hong Kong | about 5% |
| Israel, Brazil, Japan and others | about 4% |
So a typical plan for Australia or South Korea surfaces in Singapore. Turkey comes out in the Netherlands, Peru in the United States, and Kenya in Israel.
What it changes for you
Websites place you at the exit. Search results, languages, currencies and cookie banners follow the IP address. So do streaming catalogues. If a site insists you are in Singapore, this is why.
Local-only services may refuse you. A bank, a government portal or a broadcaster that only serves local addresses will treat you as a foreigner, even while you sit in its capital. Use Wi-Fi for those.
Your home apps may get nervous. A banking app that sees a login from an unexpected country can ask for extra verification. Annoying, not dangerous.
Latency is higher. Your data travels to the exit and back before it goes anywhere. Browsing and video do not care. Fast online games and voice calls notice when the exit is on another continent.
Some apps block the exit, not you. This is the one that catches people.
The Hong Kong problem
Hong Kong is a common exit for plans across Asia, and several large services do not serve Hong Kong at all. ChatGPT and Claude are not offered there, and TikTok pulled out in 2020. None of that is censorship by the network. The companies themselves decline Hong Kong addresses, and they have no way to tell that you are actually in Tokyo.
That is why many of our Asian plans come in two versions. In the plan picker, one is marked HK IP and the other Non-HK IP. The second exits somewhere else, usually Singapore, and costs a little more. If you rely on those apps, pick it. If you do not, the Hong Kong version is the same network for less money.
What it means for privacy
Two networks handle your connection and they play different roles. The local network talks to your phone, so it sees the device and where it is, and it carries your data onward inside the tunnel. The exit carrier is your actual internet provider for the trip, so it is the one that sees which sites you reach, under the laws of the country where it sits.
Depending on the trip, that is a comfort or a concern. Either way it is worth knowing which country is handling your traffic, because it is rarely the one stamped in your passport that week. If you would rather neither network saw where your traffic goes, run a VPN or Tor on top. An eSIM does not replace one, as we explain in what an eSIM hides and what it does not.
How to check, and how to choose
- To see your exit, open any "what is my IP" site on mobile data. The country it reports is the exit.
- If the apps you need refuse Hong Kong, choose the option marked Non-HK IP where a plan offers one.
- If you need an address in the country you are visiting, a travel eSIM is the wrong tool for that one job. Use local Wi-Fi, or a VPN server in that country.
- If you want the opposite, an address that is not in the country you are visiting, you already have it.
Pick a destination from the full list to see its plans and options.