How I Turned a $912 Annual Expense Into $133 by Spending Five Minutes Before Each Flight

Posted to Indie Hackers · April 2026

This is a short post about a small optimisation that compounded into a genuinely meaningful annual saving — and that I suspect a lot of people in this community are leaving on the table right now without realising it.

The expense is travel data. The optimisation is comparing eSIM plans properly before buying one.

That is the entire premise. But the detail is worth sharing because the gap between what most people pay and what they could pay is larger than almost anyone realises until they actually look.

The background

I run a small SaaS product and do consulting work on the side. I travel internationally about seven or eight times a year — client visits, a couple of industry events, the occasional working trip somewhere I actually want to be.

For the first four years of doing this I had a completely passive relationship with travel data costs. Roaming add-on from my carrier when I remembered to sort it before flying. Airport SIM card when I forgot. Occasionally an overpriced hotel WiFi purchase when something failed mid-trip.

I never added it up. When I finally did — prompted by a quarterly expense review where I was questioning every other line item — the number was $912 for the previous twelve months.

I had been paying that much, every year, without ever asking whether it was the right amount.

The market nobody told me about

Here is the thing about the international eSIM market that I did not know until I looked: it is genuinely competitive, and the price differences between providers for the same destination are enormous.

There are five serious providers operating at meaningful scale right now — Airalo, Saily, eSIMo, aloSIM, and Airhub. Between them they cover 150+ countries with 3,384+ individual plans. The price for a 5GB Japan plan ranges from $12.90 to $23.28 depending on which provider you choose. For Thailand, a comparable plan ranges from $9.50 to over $20. Same connectivity. Same destination. Completely different prices.

Most people never see this gap because comparing properly requires opening five separate apps, cross-referencing plans with different naming conventions, and doing mental maths on value per gigabyte across different data amounts. Nobody actually does that before a flight. So the default — buy from whoever you used last time — persists and the information asymmetry that keeps prices high stays intact.

The tool that fixed this

esim.coupons is a free comparison platform that removes almost all of that friction.

You search a destination — say, Japan or Thailand or Germany — and every plan from every major provider appears on one page with filters for trip duration and data amount. Straightforward so far. But the feature that actually changes the decision is the price-per-gigabyte column shown on every single plan listing.

That column does the maths automatically. Instead of comparing $18 against $12.90 as raw numbers, you are comparing $1.80/GB against $2.58/GB. The correct choice becomes obvious in about ten seconds. Without that calculation done for you, you are guessing. With it, you are making an informed decision.

The platform also shows connection speeds for each plan — the throttled kbps rate after the high-speed data runs out. For anyone running a business remotely, this number matters. A plan throttled to 900kbps after your allowance runs out is effectively unusable for video calls or file transfers. A plan at 2,500kbps handles everything a working professional needs. Seeing both the price and the speed on the same row is the kind of transparency that no provider's own app has any incentive to offer.

The coupon codes are not an afterthought

The eSIM coupons page on the site lists verified, active discount codes for every provider with expiry dates shown clearly. No expired codes left up from months ago. Current working codes include AIRALOESIM10 for 10% off Airalo plans and ESIMCP for 10% off eSIMo and 15% off a first aloSIM purchase.

I check this page before every purchase. The saving per transaction is small — $1.50 to $3 typically. Across eight trips a year that is $12 to $24 in additional savings that required opening one extra tab. Not transformational. But it compounds with the primary saving from the comparison itself.

The destinations that matter most for this community

The platform covers every major destination through its countries directory with dedicated pages for the most popular ones:

France, Spain, Italy, Germany, UK — strong European coverage with multiple providers competing on price making per-GB rates genuinely competitive.

Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore — Southeast and East Asian destinations where the price variance between providers is particularly wide making the comparison especially valuable.

USA, Canada, Mexico — North American coverage with broad plan options across all five providers.

Australia — strong Airhub options for long stays with high data plans suited to extended remote working trips.

For first-time eSIM users — or anyone who has never set one up before — the How It Works page explains the full activation process clearly without technical jargon. The Travel eSIM FAQs covers device compatibility and common setup questions in detail.

What the numbers actually look like

Before finding the platform my average data spend per trip was around $114 including roaming, airport SIM cards, and the occasional backup purchase.

After — using the comparison and applying a coupon code before every purchase — my average dropped to approximately $19 per trip.

Seven trips last year: total data spend went from roughly $798 to $133.

The process takes five minutes the evening before any flight. Search destination on esim.coupons. Filter to trip length. Sort by price per GB. Check the speed column. Open the coupons page. Copy the code. Buy. Scan the QR code when it arrives. Install the eSIM before boarding.

Land at destination. Come off airplane mode. Already connected. No roaming notification. No SIM card queue in arrivals.

The principle worth taking from this

I think about this the same way I think about any market where information asymmetry benefits the seller at the expense of the buyer. The travel data market is one where providers have historically benefited from comparison friction — the fact that comparing five providers properly was inconvenient enough that most people simply did not do it.

esim.coupons closes that gap. It adds the one piece of price transparency that providers have no incentive to add themselves — the per-GB figure — and makes the comparison fast enough that people actually complete it.

That is a genuinely valuable thing to build. It is also a useful reminder that "this is just what this costs" is sometimes a statement about comparison friction rather than actual market price.

There are almost certainly other categories in your expense list that follow the same pattern. Travel data was mine. The fix took one evening of research and five minutes before every subsequent trip.

Worth checking what yours might be.

Compare plans: esim.coupons

Coupon codes: esim.coupons/coupons

All destinations: esim.coupons/countries

Providers compared: esim.coupons/providers

First time eSIM: esim.coupons/how-it-works

What other travel or business expenses have you found significant savings in by actually questioning the default? Curious what others in the community have optimised that most people overlook.

Tags: travel, cost optimisation, tools, remote work, founder lifestyle, business expenses, eSIM, international travel, digital nomad, indie hacker tools