A couple of years ago, nobody had heard of Saily. The app launched at the end of 2023 as another entry in a market that already had plenty of options. What Nord Security (the company behind NordVPN) understood early is that most of those options were pretty much identical and that travelers deserved something built with the same attention to security and user experience that had made NordVPN one of the most recognized names in its space. That bet has paid off faster than most people expected. Saily has gone from an unknown brand to one of the go-to references for international travel eSIMs in less than two years.
The app covers 200+ destinations worldwide with plans starting around $3 to $4 for a few days of data, and it sits near the top of most best eSIM provider roundups right now for good reason. What has changed is everything around the core product, and the pace at which new things have been showing up in the past twelve months is unusual for a company operating in a space that moves as slowly as telecoms.
The Saily coupon code GIZMODO takes 15% off any plan at checkout, which is the best discount available on the app right now. If you’re in the US for the World Cup, the same code gets you 35% off the North America plan covering the US, Canada, and Mexico specifically.
The Feature Nobody Else Has
The most interesting thing Saily has shipped recently is cruise support and the reason it stands out is that nobody else has done it. Most travelers don’t know this until they’re already on the ship: What happens is that once a vessel crosses 12 nautical miles from the coast, it disconnects from land-based networks entirely and switches to its own satellite-based cellular infrastructure. Your regular eSIM plan stops working at that point, and the ship starts selling you its own Wi-Fi at whatever price it feels like charging. Most people just pay it because they have no other option.
Saily built plans specifically for that gap and covers more than 200 vessels across Royal Caribbean Group, the full Carnival Corporation fleet, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, MSC Cruises, Disney Cruise Line, Virgin Voyages, and P&O Cruises and Cunard Line. That’s essentially the entire mainstream cruise market.
Matas Cenys, Saily’s Head of Product, says it plainly: “Many travelers are surprised to learn that mobile connectivity works differently once a ship leaves port. Standard roaming plans often do not cover maritime networks, and connecting to a ship’s onboard cellular network can result in significant roaming charges. With dedicated cruise plans, travelers can prepare before departure and enjoy connectivity at sea without worrying about unexpectedly high bills.”
Everything Else That’s Changed
The cruise plans are the headline but they’re part of a longer series of updates that have quietly made the app more useful across the board. In June, Saily added the ability to get a real US phone number, a proper +1 line with no contract for $0.84 a month. It sounds like a small thing until you’ve spent twenty minutes trying to get a two-factor authentication code from Venmo on a foreign number. The number is persistent which means it stays the same regardless of which data plan you’re running underneath it, and it works anywhere in the world.
Further back, in August 2025, Saily introduced Saily Ultra which is a premium monthly subscription for frequent travelers that bundles unlimited global eSIM connectivity with a set of travel perks: monthly airport lounge access at over 1,000 lounges worldwide, fast-track airport security passes and a full Nord Security suite including NordVPN.
In May 2026 the app expanded its travel add-on catalog more broadly, letting any user buy airport lounge access and fast-track security passes directly inside the app without needing the Ultra subscription. Around the same time, Saily launched a self-service business platform that lets companies manage eSIM plans for their employees from a centralized dashboard which speaks to how far the thing has come from its origins as a simple international travel eSIM app.
None of this happened by accident. Nord Security spent years building NordVPN into one of the most trusted names in consumer tech, and Saily is essentially that same playbook applied to travel connectivity: start with a solid security foundation, build a product that’s genuinely easier to use than what’s already out there, and ship things fast enough that the gap between Saily and its competitors keeps widening.
In early June, that trajectory was recognized at the MVNOs World Congress in Amsterdam where Saily was named “Rising Star” which is one of the more respected awards in the mobile virtual network operator industry.