Iceland eSIM
Data for Iceland on Siminn and Vodafone, from $5.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and refills land on the line you already have, with nothing new to install.
- Networks
- Siminn and Vodafone
- Typical speed
- 81 Mbps typical, 22 Mbps at busy times
- 5G
- yes, non standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for Iceland
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $5.89 | $5.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $2.63 | $7.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $1.98 | $9.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $1.49 | $14.89 | |
| 20 GB | Never expires | $1.39 | $27.89 | |
| 50 GB | Never expires | $1.16 | $57.89 |
Every plan works the moment you land. Unused data returns to your wallet when the line closes, and customers get at least 100 MB of free rescue data a month even at zero balance.
What 81 Mbps actually means in Iceland
Typical download speed on Orbislo in Iceland: 81 Mbps. That sits close to the Europe median of 71 Mbps, which makes Iceland an unremarkable place to be connected, in the good sense.
The tenth percentile is 22 Mbps. That gap between the median and the floor is normal and it is where the frustration lives: the connection is quick most of the time and noticeably slow in the busiest few percent of moments, typically at transport hubs at peak hour.
At these speeds nothing on a phone is limited by the connection. Video calls are comfortable, a laptop can be tethered for a full working day, and large photo backups finish without planning around them.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in Iceland on Siminn and Vodafone. Your phone is not tied to one of them. When the network you are attached to congests or drops, the profile moves you to the other, and it happens without a prompt and without you noticing anything except that the connection kept working.
This matters more than the headline speed. Almost every travel eSIM sold today resells a single upstream agreement per country, so when that one network has a bad hour you have a bad hour with it and your only option is to buy a second eSIM from somebody else. A profile with more than one network behind it can make a decision you never see.
5G in Iceland: yes, non standalone. Worth knowing that 5G on a travel profile is normal rather than special, and that the tenth percentile above is the number that will decide how the trip feels, not the generation label in the status bar.
What data costs in Iceland
A 1 GB plan for Iceland starts at $5.89, which is $5.89 a gigabyte. That is the number to compare between providers, because a headline price attached to a different allowance tells you nothing.
The comparison most providers would rather you did not run is cost per gigabyte actually used. Independent surveys of travel data put the share of purchased data lost to expiry between 20 and 35 percent, because a plan that expires on day thirty deletes what you did not get through. Orbislo data has no expiry date, so the gigabyte you paid for is still there on the next trip. At the same headline price that is 25 to 40 percent more usable data, and in Iceland it means the effective cost is nearer $4.24 a gigabyte than $5.89.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for Iceland is to buy slightly less than you think you need and top up if you run out. Topping up takes about ten seconds and does not involve installing anything. Buying too much is the expensive mistake everywhere else and merely a neutral one here.
Landing in Iceland
Install before you fly, on your home wifi. The profile downloads while you still have a connection you trust, then sits dormant until you land in Iceland and it attaches to Siminn.
On landing there is one thing to check: data roaming has to be switched on for the Orbislo line. It is off by default on both iOS and Android, and it has nothing to do with roaming charges here, because the plan is prepaid and there is no bill to run up. Turn it on for the Orbislo line and leave it off for your home line, and your home number keeps working for calls and bank codes without costing anything.
One local thing worth knowing before you buy, which we put in the buy flow rather than in the terms: Coverage follows the ring road. In the highlands and parts of the Westfjords there is no mast at all, which is exactly what our satellite fallback is being built for.
Coverage across Iceland
The figures above cover Iceland as a whole, and a national figure hides real variation. We publish separate figures for Reykjavik, Akureyri and Vik, because the difference between a capital and a coastal town is usually larger than the difference between two countries.
Outside the cities, coverage follows the same pattern it does everywhere: the main roads and the tourist corridors are well served, and it thins in the mountains and on the water. No travel eSIM changes that, because it is the same physical network the local population uses. What a multi network profile changes is which of the available towers you get to use.
Worth knowing about Iceland
- Iceland is not in the European Union, but the roaming regulation reaches it through the EEA Agreement. The Icelandic government records that Regulation (EU) 2022/612 was taken in by Joint Committee Decision 189/2022 and has applied across the EEA since 1 July 2022.
- Emergency calls go to 112, and the Icelandic emergency service publishes a full international number, +354 599 0112, for anyone whose phone will not put the short code through.
- Some 4G phones cannot complete a call to 112 in Iceland now that the 2G and 3G networks are gone, a problem the regulator Fjarskiptastofa says only came fully to light in late 2025 and was not fully resolved when it reported in 2026.
- For phones that make ordinary calls over 4G but fail emergency calls over 4G, Iceland promoted the seven digit number 599-0112 as a temporary fallback, though the regulator stresses it is an ordinary call and no substitute for dialling 112.
How Iceland compares across Europe
- Regional typical speed
- 71 Mbps
- Upstream networks
- 2, Siminn, Vodafone
- 5G
- Yes, non standalone
- Next fastest nearby
- Latvia, 82 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- Spain, 79 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 3: Reykjavik, Akureyri, Vik
