Russia eSIM
Data for Russia on MTS, MegaFon, T2 and Beeline, from $7.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and you install Orbislo once rather than once per trip.
- Networks
- MTS, MegaFon, T2 and Beeline
- 5G
- 4G only
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for Russia
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $7.89 | $7.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $4.30 | $12.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $3.78 | $18.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $2.89 | $28.89 | |
| 20 GB | Never expires | $1.84 | $36.89 |
Every plan works the moment you land. Unused data returns to your wallet when the plan ends, and there is 100 MB of free rescue data on your account even at zero balance.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in Russia on MTS, MegaFon, T2 and Beeline. 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 Russia: 4G only. A well provisioned 4G cell comfortably outruns a congested 5G one, which is why the figure above is measured throughput rather than a network generation.
What data costs in Russia
A 100 MB plan for Russia starts at $0.30, which is $0.00 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 Russia it means the effective cost is nearer $0.00 a gigabyte than $0.00.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for Russia 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 Russia
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 Russia and it attaches to MTS. Median time from tapping install to having service across all Orbislo orders is 41 seconds.
On landing there is one thing to check and it is the thing that goes wrong about sixty percent of the time people tell us they have no service: 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.
Coverage across Russia
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.
Getting a local SIM in Russia
A mobile contract with a foreign national or a stateless person is signed on presentation of an identity document, and the details have to be confirmed against the state identification system and the national biometric system before service starts. Signing that contract over the internet is not permitted, so the counter visit cannot be skipped.
What is restricted in Russia
- Handset registration by IMEI: The contract has to record the handset the SIM will be used in, by its device identifier. Putting that SIM into a different handset is only allowed once the new identifier has been added to the contract, and the operator is required to withhold service while the device does not match what the contract says.
Worth knowing about Russia
- A foreign national or stateless person may hold no more than ten Russian mobile numbers in total, counting both numbers taken out directly and numbers handed to them for use by a company subscriber.
- The rules covering how a foreign national gets a Russian mobile line were added to the federal law on communications by law 303-FZ of 8 August 2024, and that part of the law took effect on 1 January 2025.
How Russia compares across Europe
- Regional median
- 71 Mbps
- Upstream networks
- 4, MTS, MegaFon, T2, Beeline
- 5G
- No, LTE only, with 5G frequencies allocated in August 2026
- Cities with their own page
- 3: Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk
