Two days ago Clear Roam had a network and no date. It has a front door now: clearesim.com is live, and you can buy a travel eSIM on it today. Pick a destination, pay by card, install the profile before you fly. There is nothing to download, because the app was never the part that had to come first.

What works right now

  • 197 countries, 233 destinations. Search for where you are going, see the plans, and see which carriers you would actually be roaming onto.
  • A daily allowance or a fixed pack, with the full price on screen before you commit. Thailand starts at $0.16/GB, the UK at $0.34, the United States at $0.49 — the current numbers are always the ones on the site, not the ones in a blog post.
  • Card payments through Stripe. Your card details never touch us. The card is authorised at checkout and only actually charged once an eSIM has been issued.
  • Delivery and install. Your eSIM arrives as a QR code you scan with the phone that is travelling, and everything you have bought stays in My eSIMs.

You need an eSIM-capable, carrier-unlocked phone — most phones from the last few years. Your normal SIM stays where it is: Clear Roam is data only, so your usual number keeps taking calls and texts.

Why the web went first

Store review is a queue we do not control. A deploy is. Everything behind the checkout — the catalogue, the pricing, payments, provisioning through eSIMaccess — is the same code the mobile apps will call. Shipping it on the web put it in travellers' hands now rather than after two rounds of review, and it means the riskiest part of this product gets tested on real trips before either app is asked to be somebody's only connection abroad.

What the apps will add

They are still coming, and they are not a re-skin of the website:

  • One-tap install. The QR code is the one clumsy moment in buying an eSIM on the web: the phone that needs the profile is usually the phone in your hand, so you need a second screen to show the code. In the app there is no QR at all — one tap hands the profile to iOS or Android, which opens its own setup sheet with every field already filled in.
  • Live usage. Data left and time left on the eSIM screen, counting down in days and switching to hours on the last one.
  • Low-data alerts, with a top-up that takes two taps.
  • A credit balance you top up once and spend across trips.

Still no date for those

Same bar as always: when there is a build we would take on a trip without a backup SIM in the wallet, it ships — plus however long Apple and Google take to look at it, which we have learned to budget for. The status board on the Clear Roam page is where we keep score, and it now has rather more green on it than it did last week.

Until then, the web app is that build. If you are flying somewhere in the next few weeks, it is open: clearesim.com.