Switch vs 9eSIM vs eSTK.me: Which Physical eSIM Card Should You Buy?

Verdict: if you're technical and want maximum control, buy eSTK.me or 9eSIM — both publish their chip vendor, capacity and ARA-M details, and both work with open-source LPAs, which means the card outlives the company that sold it. Switch competes on capacity-per-dollar at the top of its range (Ultra: 2 MB, 50 profiles, $23.97) and on business supply — bulk, IoT, pre-loaded cards, turnkey reseller kits — where the other two don't really play. If you want a card the enthusiast community has stress-tested, it isn't Switch yet.

Disclosure: published by Switch eSIM. Competitor specs come from vendors' own published data and the open-source projects cited at the end, accurate as of [DATE].

The three-way table

	Switch (Ultra)	9eSIM V3	ESTKme Max
Vendor	Plan B (Switch eSIM)	9eSIM / SIMLINK	ESTKme Technology Ltd, HK
Chip vendor	[UNPUBLISHED]	Kigen, made in UK	Thales (per EID 89033023)
EID prefix	[UNPUBLISHED]	89044045	89033023
Capacity	2 MB (stated)	~1.5 MB (1500–1520 KB)	1600 KiB
Max profiles	50	50	up to 60
ARA-M	[UNPUBLISHED]	Published hash `d1c0f48b…d31f`	ARA-M editing supported
Open-source LPA	[UNKNOWN]	Yes — ships own signed EasyEUICC build	Yes — hosts OpenEUICC mirror
STK menu	Implied by LPAe — [VERIFY]	Yes	Yes
Reader needed?	[VERIFY] · Bluetooth reader bundle $28.54	USB-C reader for iPhone writes (+$9)	Reader, or iLPA on iOS (~$9.99)
Price	$23.97	~$18–24	HKD 200 (~$26)

Full ranges: Switch Pro $13.57 (15 profiles) · Max $20.97 (15, iOS+Android) · Ultra $23.97 (2 MB, 50). 9eSIM V0 (Eastcompeace, 420 KB, 15 profiles, no ARA-M, near-free) · V0 Max (~~1 MB, ~~$18) · V3. ESTKme C beta 512 KiB (~~$9) · Plus+ 1024 KiB, 13–26 profiles (~~$18) · Max.

Note the sourcing asymmetry in that table. It is the article's actual finding.

The cards, one by one

9eSIM. Three tiers on one software stack. V0 is a rebadged Eastcompeace commodity chip — cheap, 420 KB, no ARA-M. V2/V3 move to Kigen silicon made in the UK, ~1.5 MB, 50 profiles, and a published ARA-M hash. One honest nuance the marketing skips: 9eSIM ships EasyEUICC signed with its own keystore, so the official EasyEUICC build won't necessarily talk to an inserted 9eSIM card — you use their signed build. Still open, still auditable, but not identical to "works with upstream out of the box." Support runs through Telegram.

eSTK.me. Hong Kong. The deepest published spec sheet of the three — per-model capacity, COS version, EID prefix, ARA-M editability, and a full product history going back through twenty-odd revisions. Premium GSMA chips (G+D, Thales) buy real-world compatibility with strict carriers; independent reviewers specifically flag NTT Docomo acceptance, which trips up cheaper chips. Uniquely, eSTK.me can be written from an iPhone via a paid third-party LPA app (~$9.99) as well as by reader. The estkme-group GitHub org mirrors OpenEUICC (~940 stars) — they're inside the open ecosystem, not adjacent to it.

Switch. Pro/Max at 15 profiles, Ultra at 2 MB / 50 profiles, plus a White Card line and pre-loaded cards. Marketed on breadth rather than internals: "any device with a SIM card slot," 190+ countries, Android and iOS. Max and Ultra are described as including LPAe, which if accurate is architecturally the most interesting claim any of the three makes for iPhone users. No chip vendor, EID prefix or ARA-M status is published.

Which one do enthusiasts actually recommend?

Straight answer: 9eSIM V2/V3 and eSTK.me Plus/Max. Not Switch.

That consensus isn't brand loyalty, it's a response to one event. 5ber — the category's early leader — collapsed in late 2024, and buyers holding cards that only worked with 5ber's app were left with hardware they couldn't reprovision. Everything the technical community now values follows from that:

A published ARA-M hash means an independent LPA can be authorised to talk to the card. Without it, an inserted card is reachable only by the vendor's own app — or by pulling it out and using a USB CCID reader, which EasyEUICC can access regardless of ARA-M.
A known chip vendor predicts carrier acceptance. Kigen, Thales and G+D pass strict-carrier checks that commodity silicon fails.
Open-source LPA support means the card survives its vendor.

Two caveats, because the community view isn't gospel. Forum sentiment is largely non-English (linux.do, Chinese-language blogs), anecdotal and small-sample; the recurring line that eSTK.me is "more stable, you get what you pay for" is a plausible impression, not a benchmark. And regulars will readily tell you that a ¥15–30 Taobao white card writes the same profiles — what you're buying from the branded vendors is QC, warranty and someone to answer when it fails.

Switch's absence from these conversations is partly just newness in this niche. But it is also a direct consequence of not publishing the three numbers the niche uses to evaluate cards.

Where Switch genuinely wins

Capacity per dollar at the top. Ultra at 2 MB / 50 profiles / $23.97 is, on published figures, more storage than 9eSIM V3 for about the same money. If the number is right, it's the best raw-capacity buy here. If.

Business supply, which the other two barely address. Plan B sells turnkey eSIM operations — from ~$5,000 for 1,000 adapters plus a branded scanner app and issuing dashboard — alongside a White Card line and 200+ institutional clients. 9eSIM's support channel is Telegram; eSTK.me is a boutique Hong Kong shop. Neither is set up to supply a fleet, invoice a procurement department, or honour a volume warranty. For IoT deployments, MVNO launches and corporate rollouts, Switch is competing in a different market and largely winning it by default.

Pre-loaded cards. A card shipped with a working destination plan, ready on landing, is a genuinely different product for non-technical travellers. Neither competitor offers it.

Bundled Bluetooth reader at $28.54, versus a $9 USB-C add-on (9eSIM) or a paid third-party iOS app (eSTK.me).

Limitations, all three

Switch: unpublished chip vendor, EID prefix and ARA-M status; no confirmed open-source LPA compatibility; the LPAe claim is glossed incorrectly on Plan B's own site; Ultra isn't listed on the Shopify store; profile counts vary between pages (one lists 10). No independent teardown or community testing exists.

9eSIM: V0 is commodity silicon with no ARA-M — don't buy it expecting V3 behaviour. Requires 9eSIM's own signed EasyEUICC build. Telegram-only support. Bluetooth models "upcoming," i.e. not shipping.

eSTK.me: iPhone writing needs a paid third-party app or a reader. Prices in HKD, so your card statement will differ. Small company, single region.

All three: profile counts are estimates — actual capacity depends on profile size. Disabling a SIM slot with an active profile can strand that profile on Android 13+. Some carriers refuse non-native EIDs regardless of card quality.

Learn more: