readynum vs 5sim

Five behaviours, compared

The honest verdict

The ticks in that table are ours to prove, and each one is a commitment enforced in the product: every displayed rate carries a source label, every price renders in the page before any signup, the minimum deposit never exceeds the price of one order, and a failed delivery refunds your wallet automatically — the full policy is on the refunds page. The dashes are not accusations. They mean exactly what the footnote says: we could not verify the behaviour on 5sim's public pages, so we print nothing.

We won't claim to be the only site that publishes a success rate — others in the category publish figures too. The claim we will make is about us: every figure on this site names its source, and where we have none we say so. Today that honesty is mostly visible as the sentence “We don't have data for this route yet” across much of our own pricing table. That is the designed launch state, not a defect: figures appear as real orders accumulate, each with its sample size and time window.

And to be fair to the other column: what we verified about 5sim is genuinely good — better disclosure than most of this category. Their per-operator delivery percentages are published over six time windows, from the last hour to the last thirty days, on a guest endpoint anyone can request without an account or API key. Their prices render on the page before any login, their API documentation is public, and their FAQ publishes an automatic-refund policy in plain words. All of that was read from their own site on 3 August 2026, and you can re-check every word of it.

When 5sim might suit you better

This section is not a formality. There are real cases where the incumbent is the sensible choice:

• You want published route figures before you buy. 5sim's per-operator rate table — delivery percentages over six windows, queryable on a guest endpoint with no account — is a genuine transparency point, and we credit it plainly (read 2026-08-03).
• You need breadth. Their homepage advertises a catalogue of around 180 countries (their figure, read 2026-08-03). readynum currently carries 23+ countries and 39+ services, and we would rather grow that list slowly than pad it.
• You're automating this week. Their API documentation is public, and the price and product endpoints work as guest endpoints you can try before funding anything (read 2026-08-03). Check it directly before taking our word for anything about it.
• You're optimising for the lowest sticker price. Their homepage advertises single numbers from around a cent (their figure, read 2026-08-03). Our prices are public too — compare the two pages directly and decide with both open.

Why every figure here carries a source label

The clearest way to show why is one verified review of 5sim. We quote it not because 5sim is uniquely bad — their disclosure is better than most of this category, and we said so above — but because recycled numbers are this category's standard failure, and no published percentage can tell you whether the specific number you are handed is fresh:

Our answer to that is not a better advertised number — it's the label. On readynum, a rate is either measured from our own orders and shown with its sample size and window, a named supplier's figure passed through and marked as theirs, or the sentence “We don't have data for this route yet”. Most of our routes show the third state today, and we own that. We would rather print that sentence than sell what the reviewer above paid for.

Questions, answered plainly