Do you mean for traveling to Australia or for Australians?

If you mean traveling to Australia then you may not want to bother but it depends on your needs. You can buy pre-paid physical sims at the local supermarkets, Coles or Woolworths. Coles often have offers. Then it depends on the coverage that you want. Telstra based sims have the best coverage if you're traveling to more remote places. If you're just in the cities it doesn't really matter. Boost and Belong are both Telstra based and their sims can be bought at discounts at Coles. Boost includes calls to many countries but you have to pay A$5 more for Belong.

AIS from Thailand.

Any tips for visitors to Australia needing ESIM? Couldn't see whether Vodafone did ESIM for monthly only, and looking for South WA coverage.

Yeah I got a Vodafone deal, like half off, at Coles.

I guess the supermarket chains use those to bring people into the stores. They seem to run them all the time. When I first visited Australia, like 15-20 years ago, the prepaid mobile data market wasn't very competitive.

Now you can get a lot of data, like tens of GBs or even over 100 GB for like 20-40 AUD.

Yeah I think in country carriers will only offer eSIMs for post-paid plans and physical card for prepaid. At least for now.

In this thread, it's mostly companies which offer multi-country deals on eSIM but you don't get nearly as much data.

Optus doing prepaid eSIMs now, $15 is not a bad deal:
https://www.optus.com.au/prepaid/sim-plans


Telstra now also appears to offer prepaid eSIMs (though have not read up on the plans): https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-ph...es#get-started

Someone had mentioned something similar earlier in the thread where Optus doesn't issue eSIMs for its prepaid plans. I'd like to convert my Optus SIM at some point.

May be outdated now, I was reading up on this here for my own usage:
https://www.optus.com.au/for-you/sup...nswer?id=20097

It specifically talks about prepaid services at the top, and states:

Yeah, our posts crossed paths.

I'll do this in person the next time I'm in Australia and report back, but I'm not planning on a trip before sometime next year.

Aside from the middlemen like Airalo, Gigsky, Nomad, Ubigi, aslSIM, FlexiroamX etc what are the most economical providers for Italy with coverage in Sardinia? Buy locally when on the ground probably the best? Any recommendations on store/provider locations?

Preferably with unlimited data and hotspot support.

Anyone have any recommendations for South Korea? I generally use whatever Airalo is offering, but their South Korea eSIM doesn't support Pixel phones (plus it's expensive). Their Asialink regional SIM is an option, but esimdb also lists a number of other options - anyone used any of them in Korea specifically?

Just go to one of the counters at ICN after you exit customs and get a local eSIM there. It's inexpensive, unlimited data, and they help you set it up if required. I do that every time I'm in South Korea - I use Airalo in other places.

If you can do without data until you get to town, then your best option is to head to a TIM, Iliad, Windtre or Vodafone shop in the city after landing, and get a prepaid eSIM there. Just bring your phone and passport. The kiosks at airports are more expensive, but maybe worth the convenience. Any of these networks will have good coverage all over Italy.

Do you need other Asian countries too? There are a couple that bundle SK+Japan , or east Asia ​​​​​​

And how long? I can see about 1-2usd/day (1gb/day)

If you are going to Singapore, Singtel (the biggest national mobile provider) now offers eSIMs for tourists. You can buy online and complete the identity verification on your device, without needing to bring your passport to a physical location. Nice improvement!

https://www.singtel.com/personal/pro...ans/hi-tourist

This is sort of what I ended up doing - except I went for a physical SIM rather than an eSIM. "Reserved" it from LG U+ in advance which gives 10% off, and it cost ~US$26 for 10 days which isn't what I'd really call cheap, but it is "unlimited" data (3GB/day at LTE speeds).

I went for the physical SIM over an eSIM for 2 reasons - one was because the eSIMs are data only where the pSIMs can also receive calls. The second is because with a pSIM the card that the SIM come in doubles as a TMoney card to use on the subway, saving a few thousand won over buying one separately. Unfortunately the voice option didn't work out, as apparently their voice SIMs don't work on Google Pixel phones, only Apple/Samsung., so I ended up with a data-only one anyway, but otherwise it worked fine.