Open source eSIM LPA

The public interface applications use is EuiccManager, in the android.telephony.euicc package. Behind it, whoever implements profile handling extends EuiccService and declares that service in their manifest. The framework then queries the package manager for apps holding the WRITE_EMBEDDED_SUBSCRIPTIONS permission that declare a service for the android.service.euicc.EuiccService action, and selects the one with the highest priority declared in its manifest. Only one can be the working LPA at a time.

There is a hard requirement bundled into that. An LPA app has to be a system app, included in the system image, in order to call the relevant system APIs at all. This is not gatekeeping by Google so much as a consequence of what the component does: it writes to a secure element that holds carrier credentials. It does mean, though, that you cannot solve a missing LPA by downloading something, which is the single most common misunderstanding in this area.

There are more than people expect, and the Osmocom eUICC and eSIM developer manual maintains the closest thing to a canonical index of them. On Android the significant one is OpenEUICC, described by its authors as a fully free and open-source local profile assistant implementation for Android, shipped in two variants. The privileged variant must be installed as a system app, signed with the platform certificate and placed in the system partition, and the project supplies a privileged-app allowlist file for ROM builders to include. Once privileged it can manage internal eSIMs, external eSIMs and chips reached over USB CCID readers.

The second variant, EasyEUICC, runs as an ordinary unprivileged app, and its limits are worth understanding because they are frequently misreported. It cannot touch the eUICC soldered into your phone. It can only access removable eSIM chips whose ARA-M field proactively grants access to its signing certificate, which means the chip vendor has to have allowlisted it. Away from Android there is lpac, a C library and command line utility, with libeuicc as its core; EasyLPAC as a desktop front end; lpa-gtk for Linux mobile; and hermes, the eSIM daemon used on Chromium OS. Several are cross-platform. None of them changes the rule that on Android, reaching the internal chip requires system privilege.

Naming builds is where most articles on this subject go wrong, because the answer changes with releases and differs per device even within one project. What can be said reliably: stock manufacturer builds on eSIM-capable hardware generally include an LPA, frequently a proprietary one from the vendor or from Google. Hardened Android systems built on that same hardware often keep it working, sometimes behind a setting that is off by default. Community builds derived from LineageOS have historically been the weak spot, with reports of the add-eSIM control being absent, or present and completely inert, on official builds. A ROM including OpenEUICC has to have chosen to, and that is a per-build decision.

So rather than trusting a list, test the device. The presence of a working add-eSIM flow that reaches a QR scanner or a manual activation code field is direct evidence that some LPA is installed and functioning, regardless of which one it is or who wrote it. The absence of that flow, or a control that does nothing when tapped, is equally direct evidence in the other direction. That test costs nothing and is more current than any page.

Every eSIM anyone sells you, including ours, is the same object at this layer: a GSMA activation code pointing at a provisioning server. There is no such thing as an eSIM that is compatible with more LPAs than another, and any seller claiming special compatibility with de-Googled systems is describing something that does not exist in the specification. What differs between sellers is whether they are honest about the boundary. Ours is that the profile is ours and the LPA is yours.

Concretely, we sell a real UK +44 mobile carrier line as an eSIM QR, not VoIP and not a shared pool number, with unlimited incoming SMS and calls worldwide over roaming and no mobile data at all. It is $25 once, first six months included, then $15 every six months, with nothing renewing automatically because we store no card. Travel data is separate, from $1.99 across 190+ countries, data only. Payment is crypto only across twelve methods, with no KYC, no account and no email, and an 8-character lookup code in the AB12-CDEF format. The UK number QR is single use and is never reissued, so the check below is not a formality. And to be plain about the ceiling: no KYC at purchase removes paperwork, not your device IMEI, your IP address, or a carrier's records of an active line.