Airalo vs Holafly: which eSIM is actually cheaper for your trip?

The short version

Neither company owns a network. Both buy wholesale roaming capacity from local operators and resell it as a profile alongside your normal SIM. Airalo reports over 200 locations and more than 30 million travellers; Holafly reports over 200 destinations and more than 25 million eSIMs sold. Both figures are company-reported rather than audited, and neither is independently verifiable. On raw availability there is nothing between them.

The differences are commercial, not technical. Airalo lets you pay for gigabytes or for days, and publishes one specific fair-use figure that applies everywhere. Holafly pushes you towards unlimited days, publishes no fair-use figure on any plan page we checked, and caps how much of that data you may share over a hotspot. That hotspot cap is the most common reason people buy the wrong one.

Two pricing models, and where they cross over

Airalo's original model is a prepaid bucket. Its Europe plan, Eurolink, covers 41 countries and networks. A 3 GB bundle valid 7 days costs €10.00, 10 GB over 7 days costs €23.50, and 50 GB over 30 days costs €62.50. When the data or the window runs out, the eSIM stops until you top it up.

Holafly's model is a day pass. Europe covers 33 countries at €11.37 for 3 days, €25.50 for 7 and €68.90 for 30. Nothing to monitor, nothing to top up. You pay for every day in the window whether you use it or not, which matters if you buy ten days for a trip needing data on four.

Airalo now sells unlimited day passes too, and undercuts Holafly at every duration, but by far less than most comparisons claim: about €0.87 at three days, €1.00 at five and seven, and €5.40 at thirty. Read that as a rounding error on a trip budget, not a reason to choose. The reason the gap is usually reported as two to three times larger is a currency trap worth knowing about. Holafly localises pricing by the country it detects you in, and its dollar ladder for Europe reads $11.90, $20.50, $27.50, $36.50, $50.50 and $73.90, which is close enough to euro-shaped numbers that comparison sites reprint them as euros. On Holafly's own eurozone storefronts the same plans are €11.37, €18.50, €25.50, €33.90, €46.90 and €68.90. Check both providers in your own currency, on your own storefront, before you conclude anything from a price table including this one. The more useful question is whether you need unlimited at all. Airalo's own 10 GB Europe bundle for 7 days costs €23.50, a euro less than its 7 day unlimited pass, so unlimited only starts paying off above roughly 10 GB a week, about 1.4 GB a day. That crossover is sharp because Airalo sells no 20 GB weekly bundle at all: above 10 GB in a week the unlimited pass is the only sensible Airalo option, since the next bucket up is a 20 GB bundle over 15 days at roughly €42. Below the crossover a fixed bundle wins, though near the boundary it wins by only about a euro. It wins heavily only at genuinely light usage, where €10.00 buys the week.

What a real trip costs

Below are seven realistic Europe profiles, priced against the cheapest option each provider actually sells that would cover them. Nomad is a third provider you did not search for, and it earns a column because on fixed data bundles it is consistently the cheapest of the three, sometimes by half. One caveat goes with it: Nomad discounts heavily and often, including a stacking code for new users, so its figures below are what it charged on the day rather than a stable list price. The 50 GB figure was explicitly a sale price.

To place yourself: maps, messaging and boarding passes run around 0.3 to 0.5 GB a day; add social feeds and browsing and you approach 1 GB; video calls, streaming and a tethered laptop push past 3 GB fast. Your phone's settings will show what you used on a comparable trip, which beats any estimate here. The pattern is consistent: for light and moderate use Holafly is not competitive, because you pay an unlimited premium for data you never touch. For heavy use the gap narrows, and in the last row Holafly wins outright.

How unlimited these unlimited plans really are

Neither sells unmetered full-speed data. Both sit on wholesale roaming agreements, and every one has a fair use policy behind it. What differs is how specifically each says so.

Airalo publishes a single number: 3 GB of high-speed data per 24 hour period, after which speeds drop to 1 Mbps, resetting every 24 hours from activation. One megabit is fine for messaging, maps, email and standard-definition video that can buffer. It is not enough for comfortable video calls or large files, so if you routinely need more than 3 GB a day, know before buying that you will spend most of it throttled.

Holafly publishes no figure at all, and it is worth being precise about that, because plenty of comparison pages send readers off to look one up. We checked the technical specifications on both the Europe and the Japan plan pages in August 2026. Neither states a daily gigabyte threshold. All Holafly says is that operators apply an international measure called a Fair Usage Policy for a period of no more than one day, to keep the connection usable for everyone. There is no number to find, so do not go looking for one and do not assume the absence of a number means the allowance is generous.

That leaves an honest trade-off rather than a clear winner. Airalo tells you exactly where the cliff is, which lets you plan, and also guarantees you will hit it if you use more than 3 GB a day. Holafly tells you nothing you can plan around, but its policy is written as short-lived traffic management rather than a fixed daily cliff, and any slowdown is capped at a day. If you routinely burn well over 3 GB a day, the Airalo outcome is known and bad, while the Holafly outcome is unknown. That is the case for paying Holafly's premium, and it is a case built on uncertainty rather than on a better published allowance. Anyone claiming to know Holafly's real threshold for your destination is guessing.

Holafly also includes Always On, 1 GB of backup data each month across more than 150 countries, refreshing every 30 days without accumulating. It will not carry a trip, but you land with something outside your plan's region. Airalo has no equivalent.

Hotspot and tethering, the decider for laptop users

This is where the two genuinely diverge, so if you expect to work off your phone's connection, read this section twice.

Airalo states there is no limit to hotspotting on its unlimited eSIMs and that you may tether as many devices as you like. The catch is that shared traffic counts against the same 3 GB daily allowance, so a tethered laptop pulling updates will exhaust it in an afternoon and leave you at 1 Mbps. On fixed bundles, tethered traffic simply comes out of your gigabytes. There is no separate hotspot rule either way.

Holafly does apply a separate rule. Its help pages say many Holafly eSIMs let you share data by activating the hotspot feature, and that the daily sharing allowance is published in megabytes in each plan's technical specifications. On the Europe and Japan plans that figure is 1 GB a day. Note the wording: many eSIMs, not all, so the allowance varies by destination and on some may not be offered.

For occasionally tethering a tablet, 1 GB a day is fine. For a full working day off a laptop it is not, and this is the complaint that recurs most among Holafly's remote-working reviewers. The exception is Holafly Plans, Holafly's monthly subscription, whose unlimited tier includes unlimited data sharing with no daily cap. So Airalo's uncapped hotspot wins for moderate tethering, and the Holafly subscription wins for heavy tethering over a month or more. Note that neither is an unqualified win. Airalo has no separate hotspot rule, but everything you share still comes out of the same 3 GB a day, so on the unlimited passes the practical tethering ceiling is the same 3 GB. Holafly's trip plans give you a smaller 1 GB but do not spend your own allowance to do it. The answer flips between those poles, which is why a blanket recommendation here is useless.

No phone number, and what that breaks

Most Airalo eSIMs are data only, with no number for calls or texts. Its store does let you filter for packages including calls and texts, and some exist, but the regional plans most people buy, Eurolink included, are data only. The plan type is shown before purchase, so check rather than assume.

Holafly's trip plans are likewise data only, with one exception. Unlimited subscriptions on Holafly Plans bought on or after 4 November 2025 include a number for the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada. Holafly's own wording is that the number supports inbound SMS and VoIP-based calling, and that traditional incoming cellular calls are not supported. Inbound SMS is the part that matters, because it is exactly what breaks on a data-only eSIM.

Banks, airlines and ticketing sites still send one-time codes by SMS, and a data-only eSIM cannot receive them. Swap your home SIM out or disable its line to dodge roaming charges, and those codes stop arriving, which is how people end up locked out of their own bank in a foreign airport.

• Move important accounts off SMS codes and onto an authenticator app, which works over any data connection
• Keep your home SIM active for voice and SMS, and set the travel eSIM as the default data line
• Turn off data roaming on the home line so it cannot quietly run up charges in the background
• Save recovery codes offline, so a locked account does not depend on a signal

Coverage, activation and refunds

On headline coverage the two are level. On the plans people actually buy the gap is wider: Airalo's Europe plan covers 41 countries and networks against Holafly's 33, which matters if your itinerary strays beyond the obvious stops. Holafly's monthly subscription reaches over 160 destinations on one plan, which no Airalo product matches. Both publish the local networks they ride on, which many resellers do not: in Japan, Holafly lists KDDI and Softbank, while Airalo lists Softbank plus one other. In most countries you are on the same infrastructure either way.

Installation is much the same on both: buy in the app, receive a QR code or install directly, and the profile sits alongside your normal SIM. Install before you fly, while you still have working internet, because installing an eSIM needs a connection and doing it on arrival is the most avoidable source of trouble. Airalo runs two validity models rather than one, and the difference decides whether early installation is free. On most plans the clock starts when the eSIM first connects to a supported network inside its coverage area, so installing a week early costs nothing. On a minority it starts at installation instead, even outside the coverage area. Airalo states which applies under Package details, so check there before you install rather than assuming. One trap matters here more than on a country plan: Eurolink is a regional plan that covers your own country if you live in Europe, so it can connect at home and start counting the moment you install it. Never activate a regional or global plan that includes where you already are, unless you want the window to open now. Holafly's trip plans start at first connection at your destination, after which the days count down whether you use data or not.

Both refund policies hinge on activation. Airalo treats an installed eSIM as used and generally does not refund after that, beyond the exceptions in its terms; eligible requests are made from your package history, and wrong-purchase refunds come back as Airmoney credit rather than cash. Holafly's withdrawal refund requires that the eSIM was never activated and that you bought it within the previous six months, with statutory rights for a faulty product applying regardless. Neither will unwind an installed eSIM you simply did not need. Airalo does let you top up the same eSIM; Holafly's trip plans mean buying a fresh one.

Reputation and the complaints that recur

As of August 2026 Holafly carries a Trustpilot score around 4.7 from tens of thousands of reviews, and Airalo around 4.0 from a smaller base. Both have several country listings with slightly different scores, so treat the figures as approximate. Holafly's advantage is real but read it with caution: a company resolving problems over 24 hour chat collects better ratings regardless of product quality.

Holafly complaints cluster around three things: speed dropping on heavy days, which is the fair use policy working as designed but rarely understood at the point of sale; the hotspot allowance, where buyers of unlimited meet a daily sharing cap they did not notice; and the day counter running down sooner than expected.

Airalo complaints cluster differently: bundles running out mid-trip, which is the fixed-data model working as designed; occasional failures to register on arrival, usually fixed by toggling airplane mode, enabling data roaming on the eSIM line, or entering an APN manually; and refunds, where installing an unwanted eSIM ends eligibility. A large share of complaints on both sides are the product doing what its terms say, bought by someone who did not read them. The narrower genuine criticisms: Holafly's hotspot cap is restrictive for remote workers, and Airalo's support is slower to reach.

On raw speed, we have no like-for-like independent test to give you, and neither does anyone else that we could find. Both companies resell the same host operators, so in a given country on a given network the underlying throughput is broadly the host network's, not the reseller's. Scattered throughput figures exist for each provider individually, but they were measured in different places on different days, which makes them useless for ranking one against the other. Anything you read claiming Airalo is faster than Holafly, or the reverse, is almost certainly extrapolating from a handful of readings. Treat the throttling policies above as the only speed difference either company actually commits to.

So which should you buy?

Buy an Airalo fixed bundle if you use under about 1.4 GB a day, which covers most ordinary trips. At that level Holafly's pricing is money spent on data you will not use: €10.00 against €25.50 for a light week in Europe.

Buy an Airalo unlimited pass if you expect to exceed 1.4 GB a day but stay under about 3 GB, if you want to tether without a separate hotspot cap, or if you simply do not want to think about an allowance. It is cheaper than Holafly at every Europe duration, though only by about a euro at most of them, so buy it for the published 3 GB ceiling and the uncapped hotspot rather than for the price.

Buy Holafly if you genuinely run well above 3 GB a day. Airalo's published ceiling followed by 1 Mbps is a limit you will hit daily and know you are hitting. Holafly publishes no daily number, so you are choosing an unknown over a known bad outcome rather than a documented better allowance. There is no destination specification to check, because Holafly does not publish one. Holafly is also the better answer if you value 24 hour chat support and the Always On backup gigabyte.

Buy a Holafly Plans subscription if you are away a month or more, moving between countries and tethering a laptop daily. The unlimited tier is €59.95 a month, covers over 160 destinations with unlimited hotspot sharing and, since 4 November 2025, includes a US, UK or Canadian number for inbound SMS and VoIP calls. There is also a cheaper Light tier at €45.95 a month for 25 GB, which is the better buy if you want the multi-country coverage and the hotspot but do not need unlimited, and which is easy to miss because most comparisons only quote the unlimited price. Airalo has no equivalent to either, and for the traveller who lives out of a laptop abroad Holafly is simply better.

Consider Nomad if cost per gigabyte decides it, but read the caveats. It covers over 200 destinations and prices Europe bundles well below Airalo: €10.38 for 3 GB over 30 days, €19.89 for 10 GB, and €30.26 for 50 GB against Airalo's €62.50. The 50 GB and 10 GB figures were sale prices when checked, not standing list prices, and Nomad also runs a stacking discount for new users, so what you pay may be lower again or, once a sale ends, higher. Its Europe plan covers 35 countries against Airalo's 41 and it says all its plans support hotspot. Its unlimited passes, €16.43 for 5 days and €29.40 for 10, carry a 2 GB per day fair-use threshold before dropping to 1 Mbps, which is stricter than Airalo's 3 GB and stricter than anything Holafly publishes, so Nomad is the wrong choice for a genuinely heavy day even though it is the cheapest per gigabyte. It is a smaller operation with thinner support.

Whichever you pick, install it before you fly and re-check the price on the day you buy. These are fast-moving products and these numbers will drift.

Frequently asked questions