Andrew’s a lifelong traveler who puts in over 100,000 miles a year, with over 25 countries, 10 business class products, and 2 airline statuses (United and Alaska) under his belt. Andrew’s worked at Th...
Edited by: Kellie Jez
Kellie’s professional experience has led her to a deep passion for compliance, data reporting, and process improvement. Kellie’s learned the ins and outs of the points and miles world and leads UP’s c...
22 comments
Me
January 25, 2020
Thank you very much! definitely much cheaper than alternatives. Wish I could test it in China. The primary question is if it’s outside the GFW. Conventional international roaming will have you outside the wall. I am eager to have it tested during my upcoming trip, which unfortunately got cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak 🙁
IN
April 23, 2020
I want to know too!
James Shaw
January 26, 2020
Nice article! Would love to see how this compares with Google Fi that offers 22 GB data unthrottled, in terms of quality and price.
jeff
January 28, 2020
What if i’m already using eSIM on my T-Mobile account instead of a physical SIM? Can I buy Airalo and use 2 eSIMs concurrently?
Andrew Kunesh
February 04, 2020
Hey Jeff, you can only use 1 eSIM at a time (on iOS), but you can store as many as you’d like. However, you can use a physical SIM and an eSIM in-tandem.
Lisa
May 11, 2022
Hi Jeff,
Verizon did that to me so I went back to them and made them give me a SIM card so I could have my eSim card available. So T-Mobile to do the same for you.
02nz
April 14, 2020
This is an interesting option even when not traveling. Airalo offers a 1GB/7 day plan for $3 in the U.S., I believe it’s T-Mobile. This would work great on an as-needed basis, for example, I have Mint and usually the lowest plan (3GB) is enough, but when it’s not this is a cheaper option than buying from Mint or switching to a higher-tier plan.
Danyway
May 13, 2020
I try them in Colombia and Indonesia and speed was lvery bad ike a 2G
Now I use the eSIM every time I travel, I tried MySIM and it works perfectly with a very good speed
Order is easy and you receive the eSIM per email : https://www.mysim-online.com
Matthew Ervin
September 07, 2020
I am having trouble locating a USA coverage map.
Mark Corbett
October 04, 2020
Our experience while using Airalo in Spain was that we never got 4g or LTE speeds. In Malaga, Seville, Cordoba etc the speeds were always 3G on our iPhone 11 Pro.
Being a cheap esim provider also means throttling of speed – which is the experience we had for a month.
They apologized for this with a $10 credit – but if we don’t trust that we will get what they advertise, then I say try someone else.
Knowroaming was fast with LTE and was much better.
Sergei T
October 16, 2020
You’re right I have the same issue with Airalo. I tried them because Ubigi was really expensive.
Since then, I tried MySIM in Korea in September and it was great, always 4Gg and Good Speed.
iphone screen repair
December 03, 2020
Thank you very much for presenting this data about airalo esim review. Wonderful information, thanks a lot for sharing. Great post!
Steven
December 11, 2020
Same as Mark. Horrible speed with them and no 4G, they send us a 2nd eSIM, and speed was the same as a 2G speed.
Just enough to text on WhatsApp.
Wong
February 06, 2021
Same as Steven! No more Airalo.
I’m using this App in January for Japan.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/my-esim-travel-data-plans/id1548434253
Danyal
February 09, 2021
The black-and-white comments trying to promote another thing above look a bit odd to me, though I would respect it if they are genuine experiences and not trolls. I tried Airalo in 3 different countries and it worked like a charm. There was once a bit of a speed issue and their support team quickly helped me to understand the reason and how best to deal with it. So yeah go check it out for yourselves. Kudos to the author of this article for a well-rounded introduction.
Charles T
October 31, 2021
Thanks for the nice review of the pros and cons of Airalo.
Note that some of the eSIMs they sell (e.g. Thailand) also include voice calls and other eSIMs may require additional verification of your identity before you can connect.
Nirlay
March 11, 2022
I understand Airalo provides data only. With data you can make WhatsApp calls, correct?
Should one buy the Europe plan, if we travel to Switzerland, Italy, France ?
Jarrod West
April 09, 2022
Hi Nirlay,
Yes, the Europe plan would likely be a good fit in your scenario. Safe travels!
William S
April 18, 2023
Great comparative article, I liked that it was so detailed. First learned about eSIM here. After researching your article I found out about another provider. Thank you!
M kenwood
June 16, 2023
I use Airalo for my weekly travels and absolutely love it. Basically live on a plane and it’s saved me so much.
Alex
June 18, 2023
Nice review very comprehensive. I am currently trying to use Airalo global e-SIM and have found the service to be very unreliable and patchy let alone fast … sadly the customer service is non-existent. Not sure if that’s how e-SIms are in general or it’s just Airalo.
Eric
August 07, 2023
Bought Airalo and was told by customer service to wait and choose a network when we landed in Germany. We’ll we did that, and it didn’t work. We spent hours at the airport trying to get one of the 3 networks to work. The net result was the loss of one day of our vacation. Oh, we did contact customer service, but it was non-existent. Email was all there was, and it took them 2 days to respond. No real-time help. We were stuck with no cell service and no way to fix it. That is until a young man said he could help, and he did. That was 5 hours after we landed. Later, our rental car broke down, but we could call the hotline to get help, right? Nope. No phone calls. Bottom line is we would have been better off with just about any other service out there. Airalo is not a friendly helpful service. You can do better.
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