Best eSIM for travel: Airalo, Holafly and Saily compared

How we compared them

We took the three eSIM providers travellers ask us about most — Airalo, Holafly and Saily — and read their published prices for the fifteen destinations our onward-ticket checker covers. Every number is the sticker price in US dollars on the provider’s own site on the date shown under the table, with no promotion or cashback applied.

The table shows three plans per provider: the smallest plan sold, a 5 GB / 30-day plan, and a 7-day unlimited plan. Holafly has no fixed-data plans at all, so its three are 1, 7 and 30 days of unlimited data. Our pick in each country is the cheapest 5 GB / 30-day plan, and nothing else: it is the plan most people actually need for a trip of a week or two, and a rule you can check against the numbers is worth more than our taste.

What we have not done is test speeds or coverage. All three resell local networks, and which network you land on can differ by plan and by month. Treat this as a price comparison, which is what it is.

Prices by destination

One card per country, one row per provider. Tap “See plans” to open that provider’s page for the country, where the full ladder of plans is listed.

What the numbers say

A few things stand out across the fifteen countries.

• Airalo and Saily are usually within a dollar of each other on the 5 GB / 30-day plan, and the pick often comes down to cents. Where they differ, Airalo is cheaper in the Americas (United States, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica) and Indonesia; Saily is cheaper in Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Panama.
• Thailand is the cheapest country in the table on every measure: 5 GB for 30 days is $7.99 at Saily and $8.00 at Airalo, and a week of unlimited data is about $21.
• Panama and Costa Rica are the most expensive, at three to four times Thailand’s prices, and Saily sells no unlimited plan for Panama at all. Colombia, Peru and Brazil sit in between.
• Holafly is never the cheapest in this table, but it is the simplest: one unlimited plan, priced by the day, from a single day upward, with the same conditions in every country. Its hotspot sharing is capped at 1 GB a day, which matters if you plan to tether a laptop.
• Saily states that hotspot use is unrestricted on its plans; Airalo’s package pages say nothing either way about hotspot, 5G or a phone number, so we make no claim for it.
• Airalo requires identity verification (a passport upload) before you can buy its Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica eSIMs, and those three have short activation windows — 90 days for Colombia, 45 for the other two — against 365 days elsewhere. Neither Holafly’s nor Saily’s pages mention verification for any of the fifteen countries.
• The smallest plans are not alike: Airalo’s entry plan is 1 GB for 3 days, Saily’s is 1 GB for 7 days, and Holafly’s is a single day of unlimited data. For a weekend, compare those three rather than the headline price.

Before you buy

The same handful of checks saves most of the support tickets these providers get.

• Your phone has to support eSIM and be carrier-unlocked. Each provider lists compatible phones on its site; check yours before paying, because an eSIM cannot be moved to another device once installed.
• These are data-only plans with no phone number. Keep your home SIM active alongside the eSIM for the text messages your bank and your airline send, and turn off data roaming on it so you are not billed twice.
• Install the eSIM at home on Wi-Fi and switch it on when you land. The validity period usually starts at first connection, not at purchase — but buy within the activation window, which ranges from 45 days to a year depending on provider and country.
• Carry a copy of your onward reservation that opens without a connection. Airport Wi-Fi fails, the eSIM is not on yet, and the check-in desk is where proof of onward travel gets asked for.
• Prices change often. We re-read the three sites and update the date under the table; if the provider’s page says something different from ours, the provider’s page is right.