I tested three travel eSIMs on a trip. It was more complicated than I thought

If you’re considering traveling abroad, you’ve probably wondered how to save money on roaming costs. Carriers — both in the U.S. and abroad — are notorious for charging a considerable amount of money to use your phone in a foreign country, and this can quickly double, or even triple, your monthly phone bill.

For many years, the solution was simple:When traveling abroad, ensure you have an unlocked phone and buy a local SIM card when you arrive. This worked well in theory, and aside from problems with carriers locking handsets — which still exist now — it was the best way to travel.

In 2021, Apple followed many Android phone makers by launching dual SIM support on the iPhone 13, which offered a lot of promise. Combining the physical SIM card with a secondary software-based embedded SIM was meant to make it easy to travel, or at least make it easy to install a second SIM card on your phone. The following year, Apple went to eSIM only and helped usher in a range of new eSIM providers dedicated to saving costs when you travel.

On a recent trip to Bali, Indonesia, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), I tried three different providers to answer the question: Which one should you roam with? Or should you use your existing carrier? I also had my Google Fi SIM as a point of comparison. Which am I going to use going forward? Let’s find out.

The cost of traveling with your U.S. SIM card

To understand the benefits of deploying a secondary data SIM for travel, we first need to explore the cost of roaming with the big U.S. carriers in the two popular destinations I traveled to.

To standardize this comparison, I priced out the cheapest package for each carrier; given the myriad of packages, plans, and terms, this price may not apply to your existing plan, but it should be the cheapest published option for each carrier. Of course, this information relies on each carrier’s website being up-to-date, so it may not be completely accurate.

First, let’s look at T-Mobile. The magenta carrier makes things reasonably straightforward as long as you’re on the right plan. If your plan includes roaming, you’ll get up to 5GB of high-speed data and then unlimited data limited to up to 256 Kbps. Wi-Fi calls to the U.S., Mexico, and Canada are free, whereas non-Wi-Fi calls are charged at $0.25 per minute.

T-Mobile also has three international passes if you need more data (or you don’t have included roaming), and all come with unlimited calling back to the U.S.: 1 day with 512MB of data for $5, 10 days with up to 5GB of high-speed data for $35, and 30 days with up to 15GB for $50. For this two-week trip, let’s assume there’s no included roaming, and T-Mobile’s cost comes out to $35 total, albeit with roaming speeds limited to a maximum of LTE.

Now for Verizon: $12 per day or a monthly plan for $100. This allows you to use your existing plan allowances when traveling, but it’s worth noting that Indonesia is limited to LTE, while Dubai has 5G roaming. The cheapest way to roam on Verizon is for a total cost of $100, the cap for a month of roaming charges.

AT&T also offers similar packages to Verizon. The International Day Pass allows you to roam for $12 per day, with no extra charges after 10 days per line, per bill. AT&T supports 5G roaming in both Indonesia and the UAE, although it’s dependent on your device being compatible with the 5G bands (n78 in particular) used in those countries. The total cost for AT&T comes to $120.

The benefits of travel eSIMs

If you search for the best travel eSIM, you’ll find many options with similar pricing and terms. However, look beneath the surface, and you’ll find a few that stand apart from the rest.: Holafly, Nomad, and arguably the most popular, Airalo.

All these allow you to add a second SIM to your phone, but unless you pay a premium, these are limited to data roaming only. Each of these SIMs also has a further benefit: it’s easy to sign up via the app and install it on your phone, and when you land at your destination, it should activate automatically. However, it’s worth noting that, unlike your own U.S. SIM, these usually only work in a specific country unless you buy a multi-country regional plan that’s more expensive.

The biggest benefit of picking a separate eSIM is the ability to control costs. Instead of charging it to your bill and suffering from sticker shock when you eventually receive your bill, paying upfront allows you to fix your costs. However, the opposite is also true: If you would rather not pay upfront, this makes it easy to defer it to your next phone bill instead. Regardless, here’s how each compares.

How much cheaper is Airalo, Holafly, or the Nomad eSIM?

I spent nine days in Bali and four in the UAE, meaning a total of 13 days. I used almost 10GB In Indonesia — which proved to be a necessity given the poor hotel Wi-Fi speeds — and 3GB in Dubai, with an average usage of 1GB per day.

Here’s a quick summary of the packages included with each of these three providers:

As you can see, most of these plans are significantly cheaper than roaming with your SIM card from the U.S., but this isn’t the entire picture.

First, it’s worth noting that Holafly has a different business model from the others. While Airalo and Nomad both offer a set amount of data that’s valid for a set number of days, Holafly offers unlimited data, but charges you for the number of days that you need it.

Second, in Bali, in particular, 5G service is virtually invisible. Although I tried all services on handsets that supported the required bands, 5G coverage was nonexistent. This is included when roaming with Google Fi, which supports the highest roaming speeds in most countries. It’s also worth noting that Airalo and Holafly offer regional and global plans that include multiple countries, and some of these plans include 5G services, while the country-specific plans do not.

The one catch with most travel eSIMs

There’s one very large catch with most travel eSIMs that you should be aware of: Unlike your physical SIM, most travel eSIMs can only be activated on one phone.

For most people, this isn’t a problem, but if you have multiple devices like me, you can’t uninstall and activate it again on a second phone. Also, if you accidentally delete the eSIM, you’ll lose whatever unused data you haven’t used.

The exception to this is Holafly, where the nature of paying per day means you can move the eSIM from one phone to another, but it can only be installed and active on a single device at a time. It’s a big improvement over the competition, but ultimately, you are paying for the privilege of doing so.

Things to consider when picking a travel eSIM

Choosing an eSIM for travel is quite hard, but I’m fairly impressed with Holafly as a whole. You’re probably looking for the cheapest, fastest, and best in equal measure — but as the adage goes, you can only have two out of three easily. Considering the overall value for money, Holafly represents a fantastic balance between the three, but there’s also a further catch worth keeping in mind.

None of these plans include calling features if you plan to call home using a regular phone call versus a Wi-Fi call using FaceTime Audio or WhatsApp. It’s not that it’ll charge you, but rather, there is no traditional phone number with which you can make or receive calls and texts. If you want a local phone number, you’ll need to buy a local SIM — which can often be cheaper, but requires visiting a store, etc.

If you also plan to travel for an extended period, it may be worth considering roaming with your existing SIM card. Yes, they cost more, but the overall difference diminishes fairly quickly, especially if you travel for close to a month or visit different countries.

Lastly, it’s also worth mentioning that local SIMs can sometimes be cheaper. In Bali, plenty of stores offered data on the same networks as these eSIMs at a slightly higher price, but with the ability to also make calls. In Dubai, it’s also fairly easy to pick up a local SIM. The pricing can be extremely competitive, as you’ll see below, for a combination of minutes and texts to call locally or internationally.

On paper, Nomad offers the best balance between speed and data allowance. While Airalo is the cheapest, you must verify your identity to conform with the UAE’s Know Your Customer (KYC) rules. This is the equivalent of giving the carrier your passport when you sign up at the airport. From personal experience, the UAE is particularly stringent in clamping down on SIM cards that don’t conform to KYC rules.

This is the travel eSIM I recommend

Overall, travel eSIMs are a fantastic option to ensure you have data available as soon as you land, but they come with their own set of limitations, many of which can be pretty confusing. Unlike your phone bill or a SIM card from the local country, there’s no person you can speak to, and there are other limitations that may leave you frustrated.

I like Airalo’s service for its balance, but the limitation on changing devices is particularly challenging. Nomad’s eSIM service is simple to use and priced very competitively. And in my actual testing, it proved to be the least throttled of all these services. It was also able to pick up 5G services in Dubai, which was slower than local networks, but still fast enough for usable data.

While I wanted to recommend Holafly, the service just doesn’t work. In many countries, it’ll try to route you through servers in Hong Kong, resulting in no data passthrough and a SIM card that doesn’t work. I contacted Holafly’s support via WhatsApp, and while they were knowledgeable, there was no way to get this working.

If you want an eSIM that works well in every country and has excellent support, I recommend Airalo, although it may not be the fastest. It’s simple and easy to set up, and aside from a limitation on changing devices, it’s extremely effective. That said, for longer trips, the convenience, calling features, and speeds may mean it’s just easier to roam with your home carrier SIM card.