We track 18,160 travel eSIM plans sold as “unlimited”. Most of them are not. They run at full speed up to an allowance, and then slow down — often to a speed where video stops and maps crawl.
That is not the problem. A daily allowance is a reasonable way to sell data, and the plans that have one are frequently the best value on the page. The problem is that 14,256 of those 18,160 plans — 79% — never tell you what the allowance is before you buy.
What we counted
Every night we collect the public plan data from 15 providers and normalise it into one schema. For each plan sold as unlimited, we look for two things the provider may publish: the amount of data you get at full speed, and the speed you drop to afterwards.
Here is where every provider that sells an unlimited plan stands today.
| Provider | Unlimited plans | State the allowance | Full speed up to | Then |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| eSimGlobe | 2,076 | All 2,076 | 512 MB – 10 GB a day | 2G |
| SimAbove | 674 | All 674 | 512 MB – 10 GB a day | 384 kbps – 2 Mbps |
| Saily | 492 | All 492 | 3 – 5 GB a day | 1 Mbps |
| Voye Global | 399 | All 399 | 5 GB a day | not stated |
| Airalo | 251 | 245 | 3 GB a day | 1 Mbps |
| Ubigi | 18 | All 18 | 15 – 59 GB per plan | 1 Mbps |
| Holafly | 11,157 | None | — | — |
| Yesim | 2,576 | None | — | — |
| eTravelSim | 385 | None | — | — |
| Airhub | 132 | None | — | — |
Six providers of ten put a number on it. Four do not. The reason the overall figure is so lopsided is that the two largest unlimited catalogues we track — Holafly’s 11,157 plans and Yesim’s 2,576 — are both in the second group.
An important caveat, stated plainly
A blank in that table is not an accusation. It means we found no figure in the plan data we collect. A provider may set out its fair-use policy in terms and conditions we never fetch, or in a support article, or on request. “No number published with the plan” is not the same as “no policy”, and we are not going to claim otherwise about another company.
We have been caught by exactly this once already. An earlier version of this count listed Saily as disclosing on only 50 of its plans. It turned out Saily publishes the allowance on every destination page — it is simply rendered on some pages and held in the page’s data on others. Once we read the second source properly, Saily went from 50 plans to all 492. Had we published the first number as a finding about the company, we would have been wrong in print.
The word “unlimited” hides two different products
Among the providers that do publish a figure, there is a distinction almost nobody draws, and it changes the answer by a factor of seven.
Most daily allowances refill every 24 hours. SimAbove says so directly:
Once this high-speed limit is reached, internet speed is reduced. Every 24h data speed resets to full speed.
Ubigi’s does not. Its allowance has to last the whole plan:
Speeds are reduced to 1 Mbps after 15,360 MB of usage over 7 days.
Read quickly, “15 GB” sounds far more generous than “3 GB”. Over a seven-day trip, Ubigi’s 15 GB is the whole budget, while Airalo’s 3 GB a day is 21 GB. The unit matters more than the number, which is why we now record it per plan and print it — 3 GB a day or 15 GB per plan — rather than leaving you to guess.
What the disclosing providers actually say
Where a provider writes the policy out, here it is unedited:
- Airalo — “Lower speed rate of 1 Mbps after 3 GB usage per day.”
- Saily — “Unlimited plan includes: 3GB/Day without a speed limit. Unlimited data at up to 1 Mbps.”
- eSimGlobe — “Data usage is reset every 24 hours. Unlimited 2G speeds.”
- SimAbove — “Once this high-speed limit is reached, internet speed is reduced. Every 24h data speed resets to full speed.”
- Ubigi — “Speeds are reduced to 1 Mbps after 15,360 MB of usage over 7 days.”
Note the range in what “then” means. 1 Mbps still carries maps, messaging and standard-definition video. eSimGlobe’s 2G and SimAbove’s slowest tier at 384 kbps do not. A plan that throttles you to 2G after 512 MB is a 512 MB plan with a long tail, whatever the listing calls it.
How to read an unlimited plan before you buy
- Look for the allowance, not the word. If the listing states one, it is a capped plan with a generous overflow, and you can compare it properly.
- Check whether the allowance is per day or per trip. Seven days at 3 GB a day is 21 GB. Fifteen gigabytes for the week is 15 GB. These are not close.
- Check the speed you drop to. 1 Mbps is usable. A few hundred kbps is not.
- Compare unlimited plans on price per day, never per gigabyte. An unlimited plan has no gigabyte count to divide by, which is why we rank it on a separate axis.
The providers that state a figure are not automatically the more generous ones. They are the ones you can check.
Our running count, updated every night, is at which “unlimited” plans tell you the limit.