How we test

Approach

We pick a country, a trip length, and a usage profile (light/medium/heavy data). We buy the Airalo SKU that matches, install it on an eSIM-compatible iPhone in dual-SIM mode, and use it as our primary data line during the trip.

For comparisons (e.g. Airalo vs Holafly), we buy both products from our personal accounts and switch between them across the same itinerary. We don't request press accounts or comped SIMs from the operators we review — the bill is paid with our own card.

Metrics we measure

• Real download/upload speed — Speedtest.net or Cloudflare speed test, at minimum 3 locations per city, at different times of day. We log the underlying carrier (e.g. KT vs LGU on Korea Jjang).
• Coverage — no-bars or fallback-to-3G zones inside cities, on intercity trains/buses, in rural/mountain itineraries where applicable.
• Activation time — minutes between buying the SKU and the QR/auto-install completing. We test both the in-app install and the QR-scan flow.
• Top-up vs new SKU economics — whether adding GB to an active eSIM beats buying a fresh SKU for the next leg of the trip.
• Customer support response time — we file at least one chat ticket per major review and log how long Airalo takes to answer.
• iPhone-specific gotchas — 'Allow Cellular Data Switching' interaction, 5G mode toggles, conflict when the home Italian SIM is the calls line and Airalo is the data line.

Price freshness

Catalog prices are refreshed monthly from the live Airalo catalog. Whenever a price changes by more than €1 / $1 vs the value baked into a guide, we update the guide and bump its 'last updated' timestamp — visible on every article.

Prices shown in EUR are converted at the spot rate at the time we update the guide; the source-of-truth is always the USD price visible on airalo.com at checkout.

Conflict of interest

We participate in the Airalo Impact affiliate program and earn a small commission on purchases made through our links. We do not receive money to favor specific SKUs, to demote competitors (Holafly, Saily, Ubigi, Nomad, MTX Connect), or to publish reviews on commission-sensitive deadlines.

If a competitor product comes out cheaper or faster than Airalo on a given route, the guide says so. If Airalo's underlying carrier is the slowest one in the country, the guide says so. We'd rather lose a click than mislead the reader.

Full disclosure: Affiliate disclosure .

Updates and corrections

Every article shows a 'Last updated' date next to the published date when the gap exceeds 7 days. Substantive corrections (factual error, price change, deprecated SKU) get a one-line note in the article body explaining what changed.

Spot something out of date? Write to us and we'll review within 7 days.