Airalo eSIM Review: I Spent Three Days Researching This So You Don’t Have To
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Let me set the scene. It was a few weeks before we were heading to Puerto Morelos, Mexico for ten days. I was sitting at my desk doing what any sensible person preparing for a holiday does: obsessively researching mobile data options instead of packing or, I don’t know, relaxing. The question I needed answered was simple enough. How do we get decent data when we’re wandering around Mexico without our Canadian carrier cheerfully helping themselves to our bank account via international roaming fees?
What followed was three solid days of research that took me down more rabbit holes than I care to admit. Local SIM cards, international plans, prepaid options, carrier unlocking. And somewhere in the middle of all that glorious time-wasting, I stumbled onto eSIM technology. Then I stumbled onto Airalo. This is my honest Airalo eSIM review.
What Is an eSIM and Why Should You Care?
An eSIM is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a SIM card, but digital, already embedded in your phone. No tiny plastic card, no ejector tool, no dropping the thing behind the desk and spending twenty minutes fishing it out. You purchase a data plan, scan a QR code or tap a few buttons, and the eSIM installs directly onto your device. Done.
What attracted me immediately was the elimination of the local SIM card ritual. You know the one. You land in a foreign country, you need data right now, and you’re wandering through arrivals with all your luggage trying to find a legitimate phone shop, decipher a foreign-language data plan, and negotiate in a language you don’t speak while jet-lagged and mildly grumpy. I find that experience exhausting on a good day. The idea of bypassing it entirely was enormously appealing.
Why Airalo?
There are eSIM providers out there. More than you’d think. After spending more time than I should have comparing them, Airalo kept rising to the top for three reasons: reputation, coverage, and price.
Reputation matters when you’re trusting something to keep you connected in a foreign country. Airalo was founded in 2019 and quickly became the world’s first dedicated eSIM store. By the time I was researching, they had millions of customers and coverage in over 200 countries and regions. That’s not a small operation run out of a garage. The reviews were largely positive, the app ratings were solid, and they had a genuine track record. That counted for a lot.
The pricing was competitive without being suspiciously cheap. Mexico data plans started at just a few dollars for a gigabyte and scaled up sensibly depending on how much data you needed and how long you’d be traveling. You could pick a local plan for a single country, a regional plan covering North America, or a global plan if you were the type who hops between countries every few days. I’m not that type. I had a beach to get to.
Setting It Up on My Pixel 7 Pro
Here’s the part where I was fully prepared to have something go wrong. It didn’t. The setup process was genuinely straightforward, which I say with some reluctance because I had steeled myself for at least one good swearing session.
I downloaded the Airalo app, created an account, searched for Mexico, and purchased a 3GB plan valid for 30 days. The price was a few dollars. The app walked me through the installation step by step, generated a QR code, and I scanned it. The eSIM appeared in my phone’s SIM settings. I set it as my data line, kept my Canadian SIM for calls and texts, and that was that. The whole process from purchase to installed took maybe ten minutes, and I’m being generous with that estimate.
For anyone else using a Pixel 7 Pro or similar Android device, the process is intuitive. iPhone users report the same experience. The app itself is clean and easy to navigate, which I mention because travel apps have a long and distinguished history of being absolutely terrible.
How It Performed in Puerto Morelos
Puerto Morelos is a small fishing village on the Riviera Maya, roughly halfway between Cancun and Playa del Carmen. It’s the kind of place that gets called a hidden gem by people who found it in a travel magazine, but it’s still genuinely lovely and considerably less chaotic than its famous neighbours. Connectivity-wise, it’s not exactly a remote jungle outpost. But you never quite know how an eSIM is going to perform until you actually use it.
The answer, over ten days, was: very well. No dropped connections, no mysteriously absent signal, no moments where I was standing on a street corner waving my phone at the sky hoping for a bar. Maps worked. Google searches worked. Looking up restaurant hours worked. All the essential traveller activities that I once had to plan for in advance because I might not have data, I could now just do on the fly. It was quietly transformative in a way I didn’t fully appreciate until I was doing it.
The Hotspot Situation (and Why My Wife Is Smug About It)
My wife declined to purchase her own eSIM. This is the part of the story where I’d normally be annoyed, but I can’t be, because she was correct. My plan had more than enough data for both of us. I hotspotted my laptop a few times when I needed to do some writing, and my other half connected through my phone as well without any noticeable impact on speed or reliability. The data held up without drama.
She has now claimed credit for this outcome as an act of brilliant frugality. I let her have it. It costs me nothing and keeps the peace on holiday.
How to Purchase and Install an Airalo eSIM
It’s five steps, and I’m being generous by calling it that:
- Download the Airalo app or visit airalo.com and create a free account.
- Search for your destination country or region and browse the available data plans.
- Purchase the plan that suits your trip length and data needs.
- Follow the installation prompts. You’ll either scan a QR code or follow manual installation steps. Either way, it takes minutes.
- Once you arrive at your destination and connect to a local network, you’re online. No store visits. No paperwork. No theatre.
One thing worth knowing: you’ll want to confirm your device is eSIM-compatible before you get too excited. Most phones made after 2018 are, but you can check the full compatibility list at airalo.com. Airalo covers over 200 countries and regions globally, so chances are wherever you’re going, they’ve got you covered.
Pros and Cons of Using Airalo
The Good:
- No physical SIM hunt. No language barriers at a foreign phone shop. No spending the first hour of your holiday looking for a carrier kiosk.
- Purchase and install before you leave home. You land connected.
- Competitive pricing. Significantly cheaper than international roaming.
- Coverage in 200+ countries. Genuinely useful for any destination.
- Data top-up available through the app if you underestimate your needs.
- Track your data usage directly in the app. No guessing.
- eSIM stays on your phone after the plan expires. For returning destinations, you just reactivate. More on this in a moment.
The Less Good:
- Your device must be eSIM-compatible and carrier-unlocked. Check before you buy.
- Most plans are data only. If you need a local number for calls and texts, you’ll want to check the specific plan details. Many travellers don’t need this, but it’s worth knowing.
- Signal quality depends on the local network Airalo partners with in your destination. In popular travel destinations it’s generally excellent. In genuinely remote areas, your mileage may vary.
The Feature That Sealed the Deal for Me
We go to Mexico often. It’s warm, it’s affordable, and at this point it requires considerably less convincing than a holiday involving delayed flights through a northern European hub in November. Which means the mobile data question was going to come up again. And again.
Here’s what I didn’t fully appreciate until after our first trip with Airalo: the eSIM stays on your phone. When my Mexico plan expired, the eSIM didn’t disappear. It’s still sitting there in my SIM settings, a little dormant Mexico data profile waiting for its next outing. When we go back, I don’t reinstall anything. I don’t research options again. I open the app, reactivate or purchase a new plan for the same eSIM, and we’re done. The entire pre-trip mobile data saga has been reduced to three taps on a screen.
For someone who spent three days on this problem the first time around, that’s not a small thing. Peace of mind is worth quite a bit. In this case it was also worth about fifteen dollars, which makes it one of the better value propositions in travel.
The Verdict
I went into this with a fair amount of skepticism, as I do with most things that promise to be simple and cheap. Airalo has, to its credit, turned out to actually be both. The setup was easy, the performance was reliable, the pricing was reasonable, and the fact that I can now travel to Mexico without a single moment’s thought about data is worth more to me than I can adequately express without sounding like an advertisement.
If you travel internationally with any regularity and you haven’t switched to an eSIM yet, I’d genuinely encourage you to try it. You can explore Airalo’s plans and coverage at the link below. Tell them the grumpy Canadian sent you. They won’t know what that means, but it might start an interesting conversation.
To check out other tools and accessories we use on the regular, click here.
Cheers!
