Fair use policy

Metered plans have no throttle

There is no fair use threshold on a metered plan, because there is nothing to be fair about. You bought a number of gigabytes. You get that number at the host network's speed, and then you stop.

We do not slow you at 80 percent of the plan. We do not slow you at 100 percent either, because at 100 percent there is nothing left to slow. Wallet data starts at $5.89 for 1 GB and falls to $1.36 a gigabyte at 50 GB, and none of it expires.

What we do instead of throttling is tell you. A notification goes out as the balance runs low, and every account holds 100 MB a month of free rescue data across 145 destinations, so you never need data in order to buy data.

Day passes run at full speed to 2 GB, then 1 Mbps

A day pass costs $5.89 for one day and $64.89 for thirty. It runs at the host network's full speed up to 2 GB in a day, then at 1 Mbps until the day ends, and then it is full speed again. The allowance is per day rather than per plan, so a quiet day builds no credit and a heavy day borrows nothing from tomorrow.

No unlimited plan in this category is genuinely without a limit. Every seller applies a threshold. The only real question is whether they print it, and where.

1 Mbps is enough for maps, messaging, email, a boarding pass, a ride hailing app and a bank one time code. It is not enough for video, a large upload or a video call. Both of those are true and printing both costs us nothing.

Our threshold is not the most generous here and we will not pretend otherwise. Airalo, Saily, Jetpac and Maya all publish 3 GB a day where we publish 2 GB. We are cheaper and clearer. On the size of the allowance alone, we lose.

Published full speed allowances, ours included

Checked 2026-08-31 against each provider's own pages. The full survey is on the price index.

Tethering

Tethering is included on every plan, metered and day pass alike, and it draws on the same allowance as the phone. There is no tethering surcharge and no separate tethering cap.

A laptop pulls data faster than a phone, so on a day pass the 2 GB goes sooner. That is arithmetic rather than a penalty. If you will work from a laptop all day, a metered plan is usually the better buy.

A small number of host networks block tethering at their end and we cannot override that. Where it is true of a country, we say so on that country's page before you buy, not here afterwards.

What counts as abuse

Four things, and they are narrower than the phrase usually is elsewhere.

Not on that list: heavy use. Streaming all day on a day pass is what a day pass is for. Using 2 GB every day for thirty days is the product working exactly as sold, and nobody will write to you about it.

• Permanent roaming. A travel eSIM used continuously in one country for months is not travelling, and our host networks price it as travel. If you live somewhere, buy a line there. It will be cheaper.
• Reselling the connection. Sharing a hotspot with the people you are travelling with is normal use and always has been. Charging strangers for access to it is not.
• Automated traffic. Bots, scrapers, proxy exit nodes, crypto mining, and traffic that plainly never came from a person.
• A fixed line replacement. A router in a house, running continuously, on a plan sold for a trip. Home cameras and backups are a broadband product, and we do not sell one.

What happens before anything is suspended

In this order, and the steps are not skipped. At no point do we take your wallet balance. It does not expire, it is yours, and a disagreement about how a line is used is not a reason to keep money you have already paid us.

• We look at the traffic pattern, not the content. We do not inspect what you do online, and could not tell you which page you loaded even if you asked.
• We email you. The message names the line, the dates, the specific pattern and what would need to change. It is written by a person and signed by one.
• You get seven days to reply, and a reply pauses the clock. Most cases end here, because most turn out to be a hotspot in a holiday rental.
• If nothing changes, we restrict the line rather than close the account. Speed is limited, the balance stays yours, and emergency calling continues where the host network supports it.
• Suspending the account is last, and a named person makes that decision rather than a script.

How to appeal

Reply to the email. That is the whole appeal route, and it reaches the same team rather than a queue that ends nowhere. If you would rather start fresh, open a support conversation and use the word appeal. Support answers in under 60 seconds, 24 hours a day.

An appeal is read by a second reviewer who was not the first. If we were wrong, the line is restored, we say so in writing, and we credit the days you lost. If we were right, you get the reasoning rather than a reference number. Nothing here removes a right you hold under your local consumer law.

What our competitors publish, and what they do not

We checked every seller in this category on 2026-08-31, on their own pages, reading the server rendered HTML rather than somebody else's summary.

Airalo publishes 3 GB a day and 1 Mbps after it, on the plan page, for a thirty day global plan at $159.00. That is a real disclosure and a more generous allowance than ours. Saily prints 3 GB a day in one place and 5 GB in another for the same product, which is worse than one number you dislike.

Holafly publishes no full speed allowance and no throttled speed anywhere we could find. A threshold you can only discover by hitting it is not a policy, it is a surprise. Some sellers will tell support what the number is and never put it on the site. This page exists so that ours is on the site, on the buy button, and in 12 languages.

Questions people ask about this