Airalo vs Holafly in 2026: Every Number, and the Date We Checked It
How to read this comparison
Every figure below carries the date it was checked, because a price in this category is a fact with a shelf life. There are three dates. The competitor survey is 2026-08-31, the headline listings are 2026-08-01, and the expiring ticket listings are 2026-08-24.
None of it came from an aggregator. Each provider was read one at a time from their own public pages and checked against the server rendered HTML. We sell against both of these companies, so read the rows where we lose first. There are four of them and they are collected near the end.
Destinations: what is marketed, and what the global plan reaches
Both companies market 200 plus destinations. That is true of their local plans and it is not the number you are buying. On the global plan, Airalo reaches 169, Saily reaches 121 and Holafly reaches 113. Orbislo reaches 145.
We lose this row. Airalo reaches 24 more destinations than we do, and if your trip crosses a lot of borders that one number settles the decision. No argument about speed or expiry changes a country we do not cover.
The gap between the marketing and the product is not unique to those two, and it is worth seeing at scale before you trust any headline here.
Marketed footprint against the footprint you can actually buy
| Provider | Marketed | Global plan reaches |
|---|---|---|
| Instabridge | 190+ | 114 |
| Yesim | 200+ | 83 |
| Nomad | 200+ | 123 |
| aloSIM | 200+ | 147 |
| Orbislo | 145 | 145 |
Airalo and Holafly are absent because we surveyed their global plan counts, 169 and 113, rather than their marketing copy. Our two columns match only because the marketed number is generated from the catalog. Checked 2026-08-31.
Price per gigabyte, on a plan that meters gigabytes
Orbislo is $1.39 a gigabyte at 20 GB. Airalo is $3.30 at the same size, checked 2026-08-31. The Airalo plan expires and ours does not, which is most of the difference in what you pay over a year rather than over a week.
Holafly is not on this table. We found no comparable global metered plan to price, because Holafly sells the day rather than the gigabyte. That is a real product difference and not an omission, and if what you want is gigabytes it is a reason to look elsewhere.
Two sellers beat us on unit price and neither does it with a better wholesale deal. Roamless charges by the megabyte with no plan at all, down to $1.95 a gigabyte, and Firsty funds a free tier with advertising.
Global metered plans of about 20 GB, by cost per gigabyte
| Provider | Plan size | Price | Per GB | Expires |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orbislo | 20 GB | $27.89 | $1.39 | No |
| Jetpac | 30 GB | $69.99 | $2.33 | Yes |
| aloSIM | 20 GB | $62.00 | $3.10 | Yes |
| Saily | 20 GB | $64.00 | $3.20 | Yes |
| Airalo | 20 GB | $66.00 | $3.30 | Yes |
| Nomad | 20 GB | $103.00 | $5.15 | Yes |
Jetpac's nearest global plan is 30 GB rather than 20 GB, so the size is a column. Airalo's cheapest global gigabyte is a separate listing at $8.50 for 1 GB over 7 days, checked 2026-08-01. All other stickers checked 2026-08-31.
The day pass, the allowance, and the speed after it
Airalo publishes 3 GB a day at full speed and 1 Mbps after that, on the plan page, before you pay. Credit where it is due. That is a disclosure, and most of this category does not make one.
Holafly publishes nothing. No daily figure, no throttled speed, nowhere on their own estate that we could find on 2026-08-31. You are buying a word rather than a number.
We lose this row as well. Orbislo publishes 2 GB a day then 1 Mbps, which is smaller than the 3 GB that Airalo, Saily, Maya and Jetpac all publish. Ours is printed on the buy button rather than buried in a help article, but printing a smaller allowance does not make it larger.
Thirty days of global unlimited, and the number behind the word
| Provider | 30 day price | Full speed a day | After that | Where it is published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orbislo | $64.89 | 2 GB | 1 Mbps | On the buy button |
| Airalo | $159.00 | 3 GB | 1 Mbps | On the plan page |
| Holafly | $161.50 | Not published | Not published | Nowhere we could find |
Saily lists about $31.00 for the same window, at 3 GB or 5 GB a day depending on tier. Read off each provider's own page on 2026-08-31.
What happens to the data you did not use
At Airalo and at Holafly, it is gone. Both sell a window, and when the window closes the unused gigabytes close with it. That is the normal shape of this product and it is the reason almost everybody overbuys.
Four sellers offer a balance that does not expire: Yesim, Instabridge, Firsty, Roamless. Read that carefully, because it is a different promise. The money stays. The gigabytes still run to a clock once you have spent the money on them. Roamless markets credits that never expire and its own terms say the account goes inactive after 12 months.
The practical effect is a buying rule. On an expiring plan you have to buy for your worst week. On a plan that does not expire you buy for your normal week and top up in about ten seconds when you are wrong. An expiring 10 GB ticket in this category ran $29.00 on 2026-08-24, against $15.89 for 10 GB in a wallet that keeps it. This is the paragraph where we are least neutral, so check it against their terms rather than against us.
Refunds, including the part we cannot tell you
Here is a limit of this piece. Our survey covered destinations, prices, allowances and disclosure. It did not cover Airalo's or Holafly's refund terms, so we are not going to characterise them. Read their own pages. A comparison that quietly fills a gap with a guess is the thing you came here to avoid.
What we can state is ours, because you can hold us to it. A provisioning failure is refunded automatically inside 60 seconds without you asking. Under five percent used, or never installed, and you tap refund in your order. A network that failed you in the destination is a full refund plus a credit. Front line agents can refund up to 200 dollars without approval.
And we have broken that promise. Between 3 September and 15 October 2026 the automatic refund missed 214 orders, and a customer found it before we did. It is in our truth report, because a company that publishes other people's undisclosed numbers has no business hiding its own.
The four rows where Orbislo loses
Collected here so you do not have to hunt for them. Three of these are structural and will not change this year.
- Destinations: Airalo reaches 24 more than we do, 169 against 145
- Day pass allowance: 2 GB a day against the 3 GB that Airalo, Saily, Maya and Jetpac publish
- Unit price: Roamless goes down to $1.95 a gigabyte by charging per megabyte, and Firsty runs an advertising funded free tier
- Cruise plans: we sell none, because nobody in this category publishes whether one works at sea or only in port, ourselves included
Which one to buy
One country, under a week, you want unlimited and you do not want to think about it: Holafly. Activation is simple and support is fast. Measured first response is around three minutes with a real person, against over ten minutes at Airalo with chats abandoned.
Breadth, or anything crossing several borders: Airalo. 169 destinations on one global plan is the largest footprint in this comparison and nobody here beats it, us included. Longer than a fortnight, or you resent paying for data you then delete: us, and weigh that sentence accordingly.
One last check on whoever you pick. Make sure the price ladder goes the right way. On Jetpac's own site a 20 GB plan costs $40.00 and a 30 GB plan costs $29.99, on every destination we checked. That is their published pricing rather than a transcription error, and it is the sort of thing a price index exists to catch.