Purchase & setting up the eSIM
You can buy a Holafly eSIM two ways: through the Holafly website, or directly in the Holafly app. For both, you pick your destination, choose the number of days and eSIMs you need, and pay. There’s no account setup needed to purchase an eSIM, just your email address.
Once you've bought it, you’ll either get a QR code via email or see the eSIM under purchases within the app. I used the app, where the Install button immediately opened my iPhone settings and walked me through the installation process. I was asked where I planned to use the eSIM and which data mode I wanted.
A little challenge I faced: this only worked properly when I selected "use abroad." Choosing "use at home" didn't let me continue the flow. If you're setting your eSIM up to use in your home country, pick the abroad option anyway. In practice, this did not affect the connection.
If your phone doesn't support the newer install flow, you've still got the usual options: scan a QR code, or enter the details manually.
From start to finish, I had a working connection in under a minute without having to adjust any of the settings manually like I’m used to for other eSIMs.
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Tip for easy installation: remove any old eSIMs you have saved on your phone to prevent errors and avoid troubleshooting.
Holafly speed test
I ran my speed tests using speedtest.net, the same method I use for every eSIM review. The eSIM connected to 5G immediately after install, which was a positive initial signal. The results were a little jumpy, ranging from 60 Mbps to 130 Mbps from the same spot, only minutes apart. A few more speed tests in different locations throughout the week showed similar results while never going below 50 Mbps, which was more than sufficient for everything I needed mobile data for.
Screenshot of speedtest.net results for Holafly eSIM in Portugal 2026For hotspotting, I got 50.14 Mbps and 74.38 Mbps across two separate tests, both comfortably fast enough for video calls or streaming. Coverage held up well beyond the city too, including along the coastline and in more rural areas, not just central Lisbon.
Pricing and plan types
Holafly day eSIM
Holafly's day eSIMs are priced by destination and length of trip. The pricing for a 7-day unlimited eSIM for Europe is in line with other major providers charging between €23 and €26. Some cheaper providers apply data caps despite calling plans unlimited.
As an example, here's what a Europe unlimited eSIM costs as of July 2026:
- 3 days: €11.37
- 5 days: €18.50
- 7 days: €25.50
- 10 days: €33.90
- 15 days: €46.90
- 30 days: €68.90
The longer the plan, the lower the price per day works out, so it's worth booking for your full trip length rather than topping up in short bursts.
Holafly Plans
If you travel often rather than taking one trip at a time, Holafly Plans is the other option to consider. It's a monthly or yearly subscription covering 160+ destinations on a single eSIM, available as a full unlimited tier or a lighter 25GB version.
Instead of buying a new eSIM per country, you keep one active plan running. For frequent flyers or long-term nomads hopping between countries, this can work out simpler and cheaper than repeatedly buying day eSIMs, though it's worth comparing costs against your actual travel pattern before switching over.
Pricing as of July 2026
- Unlimited Plan: €59.95/month
- Light Plan: €45.95/month
Both get cheaper the longer you commit: quarterly billing saves around 10%, yearly around 15%.
Every Holafly product, day eSIMs and Plans alike, also includes Always On: 1GB of free global emergency data every month, active worldwide from the moment your eSIM is installed. It keeps working even after your plan expires, for as long as the eSIM stays installed on your phone, a genuinely useful feature if you land or layover somewhere with no connection and need just enough data to sort yourself out.
Is Holafly good for remote work?
Is Holafly really unlimited and can be used by digital nomads? This is a detail most travel reviews skip past. It’s worth being precise here as the answer is yes and no at the same time.
For the day eSIMs, on your own device, data is genuinely unlimited. Holafly doesn't apply its own fair usage policy like many other providers do (usually capping data around 3-5 GB), and in a full week of everyday use I never hit a wall or noticed any speed reduction. Holafly does note that local network providers can restrict speeds "in rare scenarios," but that's down to the carrier, not Holafly capping you.
The real limit is hotspot data for other devices: up to 1GB per day, and it's a hard cap that can't be recharged or extended once you've used it up. That makes Holafly day eSIMs a good option for keeping your phone connected all day, for calls, maps, social media, streaming, all of it. But if you're planning to work remotely by hotspotting a laptop off your eSIM for hours at a time, 1GB a day can run out fast on certain activities.
If you're a digital nomad, this is exactly where Holafly's Unlimited Plan changes the picture. Unlike the day eSIMs, the Unlimited Plan comes with genuinely unlimited hotspot, no daily cap at all, ensuring you can stay connected for work all day.
Overall, the day eSIMs are great for staying connected on your phone during a single trip and for light work, but if you regularly hotspot a laptop, the Unlimited Plan is built for exactly that.
Support experience
Support turned out to be one of the stronger parts of testing Holafly. I bought my plan directly through the Holafly app, but it didn't log me in automatically afterwards, and kept showing the eSIM I was using as installation pending. A full day later, the app was still showing my installation as "pending," even though I was already using data with no problems at all.
It didn’t really make a difference for my usage, but to test the support I contacted their help desk about it through the live chat, which replied quickly and moved from a chatbot to an actual human fast, no getting stuck repeating myself to a bot. Their explanation was specific and reassuring rather than a generic script: the app status can lag up to 48 hours after you activate it and start using data, and your service is genuinely active in the meantime. The app simply hasn't caught up yet.
It's a bit unsettling to see "pending" on something you're actively relying on, but the explanation held up, and I never actually lost my connection while waiting for the app to update. It's a small imperfection on an otherwise solid setup experience, but as it didn’t impact the performance of the eSIM, I didn’t really mind it.
Discount code
Nomadwise readers get 5% off Holafly eSIMs and 10% off Holafly Plans for the first 12 months with the code NOMADWISE.
Summary: is Holafly worth it?
Based on a week of real use, Holafly is a good option if you want unlimited data on your phone without thinking about it: fast setup, a connection that is solid in the city and the countryside, and support that actually replied fast and explained the issue.
The one real caveat is the day eSIMs' hotspot cap, not ideal if you need to tether a laptop for multiple hours. But that's specific to the day eSIMs: Holafly's Unlimited Plan removes the cap entirely, making it a genuinely strong pick if you're a digital nomad who regularly works off a hotspot, and worth choosing over a day eSIM if that's your main use case.
