Airalo and Holafly are copying each other, and your roaming bill is better for it

The clearest sign of how fast this market is moving came on 2 June 2026, when Airalo announced it had passed 30 million customers, up from 20 million little more than a year earlier. Growth like that attracts imitation, and the two category leaders are now openly borrowing each other's playbook.

What Airalo changed

Airalo built its name on flexibility and low entry prices: 1 GB, 3 GB, 5 GB packages you buy per trip, with anything left over staying live for the validity window. That's still the core catalogue across 200-plus destinations.

The shift is that Airalo launched unlimited data plans in the second half of 2025, and they've taken off - the company says they're now available in 150 destinations and have grown 193% since launch. That move dropped Airalo squarely onto Holafly's turf, putting it head-to-head with the unlimited-first brands. Some newer Airalo global tiers have even started bundling a voice and SMS option for an extra fee, another feature that used to belong to other providers.

However, Airalo's "unlimited" runs on a daily fair-use cap, commonly around 3 GB a day before speeds are throttled. So it's unlimited in the sense that it won't cut off, not in the sense that you get full speed forever.

What Holafly changed

Holafly came at it from the opposite direction. Its signature product was always unlimited data sold by trip length, anywhere from 1 to 90 days - simple, generous, and a bit pricier than the capped competition.

Now Holafly has built out a monthly subscription line that looks a lot more like its rivals. Its new "Light" global plan is capped at 25 GB per month for a launch price of €45.95 (about €1.53 a day), with hotspot sharing and coverage across 160-plus destinations.

Alongside it sits a monthly unlimited subscription and longer annual options. And from late 2025, Holafly's unlimited plans bundle a phone number for the US, UK or Canada (inbound texts and internet-based calling), narrowing yet another gap with traditional SIMs.

Like Airalo, Holafly applies a fair-use policy - but its headline limit is measured monthly rather than daily, which is the single most useful difference to remember when "unlimited" appears on both their pages.

Why both are converging on the middle

This isn't coincidence; it's what happens when a market grows up. GSMA Intelligence expects eSIM penetration to roughly double in 2026 alone, with eSIM connections set to overtake removable SIMs by 2030. When a category expands that fast, the new customers aren't early adopters who care about the nuances of capped versus unlimited, they're ordinary travellers who just want their phone to work when they land.

To win that mainstream buyer, both companies have to cover every base. The capped-and-cheap brand needs an unlimited option for the "I don't want to think about it" crowd. The unlimited brand needs a cheaper, lighter tier for the short-trip buyer who balks at the premium. So Airalo built unlimited, Holafly built capped, and they met in the middle - joined by a crowded field including Saily, Nomad, Maya Mobile and others all selling variations of the same thing.

What it means for your wallet

The good news for travellers is that this competition is pushing prices down and choice up. The catch is that "best value" now depends entirely on how you travel, so the headline brand name matters less than matching the plan to the trip:

• Short trips, light use: A capped plan still wins on price. A few gigabytes covers maps, messaging, tickets and social media for a week (often for the price of a couple of coffees) and you're overpaying if you buy unlimited you won't use.
  
• Heavy use or "don't make me count": An unlimited plan removes the anxiety, but read the fair-use terms. Airalo's daily throttle and Holafly's monthly limit behave very differently on a long trip.
  
• Long-term and digital nomads: This is where the new monthly and annual subscriptions are aimed - a recurring global plan can beat buying a fresh eSIM for every leg, especially if you're abroad continuously.

The real fight has already moved past data

When two rivals can both offer capped and unlimited data at similar prices, data stops being how either of them wins. The competition moves to everything wrapped around it, and that's exactly where the 2026 battle is being fought.

Look at what's being bolted on: phone numbers for calls and texts, loyalty schemes that hand back credit on every purchase (Airalo's Airmoney, Holafly's HolaCoins), built-in security extras like the ad-blocking and protection tools Saily leans on, hotspot sharing, slicker apps and round-the-clock human support. The plan is becoming a commodity; the ecosystem around it is becoming the product.

That's the deeper story behind Airalo blinking. The travel eSIM has matured from a clever workaround into a mainstream utility, and the providers know it. The next time one of these brands makes headlines, it's far less likely to be about gigabytes, and far more likely to be about turning a data plan into a full travel account you don't want to leave. For travellers, a maturing market that competes on price and features is about the best outcome there is.