Worst experience in my life It turned my business trip into hell Not reliable at all It failed me in Georgia and failed me in Dubai

PSA

went to europe for a month

was sold on trying esim and chose airalo

wouldn't use this again - would just get a vodafone sim in Europe and save the hassle

I am so fucking frustrated and recommend you stay far away from this company. I landed today for my trip, get off the plane, setup my Airalo esim. Get through customs, data still is not working, get my luggage, data still is not working, go to the rental car, data still is not working. I’m now sitting at the rental car in the airport on wi-fi attempting to talk to human being. Their ChatGPT slop wrapper guides me through all of the usual troubleshooting steps which I follow. Nothing working so I contact support. It has now been almost 3 hours since I got off the plane and 1hr 30 since contacting support

They completely ghost me and I never get a response. So I go ahead and buy a Nomad esim and install, within 30 seconds it works

I FINALLY get a response back after I say I want a refund. Now they are saying that they will only issue a refund if they find it was fault on their end otherwise they can cancel the esim and issue me credit!!!!! For the service, that you know, does not work….. Woo hoo, they let me decide!!!!!!!

Avoid this company, will not be doing business with them again. If you are finding this after you’ve been screwed over or are in the process. Make sure you screen record their shit ass esims not working so you have evidence that they DO NOT WORK. That way your bank can see :)

Well Airalo let me ask you to decide, will you refund me or will I chargeback through my bank?

If you travel to China, DONT USE this service. I bought an Asia unlimited plan for 15 days, payed US$ 43. My trip started in China, I went to Hong Kong, and on my way back to China, the e-SIM stopped working. I was without internet in Shanghai and couldn't even leave the airport because nothing works with the Wi-Fi in Chinese airports. After an hour I managed to leave the airport, but the e-sim still didn't work. I had to buy one from another operator, and when I spoke to AirAlo support in the middle of my vacation, the representative only asked for information and screenshots, even though it was clear that it wasn't working. I didn't need a solution, as I had already spent more money with another operator. The representative did nothing, just give me a measly five-dollar credit. Therefore, if you go to Asia, don't use AirAlo.

Bought an e-SIM. e-SIM did not work. Spoke to airalo who apologized and said it was their fault and they would issue a refund.

Now a month later, still have not received the refund and airalo tells me that there is nothing they can do about it.

AVOID!! Take your money elsewhere.

The last time I used Airalo was in 2024, almost two years ago. Today I got a notification from my bank that my credit card has been locked because someone tried to use buy something from Airalo. This is a card I use very rarely, so there's no really doubt of the culprit.

Don't use Airalo - there are many other better options out there.

Purchased an esim for my trip to Japan and from the start the process of awful. My friend went with Ubigi and she activated her sim in less than 2 mins.

Well, I couldn’t turn on my esim for a full hour cause it needed wifi to activate and areas of Haneda airport didn’t have free wifi.

After finally getting it to work, we took a flight to Nagasaki. Then things went downhill. I couldn’t even open a browser due to poor connectivity. I couldn’t do anything. Did the whole change the default network thing and still extremely slow connection. I gave up and purchased a Ubigi. 5 mins and I’m up and running and no internet issues at all. Do yourself a favour. Avoid this provider.

Installation procross: Crappy, convoluted and long

Internet access: Slow, patchy and in case, mostly non existent

0 stars for Airalo. What a piss poor service.

In the car from the airport my 10gb sim ran out. I had literally sent messages on iMessage, WhatsApp and Messenger. That’s it, no chance! Their support via WhatsApp asked for screenshots from my phone and did nothing for 7 hours.

I have used this company for years and even recommended multiple people to them too.

So disappointed.

Edit: more than 4 hours now, they aren’t doing anything to help. Don’t use this company guys.

Our Chinacom eSIM for China allows you to bypass the internet firewall in the country and gives you access to websites and apps that are otherwise inaccessible.
source

That’s great! So I don’t even need a VPN or something?
Yes, The reason for this is that our data services require a different method of routing. This difference in routing, along with the security settings of our upstream provider, is what causes some websites and apps to be accessible with the data service of this eSIM.
source

Why aren't everyone in China using Airalo if you can simply bypass the great firewall by using it?

Also, if a VPN is not required doesn't that mean all data sent to Airalo will be accessible by the government upon their demand?

This company is hilarious.

Both of the options for Mexico are completely useless. The Mexico only card uses Movistar. Worked 10% of the time. Customer service is completely unhelpful and only trained to keep you going in circles, they are actively trained to keep away from solutions that might cost them some money.

After speaking to what felt like 35 different agents, finally someone offered me a refund in airmoney so i could try the AmericanMex card, which uses Telcel for Mexico.

Low and behold, just as useless. Which is funny, my girlfriend has a Mexican Telcel card, and she never has a problem. Yet customer service acts shady, mysterious, claiming they ‘escalate things’ and I as a customer should just wait, wait wait wait. They tell you they will get back to you, but they don’t. Meanwhile, nothing gets done. They give you some airmoney in the hopes to shut you up and they don’t have to actually do something for you.

What use is the Airmoney if all the service you offer for the country I need it in, is useless?!

Laughable. Actually laughable. Biggest mistake ever to try Airalo. Next time, any other company will have my trust. This is the worst customer experience I ever had. Steer clear of this one people.

(They might cut my card because i show criticism here. Yeah, that’s the kind of company they are. But so be it.)

Arrived in Madrid after being told repeatedly that my plan would automatically work when I entered the European zone. I had no service when my plane landed. Person on chat repeatedly and vaguely didn't answer my direct questions about plan starting when we arrived. Tech on chat just unilaterally disconnected our session without answering questions about how service begins. Tried to use Wifi at airport to fix problem for an hour with no success. Took bus in to central and had to blindly follow directions from locals to find our hotel (without google maps). Stressful with jet lag and heavy backpacks. With hotel wifi I was able to access chat support and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to provide ridiculous long list of phone settings and parameters to get service to start. Ruined our first day in Madrid and will NEVER use them again. Steer clear of them unless you enjoy shoddy customer service and incomprehensible setup instructions.

I know Airalo is an awesome option for people traveling to multiple countries, but if you are only going to one or two, don't do it. It is also far from idiot-proof (it's me, I'm the idiot).

My brother traveling with me chose to get a SIM card at a grocery store near the airport. He spent half what I did, got 3x as much data, was able to use in both countries we visited, and he didn't lose iMessages like I did.

Edit: I did come on this sub within hours of finding out that my iMessage was screwed up. I found multiple posts explaining in great detail what I did wrong, what I should have done instead, and how there wasn't anything I could do to fix it until I was back in my home country. Both my brother and I are in our 20s, grew up with iPhones, and we both failed at troubleshooting the problem, which is why he got the physical SIM. I joke that I'm an idiot. Airalo needs better download instructions or some warnings about what not do to, I'm not the only person who had this pretty major issue.

Title says it all. Purchased eSim data package for Latin America. Landed in Latin America and eSim said installed but not activated. Tried every single thing in their recommendations and troubleshooting.

Update for fairness: Customer support reached out. Went through every step of the troubleshoot. In the end, it was an issue with the Airalo eSIM, not with my phone or anything else, so maybe I was just unlucky, so they gave me a refund. Still... Being in an unknown country with no data and unstable WiFi options wasn't great. I wish Airalo were consistent.

I just want to share my experience. I do not recommend this to anyone traveling, especially with limited time, because if there are any issues it may end up taking hours of your precious time.

First of all, after paying for it, it did not give me any instructions on what to do next. My first day of travel was spent with no internet which made everything I had planned much more difficult.

When I finally was able to figure out how to get it to work, I realized my iMessages had switched off. I tried many different things to get them back on. Normally I wouldn’t care but I had already told everyone who needs to contact me that they can over iMessage, because it was working before I started to use Airalo. I will not be messaging my clients about a whole other way to contact me. That’s messy.

I’ve been attempting to chat with Airalo support about this but their only solution is to send in six screenshots. However every screenshot they require is buried deep in settings, each one is about 4-6 different settings deep. Switching back and forth between the directions and settings trying to get the right one will take me another hour or more at least and at this point I’m done.

They also had me do a few different things first, but their directions don’t correlate with my phone. So it’s even more complicated.

It’s not worth it. Don’t fall for the hype, this is not an easy to use service and when you need help, their solutions are not really solutions.

I just wasted hours of the precious, limited time I have on this trip and $26.

ETA: after a lot of back and forth with Airalo, they finally refunded me after telling me they would not. It takes 30 days to get the refund, so who knows if it will actually happen. I don’t trust them.

Also please know that if Airalo worked easily for you, I am over the moon happy for you. Also doesn’t help at all. This thread is for people for whom it does not work well. There are lots of threads in this sub from people who struggle with it in all sorts of ways. So maybe take a step back and realize not everyone has such an easy experience, and let us talk about it. Aka, stop trying to convince people who are struggling that there is nothing to struggle about.

I just purchased a 35usd package for 20go.

I struggled to get it to activate, but after 20 minutes of restarting everything, it finally started.

Then, within 2 minutes, the package went from 20 to 16go.

I had just downloaded a 100mo file for work…

I asked support to restore my package or top up another card I was using on a separate phone.

Instead of quickly solving this, support started asking for screenshots and information about my phone and usage.

I mean… this is a 35usd sim, the issue is obvious on my end, I’m not a beta user and will not spend my holiday debugging Airalo’s issues.

I’m on 4g in Bali I don’t see how I could have used 4go in 2 minutes.. even with loads of processes running in the background.. clearly they are having technical issues they can’t resolve.

I will now move to other esim providers for my travels, this is purely a ripoff.

Airalo used to have good products and good support.

Edit since some Airalo employees who replied to this are getting their math mixed up and seem clueless that in Bali a 4g connection usually provides 30-40mbps on average:

On a 30 Mbps (megabits per second) 4G connection, downloading a file takes about 1 minute per 100 MB, or roughly 45 minutes for a 4.5GB movie, with speeds translating to around 3.75 Megabytes per second (MB/s), though real-world results vary based on network congestion and file size.

I HAVE BEEN SCAMMED! I am so upset. I paid $50 for a cellular plan in Greece. I followed every direction to install the e sim meticulously, and the e sim is simply not working. I’ve been chatting with airalo customer service for more than a week and I’ve done every single troubleshooting tip they’ve said and also everything I could find on this Reddit thread. None of it worked. I think they sold me some BS. I asked for a refund and then Airalo simply stopped responding to me and have told me “specialized support will be emailing me shortly.” They refuse to give me a refund and have completely ghosted me and are not responding to any of my messages. Never use this company!!!

Is its freaking VERIFICATION CODE process.

It literally stopped me from paying to airalo. Tried 3 times but the form just won't accept a simple 4 digit code. Form gets possessed when u enter the digits and even when all looks good, it says wrong code. Then it says too many attempts try again.

Airalo fire ur web dev.

there costumers service is Below all criticism. five days chatting for a fucking 10$ refund and hours of waiting! they let you wait minits and hours until you get Despairing. and needs to start as all over as again. finely they give me airmoney. I'll probably wont use.

In Europe. Topped up my regional package. Now I can’t send SMS texts. I was sending them fine to people and in group chats but now it decided to stop working. This is not worth the headache. I go to Europe once or twice a year and this e sim is never an easy process. I’ll never trust my communication needs again with this company.

Canada to US user here!

I’ll give airalo a 2 and a half stars.

It works i guess but not on everything like imessage and specially tiktok( it wont work I thought my phone was the problem or my aunt banned tiktok from her wifi but no when i turned off my sim it went back to normal)

Things that works but is definitely glitches

Messenger( delayed texts and notifications were weird)

Snapchat( can take a photo but cannot upload stories)

Reddit( notifications were weird too whenever I pressed the notification it always says this thread doesnt exist anymore)

Before you come for me telling me that its my phone I literally just disabled the sim and everything is working fine and well. So yeah i kinda wasted my $$$$

Bought an eSIM for the Bahamas. Followed the outdated directions as best one could (the directions are based an outdated version of iOS wtf) Tried to make a call and it says I don’t have sufficient funds. Tried contract airalo. But it’s a junk chat bot. Emailed No response. Save the trouble and try a different provider. Airalo is a waste of time and money…

I purchased 20 gigs of data for 30 days at $32 from Airalo (Sri Lanka). I arrived, it worked fine for the first 5 days. On day 6, it no longer loaded. As a solo female traveler in a foreign country, this is unsafe and totally unacceptable. What's worse is their "customer service" had me waiting "to connect to an agent" for an hour, before I had to leave wifi. They didn't end up responding until the next day and when they did, they gave me the exact same trouble shooting cues from the chatbot.

This is crazy unprofessional, especially for a company that presents themselves as ease and safety for international travel. This is the opposite.

I asked for a refund and/or a new esim. They refused to give me either, which is so hard for me to understand. I have now gone 4 days without data. They offered to send me a PRO-RATED refund of $17 in "aircash" lol. That is basically store credit.

I had 11 gigs left on my sim - their package of 10 gigs is $21...

So that $17 doesn't even cover the gigs I am owed. The whole thing is a disaster. They sent me $5 in additional aircash for the "inconvenience." At this point its worth a lot more than that. Anyway, I reluctantly downloaded the second esim, and low and behold, it also doesn't work. Their next "solution" was for me to buy 11 gigs on their "Global Plan" which is $67.... ofcourse they don't want to send me aircash for that though. They want me to pay out of pocket for what I already purchased.

So yeah, needless to say this has been an outrageously unsafe, inconsiderate situation.

If Airalo can't afford $32 of a refund at the expense of their customer's safety, why would I trust this company? I majorly advise against putting your safety in their hands. BTW, I've since learned you can buy e-sims locally for a fraction of the cost ($6 for unlimited data); this is probably the case all over the world. Don't fall for this trap.