All International Travel eSIM Apps Reviewed! 2022

[Music] what's up guys my name is mike and this is integrated tech having cell phone service when you travel internationally makes your trip so much easier being able to quickly find transportation directions to your hotel maybe sites you want to see or restaurants that are good are all so much easier to find and enjoy when you're able to use your cell phone in the same way that you do at home a couple months back i shared my experience when i traveled internationally to italy and i thought that my cell phone service was going to work right away my carrier was us mobile and they promised that they had international data but it didn't work and i was stuck on a dock in venice trying to figure out my way to our hotel i jumped into the app store and quickly found and downloaded the first app that popped up which was aerolo and i was able to quickly get e-sim service and was up and running in just a few minutes when i got to the hotel i was able to continue to use cell phone service and overall it made my trip a great experience but over the past couple of months i've been thinking more about the esim providers and the other options that were there since i just jumped straight into rlo which was the first recommended app i didn't spend any time comparing the other apps looking at different prices or what the different options were at the time i just went with whatever was first so for the past couple of months i've been testing out and trying a few different e-sim providers to figure out if rlo really is the best or if there's other options out there that could be better so first let's get started with the idea of an e-sim e-sim is a new technology that's been out for a couple of years now and chances are if you have a modern iphone or android phone it's already built in esims are basically digital sim cards that you can quickly activate with tons of different carriers and it doesn't cost you any money what i really like about esims is that when you arrive at your destination country let's say italy for example i don't have to go hunting in the airport or out in the city to try and find a cell phone store to get a sim card to activate so i can get cell phone service instead i can just simply scan a qr code or activate the esim on my phone when i'm connected to the wi-fi in the airport and i'm quickly up and running with cell phone service so the minute i step out of the airport and i don't have wi-fi anymore i'm immediately connected to the cell phone network there in the country and i can use my phone the same way that i normally do at home some of you might say well my cell phone carrier does that for me already i have a plan with a t or verizon that says that i have international data and what you might find is that your speeds might be limited to 3g which is so slow it's almost unusable or it's very very expensive and using an esim provider specifically one that you can get in the app store on your phone may end up being far cheaper per gigabyte of data and give you a much better experience overall than trying to work with your carrier over the past month i've tried eight different options for e-sims that i found in the app store and i want to share my experience with each of these and tell you which ones i'd recommend and which ones i think you should avoid entirely the eight apps i tested were nomad e sim plus red t go aerolo gig sky ubigi sim8 and dent so full disclosure here i'm not affiliated or sponsored by any of these apps i don't have any kickbacks i didn't receive any free credit i simply wanted to know which of the e-sim providers was the best and which one would work well for me during my future travel and i thought i'd share my experience with all of you to compare each of these apps i made a list of things that i felt like were important to me and would make my experience when i'm traveling internationally easier the list included the countries that they support the ease of setup and installation the average price per gigabyte of data what the user interface was like and if they had any support options as reference points during my testing i looked at three countries first was the united states because i know what a typical gigabyte of data should cost here in the united states second i tested italy it's a frequent country that people visit when they go to europe especially from the united states figured a lot of people travel there and uh international data should be pretty cheap and inexpensive the third country i tested was georgia and it's a lesser known country one that not very many people travel to and so i thought it was a good test of the number of countries that they support a cool fact is that i actually lived in georgia for two years i speak georgian fluently and in case you're wondering it's not a state it's actually located right here on the map so first let's talk about the ones that i would not download or use they were way more expensive than all of the other apps in terms of price per gigabyte the countries they supported with somewhat limited and the user interface on some of these apps was straight out of the 90s and i can't recommend it at all these apps were esim plus you biggie and gig sky i would just avoid these don't waste your time in the middle category i've placed redtgo nomad and sim8 on average these were 20 to 30 percent more expensive than the top apps and the countries that they supported were somewhat limited also in some of these apps it was a little bit difficult to search or find a quick list of all the countries that they supported and it could be a little bit difficult to figure out how much data you have left on your specific esim plan that you've purchased i wouldn't totally ignore these apps though i think if you're looking for a good deal these could be a place to look they can be a little bit more difficult to activate they don't have the typical click through process that gives you a couple of prompts and you're activated you have to use a second device to scan a qr code and then input some additional data can be a little bit confusing and clunky just overall not the greatest experience but you can find really good deals with these apps particularly with redt go if you're traveling to let's say some country in the asian region given that they're based out of asia i think singapore they did offer a lot more support for asian countries than other apps did so some of these providers are better in different regions i wouldn't completely rule them out but they aren't my top picks in the top two spots i'd recommend aeroloe and dent and specifically in that order i was really lucky when i traveled to italy and i clicked the app that ended up being the best right off the bat aerolo is great they have tons and tons of different countries that are supported specifically i think like 190 so really anywhere that you're traveling to in the world they have on their app and on average they were a little bit less expensive than all of the other competitors but they do get more expensive as you go from purchasing an individual country plan to purchasing a region say europe or africa or asia and they tend to get really expensive if you ten if you decide to purchase a global sim which would give you cell phone service in nearly every country but overall i'd say they're my top pick but if you're looking for something that you only have to set up once and will work in many of the popular countries that people travel to i'd really recommend dent dent was quite a bit different than all of the other apps i tested it's based on the blockchain and uses its own specific cryptocurrency called dent which literally is just used for international cell phone service what's really interesting about this app is that it's only one sim and you activate it once and when you add data to it it works for up to 365 days whereas with the other apps that i tested they had plans that ranged from typically 7 days or to 30 days they didn't really ever last an entire year really separates dent from the rest of the pack they don't support very many countries though in total right now there's only 71 but many of the popular countries in europe in central america and in africa were also supported the data that you purchase on dent is good for an entire year it's ten dollars per gigabyte which i think is pretty expensive but it does last 365 days and you can use it in any of their 71 supported countries i wouldn't recommend purchasing data this way though because it does get pretty expensive pretty quick what i think really separates dent from all of the other providers is the marketplace say that you purchased 10 gigabytes for your trip to italy but while you were there you only used seven so you have three additional gigabytes of data that you didn't use on all of these other plans that data would go to waste but on dent you can sell that data in the marketplace when it was originally purchased it set a timer for 365 days and eventually that data will expire when you go into the marketplace i was typically seeing a gigabyte of data for around 3.60 with an expiration date within around 30 days basically what this means is if you download the dent app you install it you get everything set up and ready to go and when you arrive in the country that you're traveling to you purchase someone else's data in the marketplace that might be expiring in 7 days or 30 days you're going to get a really inexpensive price per gigabyte of data making it cheaper than every other app i tested including rlo if you're looking for really inexpensive data i would definitely look at dent but if it's not going to work for one of the countries that you're visiting then rlo is definitely the way to go if you're interested in trying airlow or dent or any of the other apps i talked about i'll leave some referral links down below there's some pretty cool incentives like a couple bucks off or some free data if you sign up using one of those links so please check them out thanks for watching guys if you like this video please consider subscribing and safe travels

Channel: Michael Vance

Views: 290,404

Keywords: Michael, Mike, Vance, Integrated, Tech, Technology, eSIM, Airalo, DENT, International, Travel, Cell, Phone, Service, Data, RedteaGO, Nomad, SIM8, eSIM+, Ubigi, Review, Comparison, Compaired, iPhone, 14, Pro, How, To, Activate, Setup, Foreign, Country

Id: kzaaDMmrz5A

Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 26 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/0bri3n]

I've spent some time looking at a bunch of different eSIM apps and thought this might be helpful for some on here.

[u/JoeTony6]

Great content. Airalo was always the default in my mind, but Dent sounds like a really intriguing option.

[u/WackyBeachJustice]

Thanks for this. Would you recommend to set this up at home right before the trip? My understanding is that the expiration period doesn't kick in until the connection is made once you arrive at your destination. Also it seems this is always data only, so you wouldn't be able to make calls?

[u/Whiplash104]

FYI, Apple’s support page has a list of worldwide eSIM providers. There are a couple in the list I don’t know much about. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209096 Scroll to the very bottom under “Worldwide service providers.”. This is in addition to https://esimdb.com/ which has most of them.

[u/davexc]

You should check out YESIM. Their pay as you go plan works for my needs.

[u/tsuehpsyde]

I used Airalo recently thanks in part to your other video (I was considering US Mobile and a co-worker in Europe suggested Airalo). I am happy to report that Airalo worked perfectly and I would happily suggest it to anyone that can use it! $17 and I got 5GB of data that worked in Amsterdam, Austria, and the Czech Republic.

Thanks!

[u/pomokey]

I've used airalo in the past without issue very easy and quick to set up with a pixel 4a.

[u/EggShellBuddyPal]

I’m surprised that Truphone didn’t make the list. Had good experience with them and they have EU plans covering multiple countries too.

[u/Rancid_Lettuce]

Thanks for posting this. I used your referral link to get the free GB on Dent.