An honest comparison
This page is not here to win. With travel eSIMs the real difference is rarely the headline price — it is who decides how much you buy. We lay the billing models out first, then say plainly when you should not buy soda.
Competitor data was checked on 2026-08-21 or later; the date for each individual claim is in the source list below.
The rules we hold ourselves to here
- Every claim about someone else comes from their own site or official pricing page. No third-party reviews, no blogs, no inferences of ours.
- Quotes stay in the original language. A translated quote is our paraphrase, not a quote.
- Their prices change with where you are — currency and promotions both. What we show is the version their page served us on the day we checked, and we do not convert currencies.
- If we cannot find an official source, we leave it out and list what we left out in the last section. One row short beats one row unsourced.
How the billing models differ
This table does not compare prices. It compares what you have to decide upfront and what happens if you decide wrong — which is where these products actually diverge.
| Provider | What you decide upfront | If you do not use it all | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| soda | Nothing. Top up the wallet and go; the amount is worked out from what you used. | What you did not use is still your money. It stays in the wallet, it does not expire, and it carries to the next trip. | 7 markets. Anywhere else, we cannot sell to you. |
| Airalo | Pick your GB and validity upfront, or pick the number of days on an unlimited plan. | The package is tied to its validity window. | Their site says 200+ locations. |
| Holafly | Pick the number of days. Data is unlimited, so there is no GB to choose. | Priced per day — the same whether you use a lot or a little. | Their site says 200+ destinations. |
| Saily | Pick a plan upfront (see the last section — we could not reach their pages). | We could not find an official statement, so we are not writing one. | Their parent company Nord Security says 200+ destinations. |
| Chunghwa Telecom / Taiwan Mobile / Far EasTone | Pick a daily, multi-day or fixed-quota roaming plan, and commit to the days upfront. | Chunghwa Telecom's page states it plainly: unused data is zeroed at expiry and cannot be carried over. | Each carrier publishes its own roaming country list, usually in the hundreds. |
When not to buy soda
Every line below is true. If one of them describes you, go use the alternative next to it — sparing you a bad purchase is the entire point of this page.
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You use more data in a day than most people
soda charges for what you use, so heavy use costs more. Unlimited plans are a flat price, so heavy use costs the same. There is always a crossing point; we worked ours out and put it in the table below. Past that much data, an unlimited plan is cheaper.
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Your destination is not on our list
We can only sell in 7 markets right now: Japan、Korea、Thailand、Singapore、Malaysia、Hong Kong、Switzerland. Anywhere else we cannot give you a single bar of signal. Airalo, Holafly and Saily all state 200+ locations on their own sites — if your destination is not on our list, go to them.
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You need calls, SMS, or to keep your own number
soda is a data-only eSIM with no phone number. Bank verification codes and reservation calls are things it simply cannot do. If you need your own number to keep working abroad, carrier roaming is the right answer — that is something we do not do, not something we do worse.
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You do not want to prepay or leave a balance sitting
soda is a prepaid wallet with a 5 USD minimum top-up, while the entry tier starts at 3.2 USD — so on a very short trip your settled amount can be less than the minimum you had to put in. The difference does not vanish (the balance never expires, and untouched top-ups can go back to your card within the 14-day cooling-off period), but it is still sitting with us. If you want to buy once and be done, a fixed plan is cleaner. And to be explicit: 3.2 USD is not the lowest entry price on the market, and we have never claimed it is — entry prices move with your location and whatever promotion is running, so compare them on each provider’s own site as they show them to you.
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You want visible social proof before you buy
soda is a new brand with no public review count, and it is not on marketplaces like KKday or Shopee yet. Airalo states over 30 million users on its own page; Holafly shows a six-figure review count on its. If "plenty of other people have used this" is a requirement for you, soda does not meet it today, and no amount of copywriting fixes that.
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This is probably the only trip you will take
The point of a wallet is that leftover balance waits for the next trip. With no next trip that benefit is worth nothing to you, and all that is left is the cost of not knowing the amount until the trip ends. For a one-off trip, a fixed price is easier to live with.
How much data before unlimited beats soda
Japan, worked out against Holafly's Japan unlimited plans (their page listed USD on every row on the day we checked). Days on the left, the crossing point in the middle, what each side charges at that point on the right. Use more than the middle column and they are cheaper.
| Days | Crossing point | Per day | soda charges | Holafly charges |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 5.3 GB | 1.8 GB | $12.25 | $11.90 |
| 5 | 11.1 GB | 2.2 GB | $20.85 | $20.50 |
| 7 | 20.6 GB | 2.9 GB | $27.60 | $27.50 |
| 10 | 25.2 GB | 2.5 GB | $36.70 | $36.50 |
| 15 | 51.7 GB | 3.4 GB | $50.65 | $50.50 |
| 30 | 71.4 GB | 2.4 GB | $74.20 | $73.90 |
These come from running soda’s real settlement maths point by point, not from estimating with "pick the cheapest single plan" — the two diverge by several times at high usage. Where your own crossing point lands depends on the country; the table above is Japan only.
When soda does fit
- You cannot judge how much to buy, and you are stuck between wasting a big bundle and running out of a small one.
- One trip across several of the markets we cover, without swapping eSIMs at each border.
- You travel often, so a leftover balance gets used on the next trip.
- You want to see where the connection actually exits and which carrier hosts it before you buy.
Sources
Every claim above about someone else maps to one quotation below. These were public on their pages on the date we checked; they can change any time. The links are here — check them yourself.
Airalo
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Coverage as stated on their own site
Local, regional, and global coverage for 200+ locations
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User count as stated on their own site
over 30 million people choose Airalo
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Entry price shown on their Japan page (quoted in Swiss francs — see the section above)
Japan eSIM, from 3.50 CHF
Holafly
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Coverage and pricing model as stated on their own site
Global eSIM provider offering prepaid, unlimited-data plans for travellers in 200+ destinations.
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Third-party review count shown on the page
Based on 107,341 reviews on Trustpilot
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Daily cap on hotspot sharing
Share 1 GB of data per day with family, friends, or fellow travelers.
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Japan unlimited plans by duration (each row labelled USD on the page)
3 days $ 11.90 USD · 5 days $ 20.50 USD · 7 days $ 27.50 USD · 10 days $ 36.50 USD · 15 days $ 50.50 USD · 30 days $ 73.90 USD
Saily
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How their parent company Nord Security describes them, and the coverage figure it gives
Saily is a high-rated, seamless, and secure eSIM app for travelers, offering data plans in 200+ destinations
Chunghwa Telecom / Taiwan Mobile / Far EasTone
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What happens to unused data on a fixed-quota plan
如上網量未使用完，則方案將於到期後終止，未用完之上網量將歸零不得遞延。
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Chunghwa Telecom's limited-time Japan quota plan
「亞運日本定量型12GB-788元」優惠活動期間為2026年8月17日至2026年10月8日
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Taiwan Mobile's minimum billed days on multi-country day plans
亞洲多國『漫遊上網計日型_4-60日型』於服務生效開始後收取最低4天費用$796
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Far EasTone's daily throttling threshold on Japan day plans
為維護網路連線品質及網路合理使用原則，本方案每日(台灣時間)使用上網量達到2GB後降速至512Kbps。
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Their own worked example of standard roaming rates with no plan applied
客戶至本方案適用國家，若未申請本方案，傳送一張大小約1MB(1024KB)的照片，以漫遊上網原價計費可達約40元
What we could not verify, so did not write
- Saily: on the date we checked, their site returned HTTP 403 to every automated request we made, home page and plan pages alike. So this page states nothing about Saily plans or prices — only what their parent company Nord Security publishes about them. To compare Saily, go to their site directly.
- Airalo prices: their site picks a currency from where the request comes from, and when we checked, their Japan page quoted us Swiss francs — not the currency a reader in Taiwan would see. We do not convert currencies (a conversion is our inference, not a verifiable fact), so this page lists no Airalo prices, only one entry-price line quoted from their own page.
- Taiwanese carrier tier prices: most of their plans are limited-time promotions, so a price quoted here could stop existing within a month. This page therefore quotes only structural terms — throttling thresholds, minimum billed days, and expiry of unused data — and no promotional prices. Check their own sites for current rates.