| Provider | Full speed until | Then throttled to | Hotspot | Phone number |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saily | 5GB/day | 1 Mbps | Unlimited | Optional paid add-on |
| Airalo | 3GB/day | 1 Mbps | Unlimited | On some Data, Voice & Text packages and Discover+ |
| Holafly | ~2–3GB/day per third-party analysis; Holafly publishes no figure | 256–1024 kbps | 1GB/day | Never |
| Nomad | 2GB/day | 512 kbps | Supported | Thailand 50GB plan only, per review; otherwise unclear |
| Ubigi | No unlimited plan in several markets | n/a | Unlimited | Never — data only, no SMS |
What each provider actually does
| Provider | The fair-use policy in plain English |
|---|---|
| Saily | Full speed until you use 5GB in a 24-hour period, then 1 Mbps for the rest of that day. The allowance resets daily. |
| Airalo | Full speed until you use 3GB in a 24-hour period, then 1 Mbps for the rest of that day. The allowance resets daily. |
| Holafly | Holafly publishes no figure at all. Third-party analysis of its terms puts the cap at roughly 2–3GB a day, dropping to 256–1024 kbps. Not knowing is itself the problem. |
| Nomad | Full speed until you use 2GB in a 24-hour period, then 512 kbps for the rest of that day. The allowance resets daily. |
| Ubigi | Sells no unlimited plan in the US, Thailand or New Zealand. Where it does sell one, it publishes no daily cap. Some plans instead run a fixed allowance with an unlimited 2 Mbps tail. |
What the throttled speeds mean
The cap matters less than what happens after it. Once you are throttled:
- 1 Mbps (Saily, Airalo) still carries maps, messaging, email, and standard-definition video that buffers. It is annoying, not crippling.
- 512 kbps (Nomad) is enough for maps and text. Video is not realistic, and photo uploads crawl.
- 256 kbps (the bottom of Holafly’s reported range) is close to unusable for anything but plain messaging.
How much data do you actually use?
Most travellers who are not streaming video use between 500MB and 1.5GB a day — maps, messaging, social feeds, a few uploads. On that pattern, none of these caps will ever bite, and buying unlimited is usually a waste. A 10GB fixed plan for a two-week trip costs a third of the unlimited price on almost every provider here.
Unlimited earns its price in two situations: you are tethering a laptop and working, or you genuinely cannot predict your usage. In the first case, check the hotspot rules before anything else — because that is where the real restriction lives.
How we got these numbers
Airalo and Saily publish their fair-use figures openly and we quote them directly. Nomad’s appears in its terms. Holafly publishes no figure, so the range shown comes from third-party analysis of its terms and is labelled as such throughout — we would rather show you an honest uncertainty than a confident guess. Ubigi does not sell unlimited in most of the markets we cover.