Spain SIM or eSIM card
 

Up until recently I have always had an unlimited data plan on my phone as well as service with Sprint/T-Mobile, which allowed me free international data and roaming. Now I'm with AT&T, so I need to find the best option for international data and determine how much I need....and I'm completely lost!

I've been doing some research, but every article or blog post has a different recommendation, so I thought I'd come here to add more advice to the mix!

I can get an international data plan through AT&T, but the per day charge seems much higher than what I would pay for a SIM or eSIM card.

Can anyone give guidance on:

SIM vs eSIM

Buy in airport or online ahead of time

Company: seems like Vodaphone, Orange, or Movistar are most common

How much data. I know this is very individual, but I have never had to monitor my data, so I literally have no concept of what I've used on past trips. The trip is 18 days (including travel days), I will largely be using my phone for navigation.

We will spend a day in France on a day trip, so I need something that will work outside of Spain. I am US-based and I use an iPhone 13, if that makes any difference.

Thank you!

You can download Google maps offline before leaving home. There are also full navigations apps like the TomTom one. In either case you'll use very little data. Just live traffic and a bit for turn by turn.

I don't think Vodafone is selling it's tourist package anymore. Orange might be.

When I visited Spain for the first time in 2020, my travel companion asked me to include this in my trip report. It may or may not help you:

Donna wanted me mention that she’d read that buying SIM cards ahead of time or at the airport was the way to go in Spain. However, she found that buying a €15 Lebara SIM card from one of the small carts found on the city streets was ideal. She got 15 GB of data, 1,000 minutes of international phone calls and unlimited texts. She said it was an excellent deal and with their app she could track her usage.

No idea if it works outside of Spain though.

Those of us in the UK are faced with this now that we have left the EU, where previously we had free roaming. If you buy a prepaid SIM in Spain you will be able to get free roaming for your day in France, as both are EU countries. I’ve found buying a physical SIM for one country is usually cheaper than an e-sim. Here is the Vodafone Spain web page for prepaid SIM cards, but I would be inclined to buy it at the airport or in town rather than online.

https://www.vodafone.es/c/particular...aid-sim-cards/

I went to France last year and bought an e-SIM from Orange that allowed me to my phone in dual mode, so that I had a French phone number and my Sprint/T-Mobile number. Main reason I did it was to get better data than you get with T-Mobile (my sister relied on the 2G available under the T-Mobile magenta plan, and it was useful for sending emails, but limited beyond that). If my phone plan had not offered cheap international roaming, I just would have turned off my local plan and used the Orange e-SIM.

If you are not worried about making local calls, or are willing to use Skype or something like that if you have to make calls, a data only e-SIM might be the way to go.

Great thing about the e-SIM was that I bought and downloaded it in advance of my trip, so all I had to do when traveling was go to Settings and flip the toggle switch going live with my e-SIM.

Lebara Uk or Lebara Spain still offers EU roaming. It is a good option.

EU law requires free roaming between EU countries, so you don’t need to look for a Spanish or French provider that allows it — they all do.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/pres.../en/IP_22_4198

We used e-SIMs on our trip to Spain this past fall, and they worked great.

Previously, we’ve ordered Orange SIM cards from Amazon ahead of trips and that also works fine, but it’s easier not to have to switch the actual card so now prefer the e-SIM.

Thanks for all of the responses!

You're right, it is very individual; I have just used a Lebara SIM card for the last 12 days in the Netherlands. While I did use wifi whenever it was available, such as at our friends' house and while in various hotels, I did use cellular data for all urban navigation, looking up information and making reservations, and occasionally sending and receiving emails. I did not use cellular data to upload or download photos or for watching anything with video. We are now just about to board our plane to go home, and I just checked our data use: almost exactly 2 GB used out of the 8 GB that came with our package.

This may help others to assess their data needs.

On the data issue, I used wifi where available, so I think all, or virtually all, of any video streaming I did was not on my Orange Holiday e-SIM. However, I did use my phone as a navigation device (and we drove CDG to Normandy, then to Champange and Alsace over the course of our 16 day trip), and surfed the web when out and about just as I would at home (I don't check Facebook and such, so if you are a heavy social media user, then my experience may not be comparable). I can't remember the numbers, but I didn't come anywhere close to using my data limit. I did have to top up because the card is only good four 14 days and we were there a little longer, but I had data to spare.