Airalo in Germany: the entry tier and the long unlimited plans, and not much else

What Airalo charges in Germany

Every figure below was read off Airalo's own site on 13 August 2026.

Unlimited is sold separately: $11 for 3 days, $18 for 5, $24 for 7, $30 for 10, $42 for 15 and $59 for 30.

Hotspot tethering is supported. No plan carries calls or SMS.

It no longer owns the top of the German ladder

This page used to say Airalo held both ends of the German market. That was written when Nomad's German prices sat in our data unchecked, and several of them were too high. Nomad's prices have since been read off its own site, and they are lower than we had them at every size above 1 GB.

The first three columns are all read from the sellers' own checkouts. eSIMCard's rows have been withdrawn entirely — we read its site on 18 August 2026 and the figures we held were wrong.

Ten gigabytes is the size most people buy, and Airalo no longer holds it: Nomad's $14 is two dollars under Airalo's $16. Airalo is still ahead of Saily's $16.99, so it is second of three rather than first.

Fifty gigabytes used to be where Airalo was untouchable, on the grounds that nothing else in Germany sold a plan that large. That was wrong — Nomad sells 50 GB over 30 days at a verified $32, or $0.64 a gigabyte, against Airalo's $36 and $0.72. Airalo is second at the top of the ladder too, though $0.72 is still the second-cheapest data in the country.

Five and twenty gigabytes go the same way: Nomad at $10.00 and $21.00, Saily at $10.99 and $22.99, Airalo at $11.50 and $23.00. At those sizes Airalo is third.

Where Airalo is genuinely first is the very bottom and the very top of the unlimited range. Its 1 GB plan runs three days for $4.00; Saily's verified 1 GB runs seven days for $4.49 and Nomad's seven days at a verified $4.50. Airalo is 49 cents cheaper for less than half the window, so it is the better buy on a two- or three-day trip and the worse one on a long weekend.

On 3GB it is cheaper but briefer: $7.50 buys three days and $8.00 buys a week, where Nomad's $8.00 buys thirty days and Saily's $8.99 the same. Same money, four times the window, so Airalo's 3 GB only makes sense on a genuinely short trip.

On unlimited, Airalo and Nomad are level at three days ($11) and five ($18), Nomad is a dollar cheaper at seven ($23 against $24), and they are level again at ten ($30). Above ten days Nomad stops selling and Airalo does not: $42 for 15 days and $59 for 30 are its own.

As everywhere, the extra validity is nearly free — fifty cents from 15 to 30 days at 5GB and 20GB, a dollar at 10GB. Buy the month.

The Telekom claim we have withdrawn

An earlier version of this page said Airalo's Germany plan runs on Deutsche Telekom, and recommended it on that basis for the Bavarian Alps, the Rhine Valley and eastern Germany. That advice has been removed, because the premise was never established.

Airalo does not publish a host network for Germany. It publishes one for no country at all — there is no field on the product page to read and nothing in our data. The name it sells the German plan under, Hallo! Mobil, is Airalo's own product branding rather than a carrier. The old page was reasoning from an assumption, and then making a coverage recommendation on top of it, which is the worst version of the mistake.

The rest of the market is only a little better placed. Our data listed Telekom against eSIM Go, and that came from this site’s own generated text: eSIM Go sells wholesale to resellers and publishes no consumer price — checked on esim-go.com on 18 August 2026, where there is no basket, no checkout and no per-country page — so it has never named a carrier anywhere a reader could see. See our eSIM Go page. Saily, Nomad, Holafly and eSIMCard, like Airalo, publish nothing — earlier versions of this page listed Nomad among the sellers naming Telekom and put Telekom and Vodafone against Holafly, and both were errors in our data rather than claims either company makes.

The underlying point about German coverage still stands on its own. Signal on the Autobahn is not uniform, alpine valleys drop out, and parts of eastern Germany are thin. Deutsche Telekom is widely reckoned to have the fewest of those gaps. What you cannot do is buy that outcome through a travel eSIM, because none of them will commit to the carrier in writing.

If a specific rural route is the point of your trip, the way to guarantee a network is a German prepaid SIM bought from the carrier you want. Expect around $15 at an airport counter, and bring your passport — German SIMs must be registered against ID.

Do you need to buy anything at all?

If you have an EU or EEA mobile contract, almost certainly not. Roam-like-at-home means your domestic allowance travels with you into Germany at no extra charge, and no eSIM on this page improves on free.

The pages worth reading here are for everyone else: travellers from the UK, the US, Asia, Australia and anyone whose home plan bills international roaming by the megabyte. For them the arithmetic is stark — Airalo's 10GB month at $16 is less than a single day of legacy roaming charges on many contracts.

Verdict

For a non-EU visitor to Germany, Airalo is no longer the default from our data. Take Airalo's 1 GB at $4.00 if you are in and out inside three days, its 3 GB at $7.50 on the same logic, and its 15- or 30-day unlimited plans if you want uncapped data for longer than Nomad will sell it.

Everywhere else, Nomad is cheaper on a checked price: $10.00 at 5 GB, $14.00 at 10 GB, $21.00 at 20 GB and $32.00 at 50 GB. Airalo remains a perfectly reasonable second — its 10 GB month at $16 still beats Saily — but it is second.

The one thing Airalo will not sell you is a named network, so a trip that depends on rural coverage still points at a local SIM. Full provider comparison on the Germany hub, and the wider market on cheapest eSIM.