Airalo Japan: prices we can check, a network we can't name

"Moshi Moshi" is a brand, not a network

Airalo sells its Japan eSIM under the name Moshi Moshi. That name belongs to Airalo. Japan has four mobile networks — NTT Docomo, SoftBank, au by KDDI and Rakuten Mobile — and Moshi Moshi is not one of them.

We read Airalo's own Japan page on 13 August 2026 and pulled all 17 plans it lists. Every one of them has an empty network field. Airalo tells you the price, the allowance and how long it lasts. It does not tell you whose masts you will be connecting to.

An earlier version of this page said Moshi Moshi ran on KDDI and SoftBank, and that you would not get Docomo. We could not source that anywhere, so it is gone, along with the coverage verdict built on top of it. We do not know which Japanese network Airalo uses, and from the product page, neither will you.

The prices we can confirm

Every figure below was read from Airalo's Japan page on 13 August 2026.

There are six unlimited options as well: $11.50 for 3 days, $17 for 5 days, $27 for 7 days, $34.50 for 10 days, $48 for 15 days and $69 for 30 days.

The 20 GB / 15 days plan at $1.20 per GB is the cheapest gigabyte Airalo sells in Japan, and until 18 August 2026 we called it the cheapest from any provider. It is not: Nomad's verified 50 GB for 30 days at $35 is $0.70 per GB, and Nomad's 20 GB at $23 is $1.15. Airalo's $24 is still the best short-window rate here, and you can check it yourself in a minute.

Note how the pricing is shaped. Airalo charges for the calendar, not just the data: 20 GB costs $24 over 15 days and $25 over 30. A dollar buys you a fortnight. If your trip is short, take the short window and pay less.

Against Saily, it comes down to a cent

Saily is the other Japan provider whose prices we have verified directly. Line the two up at matching sizes and the gap is almost comic:

Saily is one cent cheaper every single time, and at the small end it gives you far longer to use the data — 7 days against Airalo's 3 on the 1 GB plan, 30 days against 7 on the 3 GB. On price alone, Saily edges it.

Airalo wins in two places against Saily. If 15 days is enough, Airalo's 20 GB / 15 days at $24 undercuts the Saily 20 GB month at $24.99. And it sells unlimited plans, which Saily does not. Neither provider names a Japanese carrier — and neither does Nomad, whose verified prices now sit below both at 3 GB, 5 GB, 10 GB and 20 GB, and which sells a 50 GB neither of them offers.

What you get, and what we could not confirm

Hotspot and tethering are supported. That is the practical advantage over Holafly, which blocks tethering at network level, and it matters if you are sharing a connection with a laptop or a travelling companion.

There are no calls and no SMS. You get data and nothing else — the same as every tourist eSIM for Japan, and the same as the data-only SIMs sold at the airport counters. LINE and WhatsApp cover the rest.

You can top up mid-trip from the app rather than buying a fresh eSIM, which is genuinely useful on the short 3-day and 7-day allowances. What we cannot confirm is exactly what happens the moment an allowance runs out. The previous version of this page stated a 128 kbps throttle; we could not verify it, so we are not restating it as fact.

Verdict: a price you can check against a network you can name

This is the real trade-off in Japan, and it is not the one this page used to describe.

One provider in our data names a host network for its Japan plans: eSIM Go, which lists SoftBank. Its prices are indicative — collected from provider material rather than read from a live checkout. Airalo, Saily, Nomad and Holafly are the reverse: prices we have confirmed to the cent, and no network named at all. Holafly is a recent change there. This page used to say it listed NTT Docomo alongside SoftBank; reading its Japanese prices off its own site on 18 August 2026 showed that it publishes no host carrier for Japan, or for any country, and the Docomo attribution came from our own data.

So you are choosing which half of the answer you want firm. For the Tokyo–Kyoto–Osaka corridor, take the price. All four Japanese networks run at 97%-plus coverage there with a 50 Mbps national average, and no visitor on that route will notice which one they are on. Airalo is a sound, cheap, hotspot-friendly choice, though on metered plans Nomad's verified prices undercut it at every size they both sell. On unlimited, Airalo sells six durations against Nomad's four, but Nomad is cheaper where they overlap — $11 against $11.50 for three days, $25 against $27 for seven.

If your trip turns on coverage — the Japanese Alps, the Hokkaido interior, the smaller Okinawa islands — then knowing the network is the whole question, and Airalo cannot answer it. Buy from someone who will tell you, and confirm the price at checkout. Full provider comparison is on the Japan hub.