Do This One Thing to Your Phone Before Flying to Europe

Before you fly to Europe this summer, here's something worth knowing about your phone plan. Most US carriers offer an international add-on that sounds perfectly reasonable when you sign up for it: something like $10 a day for calls, texts, and data abroad. You think, fine, that's manageable, and you don't give it another thought.

Then you land in Italy, and you leave Google Maps running while you drive from the airport to your Airbnb. You look up a few restaurants for dinner. You send photos to the group chat. You hop on a video call to show your partner the view from the balcony. Normal phone stuff, nothing extravagant. Two days later, you check your account and you're looking at a bill that's already past $150, because it turns out those daily charges stack up fast, the data cap was much smaller than you assumed, and everything you did beyond it was billed per megabyte at rates that feel like they belong in 2005.

This happens to people constantly, and once it happens to you, you spend the rest of the trip treating your phone like it's on a meter. You stop looking things up. You wait for WiFi. You don't use navigation because you're watching your data, so you end up lost in a town where nobody speaks English and you can't even pull up a map. Your phone, the one thing that makes traveling in a foreign country so much easier, becomes something you're actively trying not to use.

There's a fix for this that's been around for a few years now, and once you know about it, you'll never travel without it again. It's called an eSIM.

What an eSIM Actually Is

Your phone connects to your carrier through a SIM card, that tiny chip that was either already in the phone when you bought it or that someone at the store popped in for you. When you travel abroad, that same card tries to connect to foreign networks, and your carrier charges you a premium for it, which is where those $10/day plans and surprise bills come from.

The old workaround was to buy a local SIM card when you arrived. You'd find a phone shop at the airport, hand over your passport, pick a prepaid plan you didn't fully understand, and physically swap out your home SIM card for the new one. It worked, but your regular phone number went dead for the duration of the trip, and if you traveled to a second country you'd sometimes need to do the whole thing over again.

An eSIM is essentially a digital SIM card that's already built into your phone. You don't swap anything, you don't visit any shops, and you don't lose your regular number. You just buy a data plan through an app before your trip, install it with a couple of taps, and your phone connects to a local European network the moment you land. Your regular carrier keeps handling your calls and texts, while the eSIM handles all your data (maps, browsing, WhatsApp, everything) through a local connection at local prices. Two connections on one phone, each doing its job, and you don't have to think about it.

If you're wondering whether your phone supports it: if it was made in the last four or five years, it almost certainly does. All iPhones from the XS onward, Samsung Galaxy from the S20 onward, and Google Pixel from the 3a onward all have eSIM built in.

Check if your phone works with Airalo →

Why It's a No-Brainer for Europe

Whether you're on a two-week vacation, scouting areas you've been dreaming about living in, or visiting a property you already own, your phone isn't optional when you're abroad. You need it for directions in towns where street signs don't mean anything to you, for translating menus and signs and documents on the fly, for staying in touch with people at home, for finding the restaurant that doesn't show up on any English-language list, and for a hundred other things you don't even notice until you can't do them anymore.

With an eSIM, you get local data at a fraction of what your carrier would charge you. A week of generous data coverage in Europe typically costs somewhere between $10 and $25, compared to the $70 to $100+ your carrier would bill you for the same period (and that's before overages). Many eSIM providers also offer Europe-wide plans that work across dozens of countries on a single connection, so driving from Italy to France doesn't mean buying a new plan at the border. Airalo, for example, has a plan that covers 39 European countries, which means you buy it once before your trip and you're covered wherever you go.

See Airalo's Europe-wide data plans →

How to Set One Up (It's Genuinely Easy)

This is the part where people expect a catch, but there really isn't one. The whole setup takes about five minutes from your couch before you pack. You download an eSIM app (we use and recommend Airalo, which covers over 200 countries and has the best reviews we've seen on both iOS and Android), browse the plans for your destination or for all of Europe, pick the one that fits your trip, and buy it. A week in Italy with plenty of data for maps, messaging, browsing, and video calls will cost you somewhere around $15 to $25.

After you buy, the app walks you through installation. On an iPhone, it's Settings, Cellular, Add eSIM, install, done. On Android it's a similar path through your network settings. Within a couple of minutes you'll see two connections in your phone: your regular carrier for calls and texts, and the eSIM for data. You can set it to activate automatically when your plane touches down, so you walk off the jet bridge already connected. No airport kiosks, no passport checks, no tiny plastic chips to fumble with while you're half asleep from the flight.

One tip that's worth passing along: do the setup at home before you leave, not at the airport. The process rarely goes wrong, but if it does, you want to be troubleshooting on your own WiFi in your living room, not in a foreign terminal with no internet access and a taxi waiting outside.

Set up your Airalo eSIM before you pack →

Choosing the Right Provider

There are a lot of eSIM providers out there now, and they're not all the same. The things that actually matter when choosing one are coverage (especially if your trip crosses borders, which in Europe happens all the time), transparent pricing with no hidden fees, clear information about how long your data lasts and whether unused data expires, and decent customer support for when you're abroad and need help fast.

We recommend Airalo because they check every one of those boxes. They offer both single-country and regional plans, their pricing is clear, the app is well-designed and easy to navigate, and for anyone who travels to Europe regularly, their plans can be topped up directly from the app without buying a new eSIM each time, which makes every trip after the first one even simpler.

Compare Airalo plans for your trip →

One Less Thing on Your Mind

Whether you're driving through Tuscany for two weeks, walking around Lisbon for the first time, checking in on a house you bought in the south of France, or just exploring a city you've been following on Instagram for years, your phone should be making the trip easier, not more stressful. An eSIM takes the entire question of connectivity off your plate for a few dollars a day, and once it's set up, you can stop thinking about your phone plan and start thinking about where you want to have dinner tonight.

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This post is sponsored by Airalo. All opinions and editorial selections are our own.