On a price list, "3 GB for 7 days" and "3 GB per day for 7 days" sit next to each other and look similar. They are different products.
Total-allowance plans
You get one block of data for the whole period. With 3 GB for 7 days, you may spend it all on day one if you want.
- When it is gone, it is gone. After 3 GB the phone has no data until you buy another plan.
- Flexible. Heavy days and light days are up to you.
The risk: watching one episode while waiting at the gate can empty a seven-day plan in an evening.
Daily plans
Each day you get an allowance at full speed. With 3 GB per day, once today's 3 GB is gone the connection is slowed until midnight, then the allowance refills.
- You never lose the connection completely. Running out only means slower — messaging and maps still work.
- Nothing carries over. Use 500 MB today and the other 2.5 GB disappears; it does not roll into tomorrow.
Which to choose
Choose a daily plan if:
- You are travelling and need data reliably every day.
- Your worst fear is losing the connection mid-trip when you need the map.
- You are not sure how much you use.
A total-allowance plan suits you if:
- You only need data on a few days, say the arrival and departure days.
- You are staying somewhere with good wifi and only need data when out.
- You know you use very little.
If that is you, you should know that we do not sell total-allowance plans at all — every plan on this site is a daily one, so you would be buying that shape elsewhere. Before you go looking, though, compare it against a short daily plan here covering just the days you actually need data: for a traveller who needs two or three days out of ten, that is usually both cheaper and harder to get wrong.
What "throttled" means in practice
When the day's high-speed allowance is gone, the connection remains but slows. How much it slows varies by plan. At that speed messaging and maps still work; video does not.
As it happens, every plan we currently sell behaves this way: it slows rather than cutting off. On a destination page, select a plan and you will see a tag reading "Still connects after your high-speed data runs out". There is no plan here that stops carrying data the moment the day's allowance is gone, which is the behaviour worth avoiding and the reason we stock what we stock.
A rule of thumb
If you are torn, a moderate daily plan beats a large total-allowance plan. The reason: the worst thing abroad is not slow data, it is no data while standing in an unfamiliar city.