An eSIM for everyone travelling with you

Picture the first evening of a family holiday in Greece. Everyone wants to message home, one teenager needs maps to find the bakery, the other is already on video with a friend, and the one phone with a data plan is on its last 20 percent of battery because it has been a hotspot for the whole family since the airport.

There is an easier way. At AirPlans you can buy an eSIM for every person on the trip in a single order, and you can send an eSIM to someone who is not travelling with you at all. Here is how both work, and what to check before you buy for a group.

Up to 15 eSIMs in one order

Choose your destination and your plan the way you normally would. Then, on the checkout step, choose how many eSIMs you need, anywhere from 1 to 15. You pay once, at one checkout, and you get one receipt for the whole order. No repeating the same purchase five times, and no five separate charges on your card statement.

Every eSIM in the order is the plan you chose. If one person needs something different, for example a teenager who streams all day while the rest of the family mostly uses maps and messages, buy that person's eSIM in a separate order with a bigger plan.

Each eSIM is its own line

This is the part people most often get wrong, so it is worth being clear. Each eSIM in your order is a separate line with its own QR code, and each one goes on one phone. Every person installs their own. One eSIM cannot be split between two phones, and you cannot install the same QR code on everyone's device.

The upside is that everyone's data is their own. One person's video calls do not eat into anyone else's allowance, and if the group splits up for the afternoon (parents at the museum, kids at the beach), everybody still has maps, messages and a way to find each other again.

What about sharing one plan by hotspot?

You can share data from one phone to others nearby with a personal hotspot, and most of our plans allow it. Not every plan does, so check before you rely on it: on the country page, the plan details show a Hotspot line when hotspot is allowed for that plan.

A hotspot is great for a laptop or a tablet sitting next to you. For a group of people, it is usually the weaker option. Everyone has to stay within range of the phone sharing its connection, that phone's battery drains quickly, and the whole group shares one allowance. The moment someone walks off on their own, they are offline. A separate eSIM for each person avoids all of that.

Before you buy: check every phone

For a group, this step matters more than anything else. Every phone on the trip must support eSIM, and every phone must be unlocked, meaning it can work on any network and not only on the carrier it came from. Most recent phones support eSIM, but an older hand-me-down phone, a budget model or a phone bought through a carrier deal might not.

Check each phone on our eSIM compatibility page. A quick test that works on most phones: dial *#06#. If an EID shows up next to the IMEI, the phone supports eSIM. If there is no EID, it does not. Do this for every phone in the group before you choose the number of eSIMs, not at the airport.

Sending an eSIM to someone else

Sometimes the person who needs the eSIM is not sitting next to you. Your parents are flying out to visit you. Your teenager is going on a school trip or a youth exchange on their own. A friend is about to leave on a trip and you want to give them something useful.

After the purchase, an eSIM can be sent to a friend or family member by name and email, using the link in the delivery email. They get the eSIM in their own inbox and install it on their own phone. You do not need to forward screenshots or read a QR code out over the phone, and the person travelling does not need to know anything about how you bought it.

Installing as a group

The easiest time to install is at home, on Wi-Fi, a day or two before the flight, with everyone and their phone at the same table. Our installation guide walks you through it. A few tips that make group installs smoother:

• One QR code per phone. Decide in advance whose phone gets which code, and keep track of it. Each code is meant for one phone, and once it is installed it generally cannot be moved to a second one.
• Show the code on a second screen. A phone cannot easily scan a code that is displayed on its own screen. Open the codes on a laptop or tablet and let each person scan theirs.
• Help the less techy travellers first. Grandparents and younger kids often need a hand. Doing it at home, calmly, is much easier than at the gate.
• Check the settings on landing. Each phone should use the travel eSIM for mobile data, with data roaming switched on for that eSIM.

Who this suits

• Families. Parents and kids each with their own data, and no fighting over one hotspot.
• Couples. Two eSIMs in one order, so you can split up for an afternoon and still find each other.
• Group trips. Friends, a team trip, a wedding party: one person organises, everyone gets their own eSIM.
• A parent travelling to visit you. Buy it yourself and send it to them, so they land already connected.
• A teenager travelling alone. Make sure they have data from the moment they land, without handing over a card.
• A gift. Data for someone's trip is a practical present, and it arrives by email.

Ready to plan the group

Start with all destinations, or go straight to a popular family trip such as Greece, Italy or Thailand. Check every phone, pick the plan, choose how many eSIMs on the checkout step, and everyone lands with their own connection.