Data in South Africa
 

We’re heading out to South Africa for almost four weeks. There are four of us traveling around and as we are from the Netherlands, roaming comes with a pretty hefty price tag. There is a party that offers a mifi router from NL to bring and use that to give us all access to the net. However, I am just wondering whether there are better ways to do this when there. We will be mainly using it to stay in touch with family through messaging and the odd call through whatsapp, and to upload foto’s to cloud storage to keep them safe.

Any suggestions?

It is pretty much always best to get a local SIM card if there are ones available that are prepaid and don't require contracts or registrations.

If you have an iPhone or an eSIM-enabled Android phone, it's even easier - you don't need a physical card. I used Airalo on my last trip, you can buy a local data eSIM and install it directly from the app, works like you'd expect it to (but make sure to restart your phone after installing the eSIM).

Looking right now, you can get a 30-day CellSA eSIM with 3 gigs of data for 11 USD, 5 gigs for 15.50 USD, or 10 gigs for 26 USD. This may (or may not) be expensive compared to buying a local SIM in a kiosk, but it's definitely gonna be cheaper than a router rental from the Netherlands.

For what it's worth, if you do go with Airalo, you can use my referral code ANDREI3658 to get a few dollars' signup bonus, and I will get one too. Or don't. And there are other competing apps available that you might prefer. :)

Thanks AnTyx, that is interesting. I didn't know my 12 Pro could do that. :) Learned a new thing today. And yes, what I have seen, this is cheaper than getting a mifi router in the Netherlands. I am curious how the coverage is, but I guess that is something that we need to find out. :)

Does anyone here have experience with Maya Mobile? Where Airola offers 10Gb for 30 days, Maya Mobile actually offers an unlimited 4G eSim for 30 days. That sounds even more attractive to me.

I know it has been months, but better late than never, right? Just to give all of you some feedback on my choice. And to help future Google users with the same question. ;)

Anyway, in the end, I went with Maya Mobile. They offered a 30-day unlimited data esim for South Africa at about U$70 at the time. Other providers mainly did Gb limited options and as we were traveling with four, the idea of using my iPhone as a hotspot for the family was very attractive. I activated the esim before getting on the plane, so it was active when we touched down and it worked pretty much flawlessly for our stay. We used about 30Gb of data in almost four weeks, doing all of the things you like to do on your travels. Syncing photos to the cloud to get them safe, video calling family, and all that. I can recommend their service.