Can You Really Get Free Data While Traveling? Firsty eSIM Review

You’ve booked your trip, sorted your travel insurance, and made sure you have the best credit card for foreign travel. What’s next? How about free mobile data wherever you travel?

On my latest long term adventure, I had just that, with Firsty. Now I’m going to share my experience of using Firsty in Europe and further afield in South America.

What is Firsty?

Firsty is a digital SIM card  (eSIM) that redefines international travel by providing hassle-free mobile connectivity in over 160 countries. Unlike traditional SIM cards, which require physical swapping and often a trip to a local store, an eSIM is added to your device digitally—allowing you to switch between operators and plans with just a few taps.

In 2015, when I did my first South American tour, I bought a physical SIM card for each country I visited. Now, an eSIM takes care of all of that—saving time and effort.

Firsty’s standout feature is its freemium model. With Firsty Free, you can earn mobile data by simply watching short ads. This means that while you’re on the go, you can access essential services like navigation and messaging without spending a dime.

How to Get Firsty and Activate Your free eSIM

The Firsty sign-up process is straightforward:

 

1. Download the Firsty app.
2. Create a free account using your email or phone number.
3. Choose a plan (or start with free data).
4. Follow the in-app guide to activate your eSIM

You need a good internet connection for setup. I recommend doing it on Wi-Fi at home before you travel.

Firsty plans

Firsty offers a freemium service. That is, you can use the service at no cost (by watching an ad) for basic activities, but need to pay more for higher speeds.

🆓 Firsty Free

• How it works: Watch an ad to unlock 14 to 60 minutes of free data.
• Speed: Throttled (~200Kbps or less).
• Best for: Google Maps, basic web searches, app notifications.
• Limitations: Some apps like Apple News are hit or miss, and video streaming is out of the question.

To get free data, you have to watch an ad. In some destinations it seems the ad space isn’t filled, so you watch a 10-second Firsty promo instead. After which you are rewarded with 14 – 60 minutes of data depending on your location.

The data speed on the free plan is throttled (heavily). It’s enough to use Google Maps, look something up on Google, but sending WhatsApp messages can be hit-or-miss. It’s great for getting banking and other notifications though (such as flights).

💳 Comfort+ (€1.50+/day)

• Faster speeds (~5 Mbps max).
• No ads, but speed drops to 1 Mbps after heavy usage.
• Unlimited data (but limited speed).
• Best for: Web browsing, messaging, social media.

The Comfort+ plan starts at €1 a day, though I’ve not seen it available for less than €1.50 in the countries I’ve visited.

Firsty bills this as having no ads and no limits, with data speeds of up to 5 Mbps.

🏆 Firsty First Class (€2.50+/day)

• High-speed data + tethering/hotspot allowed.
• Best for: Heavy users, working remotely.

Firsty’s First Class plan removes most restrictions, allowing you to enjoy high-speed data, including hotspot use and tethering.

Prices start from €2.50, with plans ranging from 1 day to 30 days. While that might seem like a jump in price compared to Comfort+, it’s worth noting that First Class is much faster, and allows you to do everything you’d expect from a high speed connection, including tethering, remote working, and streaming.

How fast is Firsty data?

Firsty Free

In my initial tests I was unable run Speedtest by Ooklaa, or Fast.com. This was probably signal related, as others have reported speeds of up to 200Kbps. That’s faster than GPRS but slower than EDGE (sometimes called 2.5G).

Eventually, I did manage to run some tests myself and found that Firsty free topped out at 170 Kbps download and 190 Kbps upload. It didn’t seem to matter whether I was connected to 4G or decent 3G.

Comfort+

Comfort+ promises speeds of up to 5 Mbps. In my tests with Ookla, it delivered just that. Note that my test was conducted in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but Ookla ran the test on servers in USA. I imagine that, plus additional hops accounts for the high pings.

First Class

Firsty works on both 4G and 5G networks. During my trip, I was able to test the 4G speeds, and got speeds of up to 120Mbps. I did occasionally connect to 5G networks but unfortunately didn’t have the First Class then.

What can you do with Firsty free?

Although only 200Kbps, Firsty free is plenty fast enough to navigate around town using Google maps and even look up restaurants and hotel reviews (with photos).

During my travels I used Firsty free for the following:

• Google or Apple maps
• Whatsapp
• Banking apps and notifications
• Reddit app
• Booking.com app
• Gmail app

What can’t you do with Firsty free

It goes without saying that heavily throttled data speeds will limit what you can do. Here are some of the things I tried that didn’t quite work as well as they should, if at all.

• Watch Youtube
• Apple News
• Windy weather
• Apple weather
• Tethering (obviosuly)
• Apple Mail (slow)

Firsty in the Real World: My Experience Using It Abroad

I’m not new to the world of eSims, or even using them for travelling, having picked up my first in Mexico in 2021, but Firsty has been something of a game changer.

My initial expectations weren’t high. Especially given that the countries I planned to visit weren’t actually included in the free data plan at the time of downloading Firsty. Yet, by the time of my departure things had changed and these countries were then covered.

I started using Firsty in Colombia where I enjoyed a  temporary introductory offer of 100Mb of free fast data.  100Mb doesn’t go very far these days, but it was a life-saver in terms of tethering my partners phone to sort out an issue with our taxi from the airport.

Now that wouldn’t be required, as Firsty has an agreement with Uber to allow you use it without having to watch ads first. This is a great feature for travel.

After my initial free data period of was up, I was able to watch an ad to get 30 minutes of free data. It was slow, but still enough to use Google/Apple maps when navigating around the city and checking restaurant reviews and images.

I did have some initial problems with WhatsApp connecting (in Colombia), and, it seemed that my messages took a while to get through, sometimes, but it did eventually work.

Later in Argentina, I found that sometimes WhatsApp messages worked even when I hadn’t watched an ad at all, although it was a nice bonus, I think more of a quirk rather than something to be relied upon.

By far the biggest use of Firsty was looking up and booking accommodation. I was able to use Google maps to find hotels, hostels and camping grounds on the fly, and check out the images and reviews before turning up.

In larger towns and cities, I also used booking.com which worked well. Interestingly, Airbnb didn’t work well at all. Perhaps the Airbnb app is too data-hungry.

In some countries I travelled to, I was surprised to find that I only got 14 mins of data, and the ads were 60 seconds rather than the 30 seconds I’d been used to.

Firsty explains this on its website. You get less free data per ad in countries where data is expensive e.g. Chile. This makes perfect sense but I was surprised there was no in-app notification to warn me about this.

A Few Hiccups

Overall, I loved using Firsty, and my experience was pretty smooth, but as a new service, I did encounter a few hiccups. Fortunately these were all sorted out during my travels.

Locked out by app updates

When trialling Firsty on iOS, I sometimes encountered an issue where I was asked to update the app before I could use it.

My thoughts were, “how the hell am I supposed to update the app if I can’t use the app to get data in the first place.”

I’m sure Firsty expects its users to be staying in hotels with wifi, but I was camping, and often staying in relatively remote areas. Even if I wasn’t, it would still be a major annoyance to pull out the app when needed and find it doesn’t work.

This issue went on for a while, and there were several updates to the app on iOS over a short period, where as Android was still using the original version I downloaded before travel.

All apps do this to some extent (it drives me crazy), but Whatsapp for example at least lets you know 30 days in advance that the current version will stop working.

This a simple fix that I’m sure Firsty will address in the future.

eSim disabled

There were a few times when I had error ‘eSIM disabled‘ this despite me having used the eSim to open up the Firsty app, and watch an ad. I contacted technical support about this, and after turning off auto network selection, and manually selecting a network, I had no further issues.

In fact, I later went back to auto network selection and I haven’t had the issue appear.

My suggestions for Improvement

Stackable ads

There are times, especially in countries where Firsty only provides 14 mins of data per ad, where I needed data, but it was inconvenient to watch an ad, or go through the process of paying for one of the other plans.

What would have been great, is being able to watch multiple ads whilst in my hotel, then go out knowing I had banked certain number of minutes of free data.

Let users know in advance, how much data they will get

My initial trial of Firsty (outside of Europe) was in Colombia, where I enjoyed 30 minutes of free data after watching an ad.

I later travelled to Chile and was surprised to find that watching the same length ad, only yielded 14 mins of data. This is explained if you dig around the Firsty website, but there was no in-app messages or notifications to let me know in advance.

App partnerships

Firsty has partnered with Uber to allow free internet access to the Uber app, without any ads or purchases. I’d love to see Firsty extend this to other ‘mission critical’ travel apps.

Perhaps even offer the user the ability to select one app per month from a curated list e.g. Uber, Airbnb, Booking.com etc..

Firsty to Firsty messaging

WhatsApp does work on Firsty Free, but I think Firsty-to-Firsty messaging would be a great bonus for people travelling together.

My partner and I, riding different motorcycles, got separated in La Paz. Rather than having to stop, open Firsty, watch an add, and then wait for WhatsApp to connect, we’d have loved to have be able to message either other directly from the Firsty app.

Is Firsty Cost-Effective?

You can’t beat free right? And if you only have basic data needs such as messaging friends, looking up directions or organising some transport etc.. then Firsty free is a great cost-effective option.

On my latest trip, my primary sim sent me an SMS each time I crossed a border. “Welcome to this country, get 500Mb data for 7 days at just £10.” With Firsty free those 7 days of data wouldn’t cost anything at all, but then I doubt I’d be able to get through 500Mb in 7 days at Firsty Free speed.

When it comes to paid plans, things aren’t always as clear, and you’d need weigh up the convenience, cost, speed, and data limits of the plans you’re comparing.

When I think Firsty makes sense

• Short-Term Trips: Ideal if you’re traveling for just a few days or need data intermittently.
• Flexibility: The ability to pause and resume the paid plans is convenient if your data needs change frequently.
• Freemium Benefits: If you are a light data user Firsty Free you might significantly reduce your costs.

Final thoughts

Firsty is the first eSim I’ve heard of to offer free data. As someone who is often hopping between countries, I liked the ease of use, and hassle free approach to mobile data. No more queuing in Claro stores in Chile, or Personal in Argentina. Just cross the border and go.

The free data plan was particularly useful when hopping from city to city. Yes, sometimes I wished it was a little faster but it got the job done.

For more critical tasks, the Comfort+ plan was never far away, and I particularly like the fact that you can start the plan, then pause and continue it as you require, as typically you don’t need mobile data when in your hotel or Airbnb for example.

During my trip I did have a few minor issues, all of which sorted out pretty quickly. Probably the biggest downside for some will be the lack of a telephone number.

In some countries and cultures, calls are still the norm, but we need to remember, this a data sim, so if you’re someone who loves to talk or needs a local phone number, this won’t be for you. That said, for those who rely on messaging, email, and mobile data, Firsty offers an incredibly convenient and cost-effective way to stay connected while traveling.

There are times when I enjoy longer stays in a particular location, these can be 6 months or more. On such occasions I’m more likely to consider a local sim, but for my other travels, Firsty will be at the top of my packing list. The question is, will it be on yours too?