Maya Mobile vs Lotsotravel: We Read Maya's Fine Print So You Don't Have To (2026)

Here is Maya Mobile's homepage, word for word: "unlimited data with no caps or throttling." Here is Maya Mobile's own help center, same company, same week: speeds "may be temporarily throttled to 10 Mbps" if daily usage exceeds 3GB, and to 1 Mbps if very high usage continues. Both pages are real. Both are still live as we publish this. Finding the contradiction took no forum archaeology and no lawsuit. It is one click apart on their own site.

That's not a "gotcha." It's a completely standard fair-use policy, the same shape almost every unlimited eSIM runs on, including some of the "unlimited" tiers we sell ourselves. The issue is just the word choice: "no throttling" is a stronger claim than the policy underneath it. So this post does the boring, useful thing: it reads Maya's actual terms next to Maya's actual marketing, prices out real trip scenarios against Lotsotravel, and tells you plainly where Maya is the better buy anyway.

A disclosure before we go further: we sell eSIMs too, so we're not a neutral party here. Every Maya claim below links straight to Maya's own page. Check it yourself rather than taking our word for it. We've quoted their fair-use language rather than summarizing it in a way that makes them look worse than the text does.

At a glance

The short version: Maya sells one simple, slightly-oversold flat rate for everywhere. We sell a menu, priced by what you'll actually use. Which one wins depends entirely on how much data you burn and how many countries you're crossing in one trip.

What "unlimited" actually costs, and what it actually means

Maya's whole pitch is simplicity: one eSIM, one price, every country on the list, no math. For a certain kind of trip, that's the right product. Here's the pricing, straight from their plans page:

Now the part that matters more than the sticker price: what "unlimited" is fenced by. Per Maya's own "Unlimited Data Plan Guidelines":

• Speeds "may be temporarily throttled to 10 Mbps" once daily usage passes roughly 3GB.
• Sustained very heavy use can drop you further.
• Any throttle "will be removed within 24 hours."
• The policy is explicitly written for normal travel use: messaging, social apps, "streaming music or video a few hours a day." It explicitly excludes hotspotting like a home connection, automated or machine traffic, and data reselling.

None of that is unreasonable. 10 Mbps still handles maps, messaging, video calls, and most streaming fine. What it isn't, is "no throttling." If you're the kind of traveler who reads a headline claim and buys on it, it's worth knowing the actual ceiling before you're standing in an airport lounge wondering why a video call is stuttering on your "unlimited" plan.

Our own unlimited tiers use the same fair-use shape, and we say so on the plan page in plain numbers rather than a blanket "no throttling" line: LITE throttles after 2GB/day, STANDARD after 3GB/day, MAX after 5GB/day. We're not claiming a superior policy here, just a more literal description of it.

Europe coverage: same headline number, four different countries

Both Maya's Europe region and our Europe+ plan list 35 countries. That is where the symmetry stops, and the four countries where the lists diverge are the ones worth checking against your itinerary.

Maya's Europe grouping includes Turkey and Vatican City. Ours does not; we sell Turkey as a country plan only, so don't assume regional coverage there. Our Europe+ list includes the Faroe Islands and Cyprus, neither of which sits in Maya's Europe region. Maya does sell both as standalone country eSIMs and both fall inside its global 165+ footprint, so a Maya traveler is not stranded, but they are outside the regional grouping.

Thirty-three of the 35 match on each side. That overlap tells you something useful about the category: both products are built largely on the same wholesale local-carrier agreements. Comparing "Maya's network" to "Lotsotravel's network" in most of Europe means comparing two providers sitting on top of similar underlying access, priced differently.

One structural note before the price table, because it changes what a fair comparison looks like. Maya does not sell a separately priced Europe plan. Its regions are coverage groupings of the single global product, and the Europe page shows the same $9.99 / $19.99 / $27.99 / $49.99 ladder as everywhere else. So there is no Europe-specific Maya price to put next to our Europe+ price. The comparison has to be trip-to-trip, which is what the next section does.

The price comparison, scenario by scenario

Maya's core product is a global flat rate, so the fairest comparison isn't plan-to-plan, it's trip-to-trip: what would each cost you for a specific itinerary?

A few honesty checks on that table:

• Durations don't always line up. Maya sells in fixed 3/7/14/30-day blocks; our plans have their own validity windows. We rounded up to the nearest Maya block that covers the trip, which is why a 5-day hop prices against Maya's 7-day plan rather than its 3-day one, and picked our closest plan by data and days.
• The 30-day multi-region estimate is a range, not a receipt. Stitching together separate regional plans across Asia and Europe for one continuous trip depends on exactly which countries and how the trip is sequenced, so "$50-70+ combined" is an estimate, not a quote.
• Both companies re-price periodically. These numbers are accurate as of this post's pricingVerified date; check the linked pages directly if you're buying months from now.

The pattern: Maya's flat rate wins when a trip crosses many countries in one continuous window and your data use is high. Our capped, region-specific plans win for the much more common case: a trip contained mostly in one region, with data use that isn't trying to max out a fair-use ceiling every day. Most travelers, most trips, land in the second category, which is why the price gap in the table above tilts toward us more often than not. It's a real trade, not a foregone conclusion.

App versus website

Maya leads with an app. Setup, top-ups, and a live usage meter all live there, and it's the route their marketing pushes you down. It isn't the only route: Maya's own documentation lists three ways to install (automatic, a QR code emailed to you, and manual entry), and its help center points you to a web account at maya.net to see your usage bar and export a CSV of it.

Everything on our side happens on the website. Browsing plans, buying, and getting your QR code, with an email notification when the QR is ready. There is nothing to install and no second login to keep track of before a trip.

If watching a live data meter in a dedicated app matters to you, that's a point in Maya's favor. If you'd rather not add another app before a trip, that's a point in ours. Both companies run support over WhatsApp and email, which is where you'd take an activation problem on either side.

Refunds, read carefully

Both providers offer real refund policies, and both have limits worth knowing before you buy:

• Maya Mobile: full refund if the eSIM is unused, per their return policy, covering cases like a cancelled trip, an incompatible phone, or a duplicate plan. That eligibility ends once a capped plan has used more than 10% of its data allowance, or an unlimited plan has used more than 1GB. Maya's published policy states no refund deadline; the 30-day clock on their site is a separate rule requiring you to install and activate within 30 days of purchase.
• Lotsotravel: refunds are available for eSIMs that fail to install or activate before any data has been consumed. Once data has been used, refunds become discretionary.

Neither policy is generous once you've used the product, which is normal for prepaid data. The practical lesson for either provider: if an eSIM won't activate, request the refund before you troubleshoot your way into using a meaningful chunk of the allowance.

When Maya Mobile is the right choice

There are real trips where Maya is the better buy, and we'd tell a friend to go with them in these cases:

• You're on a long, multi-country trip and burn a lot of data. One flat rate across 165+ destinations removes the need to buy a new plan at every border, and the 30-day rate ($1.67/day) is hard to beat for sustained heavy use.
• You want an in-app usage dashboard. If watching a live meter matters to you more than saving a few dollars, their app does that and we don't.
• You want one product and zero decisions. Our menu of capped plans by data size and region requires picking the right size. Maya's answer to "how much data" is always "unlimited," which is simpler for some travelers.
• You're comfortable with fair-use throttling and just want the marketing to match reality once you've read the actual policy. Once you know the real ceiling (10 Mbps after ~3GB/day), it's a perfectly good product.

In any of those cases, Maya Mobile is a legitimate choice, and the flat-rate simplicity is worth the premium for the right trip.

What we're not measuring

In the interest of not overstating our own case:

• Real-world throttled speed. We haven't run our own bandwidth tests against Maya's 10 Mbps threshold in the field; this is Maya's own published number, not ours.
• App store ratings. Maya's app has a meaningful review volume on both stores; we haven't tried to normalize that against a website-only product that has no equivalent app rating to compare it to.
• Network partner overlap outside Europe. We ran the Europe country lists side by side because both are published and checkable; we haven't done the same line-by-line check for Asia or the Americas.
• Customer support responsiveness at scale. Both providers claim fast response times; we don't have a controlled, side-by-side dataset to back either claim beyond what each company publishes.

Making the call

Maya Mobile's core idea, one eSIM, one flat rate, every country, is a good idea, described a little more absolutely than its own fine print supports. Read past the homepage line to the actual fair-use policy, and it's a normal, workable unlimited product that's the better buy for long, data-heavy, multi-country trips. For a trip contained mostly in one region with typical data use, our capped regional plans are usually cheaper for the same coverage.

Both eSIMs can live on the same phone at once, so if you're not sure which shape fits your next trip, that's not a decision you have to get right the first time.