Short answer. On every eSIM Tunisie plan you get 1 GB of data a day at full 4G speed. After that the connection stays on at 512 kbps until your daily allowance renews, and there is no total cap over the length of the plan. That is what our terms of sale call a fair use policy (article 4), and it is the rule our supplier applies to every one of our seven durations. This page explains what that means day to day, so nobody buys "unlimited" expecting something else.
Why "unlimited" needs explaining
The word is used loosely across the travel eSIM market. Some plans marketed as unlimited slow you down after a daily threshold, some after a threshold that is not published, some reserve the right to reduce speed "temporarily". Fixed-data plans, by contrast, give you a number of gigabytes and stop when they are gone. None of these models is wrong, but they suit different travellers — and a buyer can only choose well if the rule is written down. Ours is simple, and it is the same on the 1-day plan as on the 30-day plan.
We would rather you read this before buying than discover it on the third evening of your holiday. If the rule does not suit how you use your phone — for example if you plan to stream films every night over mobile data — a fixed-data plan, a local SIM or your accommodation's Wi-Fi will serve you better, and the rest of this page will help you tell which.
The rule, in three lines
- Each day, the first 1 GB is delivered at the full 4G speed the network gives you where you are.
- After 1 GB, the speed is reduced to 512 kbps (kilobits per second). The connection is not cut, you are not asked to buy anything, and nothing extra is charged.
- The allowance renews daily for as long as the plan runs. A 7-day plan gives you seven such days, counted from your first connection in Tunisia.
Our eSIM runs on the Orange Tunisie network. "Full speed" is therefore whatever Orange Tunisie's 4G delivers at your location — fast in towns and resorts, lower where the signal is weak. Our terms are explicit that we do not guarantee full coverage everywhere or a minimum speed, which is true of every mobile network.
What 512 kbps actually is
512 kilobits per second is 64 kilobytes per second. In practice that means about 16 seconds per megabyte downloaded. Used flat out for an hour without a break, 512 kbps can carry at most about 230 MB. Those two numbers explain almost everything about the slow phase: small, text-based things stay quick, and anything that moves a lot of data — video, large uploads — becomes slow.
| After the first 1 GB of the day | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Messaging (WhatsApp, iMessage, Telegram) | Works normally for text; photos take a few seconds each |
| Maps and turn-by-turn navigation | Works; map tiles load a little more slowly |
| Email, ordinary web pages | Works; heavy pages take longer to appear |
| Music streaming at normal quality (96 kbit/s on Spotify) | Fits within 512 kbps |
| Music at high quality (160 kbit/s on Spotify) | Fits within 512 kbps |
| Voice calls over apps | Generally usable |
| Video at 360p (YouTube recommends 0.7 Mbps) | Below the recommended speed: expect buffering or lower quality |
| Video calls | Possible, but picture quality will drop |
| Uploading a 3 MB photo | About 47 seconds |
| System or app updates | Very slow — keep them for Wi-Fi |
The music figures are the bitrates Spotify publishes for its "Normal" and "High" settings; the video figure is YouTube's own recommended sustained speed for 360p. The other rows describe typical behaviour, not a guarantee: apps change, and real speed also depends on the signal.
Is 1 GB a day enough?
For most holidays, yes. The figures below are orders of magnitude, not measurements — data use varies a lot with video settings and apps — but they show where a gigabyte goes.
| Activity | Typical data use |
|---|---|
| Text messages | a few kilobytes each |
| Navigation for an hour | a few megabytes |
| Browsing article pages | roughly 1–3 MB per page |
| Music at normal quality for an hour | about 43 MB (96 kbit/s) |
| Scrolling a video feed for 15 minutes | often 100–250 MB |
| Video at 480p for an hour | about 495 MB at YouTube's recommended 1.1 Mbps |
| An operating-system update | often more than 1 GB |
A light day — messages, maps, a few searches, photos kept on the phone — stays in the low hundreds of megabytes. A busy day with social media and photo sharing usually lands somewhere between a few hundred megabytes and a gigabyte. What pushes a day well past 1 GB is almost always video: feeds on autoplay, streaming, video calls, or a phone that decides to update itself.
And when you do pass 1 GB on a heavy afternoon, the practical consequence is modest: the maps, messages and bookings you actually need keep working at 512 kbps, and the next day starts with a full gigabyte again. For a full week's arithmetic, see how much data you need for a week in Tunisia.
An example day, gigabyte by gigabyte
To make the rule concrete, here is an illustrative day for a couple exploring Tunis and Sidi Bou Said, with the kind of use most travellers have. The amounts are estimates built from the orders of magnitude above, not measurements.
- Morning: checking messages and the weather, booking a ride, 40 minutes of navigation to the medina — a few tens of megabytes.
- Midday: looking up two restaurants, reading reviews, sending a dozen photos to family by message — perhaps 50 to 100 MB.
- Afternoon: twenty minutes scrolling Instagram and TikTok on a café terrace with autoplay on — easily 200 to 300 MB.
- Evening: a 15-minute video call home, some browsing, a playlist on the way back — another 200 to 300 MB.
That day ends somewhere around 500 to 800 MB: inside the full-speed gigabyte. Add an hour of streaming video in the hotel room instead of using the hotel Wi-Fi, or a phone that starts a system update, and the day crosses 1 GB. From that point the evening's messages and maps keep working, and the video becomes the slow part — which is exactly the trade-off the rule is designed around.
Knowing where you are in your day
The simplest gauge is your phone's own counter. Reset it when you land, then glance at it in the evening for the first two or three days: you will quickly learn whether your normal day is 300 MB or 900 MB, and which app is responsible. On iPhone the list is under Settings → Mobile Data; on Android it is in the data usage screen, where you can also set a warning at, say, 900 MB. If a day regularly goes past 1 GB, the list will almost always show a video app or a cloud backup at the top.
Common misunderstandings
- "Unlimited means no speed limit." Not on our plans: the first gigabyte of each day is at full speed, the rest at 512 kbps.
- "Slow means cut off." No. At 512 kbps the connection stays on; you are never left without data.
- "The allowance is a pot for the whole trip." No. It is a daily allowance, not a monthly pot to save up for a heavy day at the end.
- "A longer plan is faster." No. Every duration follows the same rule; a longer plan simply gives you more days.
- "The plan starts when I buy it." No. It starts on your first connection in Tunisia, so you can install it at home before the trip.
Six settings that keep you under 1 GB
- Turn off automatic app and system updates over mobile data. This is the most common way a day's allowance disappears without you touching the phone.
- Turn off video autoplay in Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X.
- Set photo backup (iCloud, Google Photos) to Wi-Fi only. Holiday photos and videos are large.
- Download maps and playlists before you leave the hotel Wi-Fi.
- Lower video quality in streaming apps when you are on mobile data.
- Reset your phone's mobile data counter on arrival (iPhone: Settings → Mobile Data, at the bottom; Android: the data usage screen) so you can see what each app really uses.
Sharing the connection with a laptop or tablet
Our terms say it plainly: connection sharing (hotspot) may be allowed, limited or unavailable, depending on the network and on your phone. If it works on your device, remember that everything connected shares the same daily gigabyte — and a laptop is the worst offender, because it will happily download system updates, sync cloud folders and back up photos the moment it finds a connection. Before you share, put the laptop in its "metered connection" or "low data" mode and pause cloud sync.
Unlimited versus a fixed amount of data
A fixed-data plan gives you, say, 10 GB for a trip and stops (or charges) when it runs out. It suits travellers who use very little on most days and a lot on a few. Our daily model suits the opposite pattern — steady use every day — and removes the risk of running dry halfway through a trip: the worst case is a slower evening, not no connection at all. Local Tunisian SIMs work on fixed amounts too, and they are cheap; we compare that route in Tunisia SIM card at the airport or an eSIM. Other travel eSIMs describe their own "unlimited" rules differently — we summarise what Airalo and Holafly said on the day we checked in our comparison.
What the plan does not include
- No Tunisian phone number, and no ordinary calls or texts: the eSIM is data only. Calling apps work over the data connection.
- No 5G promise: our plans are sold as 4G.
- No top-up of the daily allowance: if you need more speed, you wait for the next day's gigabyte or use Wi-Fi.
- No use outside Tunisia: the plan is for Tunisia only.
Before you buy
Choose the plan by the number of days, not by an amount of data — every duration has the same daily rule. The prices run from €6.50 for 1 day to €99 for 30 days on our plans page. Check that your phone supports eSIM first: the eSIM is delivered immediately, and our terms exclude the right of withdrawal once it has been issued. The full rule is in article 4 of our terms, and installation is covered in our FAQ.