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“Unlimited” on a travel eSIM normally means unlimited on the phone the eSIM is installed in. Sharing that connection to a laptop or a second person is usually a separate, much smaller allowance. Holafly, for example, states on its own Morocco page that you can share 1 GB per day, and that the total you can share depends on the plan length — a 7-day plan includes 7 GB of sharing. The unlimited part is real. The sharing part is not unlimited, and those are two different products for anyone travelling with a laptop.
This is the single most common unpleasant surprise in travel connectivity, and almost nobody hits it on purpose. You buy an unlimited plan, you use it happily on your phone for three days, then you open a laptop in a café to answer something urgent, and by the afternoon the tethering has stopped working while your phone still browses perfectly. Nothing is broken. You have simply spent a different allowance from the one on the label.
Two different numbers, one word
Every travel data plan really has two figures, and only one of them usually appears in the headline.
Data you use
- Consumed by the phone the eSIM lives in
- This is the one marked “unlimited”
- Browsing, maps, messaging, video on that handset
- Generally genuinely generous
Data you share
- Passed on to a laptop, tablet or another person
- Called hotspot, tethering or personal hotspot
- Usually a separate daily allowance in gigabytes
- This is the one that runs out
The word doing the work is share. Providers are generally not hiding this — Holafly states the sharing figure plainly on its own Morocco product page, next to the plan. It is simply that the word people read is the one in large type, and that word is “unlimited”.
A 7-day unlimited Morocco eSIM at Holafly’s listed $31.50. On the phone: unlimited. Shared to a laptop: 1 GB per day, 7 GB across the plan. A single video call is roughly 500 MB an hour, so two hours of calls on the laptop is most of a day’s sharing gone before you have opened anything else.
Why the limit exists at all
It is not arbitrary and it is worth understanding, because it tells you which plans will and will not have it.
A travel eSIM does not run its own network. It roams onto a local one — in Morocco, one of Maroc Telecom, Orange or inwi — and the provider is buying that capacity wholesale. A phone browsing is a fairly predictable amount of traffic. A tethered laptop is not: it syncs cloud drives, downloads operating-system updates, backs up photo libraries and streams at desktop bitrates. One laptop can consume more in an afternoon than a phone does in a fortnight.
So the sharing allowance is how an “unlimited” plan stays economically possible. That is a reasonable piece of engineering. It is only a problem when you find out about it in a café in Marrakech with something due.
Who this actually catches out
| Your trip | Does the sharing cap matter? | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| One person, phone onlyMaps, messaging, social, photos | No — not at all | Buy the eSIM. Unlimited genuinely means unlimited for you. |
| One person with a laptopWorking, or just heavy admin | Yes, quickly | Check the sharing figure before buying, or bring a connection built to share |
| Two people, one plan | Yes | The second person is on the sharing allowance, not the unlimited one |
| Family with tabletsDevices with no SIM slot | Yes, constantly | Every one of those devices is spending the shared gigabyte |
| Remote work for a week or more | Yes — this is the hard case | Calls plus cloud sync will exceed a daily gigabyte most days |
Notice that the top row is genuinely well served. If you are one person with a phone, a travel eSIM is cheap, instant and unlimited, and we would tell you to buy one — we say the same thing in our eSIM versus pocket WiFi comparison. The cap simply does not touch you. It is the four rows underneath where the headline and the reality separate.
How to check before you buy, in about a minute
- Ignore the word “unlimited”. It is describing the phone, not the connection.
- Search the plan page for “share”, “hotspot” or “tethering”. On a phone, that is the browser’s find-in-page. The number is normally right there.
- Look for a per-day figure. “1 GB per day” is a sharing cap. If you cannot find any figure at all, that is a question for support before you pay, not after.
- Multiply it by your trip. A gigabyte a day is fine for pulling a boarding pass onto a laptop. It is not a working week.
- Check whether sharing is allowed at all on the cheapest tiers. On some plans it is restricted rather than merely capped.
Tethering runs the host phone hard. It is the phone doing the radio work for every connected device, and it will be hot and flat by mid-afternoon — and it is invariably the same phone holding your boarding passes, your booking confirmations and the map you are navigating by.
What a pocket WiFi does differently
A pocket WiFi router inverts the problem rather than solving it cleverly. It is a hotspot — that is the entire device. There is no “data you use” and “data you share”, because 100% of what it does is share. Every gigabyte is a shared gigabyte, so there is no second allowance to run out of and no line in the terms to go and check.
| Travel eSIM | Local SIM | Pocket WiFi router | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data on the phone | Often unlimited | By bundle | Unlimited |
| Data you can share | Separate daily cap | From your bundle | All of it — that is the device |
| Laptop friendly | Up to the cap | Up to the bundle | Yes |
| Devices with no SIM slot | Via the cap | Via the cap | Up to 10, directly |
| Whose battery | Your phone’s | Your phone’s | Its own, up to 8 hours |
| Price | Per person | Per person | €4.90 per day, whole group |
That is the honest shape of it: an eSIM is a phone product and a router is a group and laptop product, and the sharing cap is exactly where the boundary sits. If several of you are travelling, the cost comparison is set out in our guide to internet for a family or group in Morocco, and if you are trying to size an allowance at all, we did that arithmetic in how much data you actually need.
None of this is a trick. Holafly publishes its sharing figure on the product page, and the unlimited claim is accurate for the use it describes. A solo traveller with a phone gets exactly what was advertised, cheaply and instantly. The mismatch only appears when a buyer with a laptop reads a plan written for a buyer without one.
Frequently asked questions
Can you use a hotspot with a travel eSIM in Morocco?
Usually yes, but with a separate and much smaller allowance than the headline plan. Holafly, for example, publishes 1 GB of sharing per day on its Morocco plans, with the total scaling to the plan length — a 7-day plan includes 7 GB of sharing. Check the plan page for the words “share”, “hotspot” or “tethering” before you buy.
Does “unlimited data” include tethering?
Normally not. Unlimited almost always describes data used on the phone holding the eSIM. Data passed to a laptop, tablet or another person is typically metered separately, with its own daily figure.
Why do eSIM providers limit hotspot use?
Because a tethered laptop behaves nothing like a phone. It syncs cloud drives, downloads system updates and streams at desktop bitrates, and one laptop can use more in an afternoon than a phone uses in two weeks. The sharing cap is what keeps an unlimited plan viable for the provider.
Is 1 GB a day of sharing enough to work from?
For light admin, yes. For a working day, generally not — a video call alone is roughly 500 MB an hour, so two hours of calls uses most of it before email, cloud sync or file transfers. If you are working for a week or more, plan for a connection with no separate sharing allowance.
Does a pocket WiFi have a hotspot limit?
No, because sharing is the only thing it does. There is no separate allowance to exhaust: the router connects to the mobile network and serves up to 10 of your devices, and every gigabyte is a shared one. The data is unlimited with no daily cap and no throttling.
Can I connect my laptop to a pocket WiFi in Morocco?
Yes — a laptop joins it exactly as it joins WiFi at home, and so do tablets, e-readers and cameras that have no SIM slot at all. Nothing has to be tethered from your phone, so your phone keeps its battery and its own connection.
A connection built to be shared
€4.90 per day · unlimited with no sharing cap · up to 10 devices · free delivery and collection in Marrakech
Check dates and book
Travelling alone with just a phone? An eSIM is cheaper and the cap will never touch you — here is the comparison.
Sharing figures and plan prices attributed to Holafly were read from that company’s own Morocco eSIM page on 8 September 2026 and are quoted as their published terms, not ours; providers change terms, so check the current plan page before buying. Our own prices were correct on 8 September 2026 — see the pricing page.
