Buying a SIM card at Toronto Pearson (YYZ)

Three carriers, one terminal

Toronto Pearson has carrier-run kiosks from Rogers, Bell and Telus in Terminal 1 international arrivals. That is a better set-up than most airports offer: three competing sellers in the same hall, rather than one concession with a captive audience.

We hold nothing for Terminal 3. No seller, no location, no hours. If you land at T3, do not build your arrival around finding a SIM counter — we cannot tell you there is one.

We hold no opening hours for the Terminal 1 kiosks either, which matters at an airport that takes long-haul arrivals late into the evening. The queue figure we do have is 10 to 12 minutes at peak, and peak here means the evening transatlantic bank landing together. We have no off-peak figure.

The ID question has two answers

Our Canadian country data says no ID is required and the purchase is instant. The note we hold specifically for Pearson is a little more cautious: passports may be required for some plans.

In practice this is not an obstacle. You will have just cleared immigration with your passport in your hand. But it is the reason to treat the kiosk as a five-minute transaction rather than a thirty-second one.

What it costs, and what the same money buys online

Our figure for a SIM bought at a Canadian airport is about $25. Against that, here is the eSIM ladder for Canada. Airalo's rows were read from its own site on 13 August 2026, Saily's on 16 August and Nomad's on 18 August.

Read the bottom of that table before you decide anything. Nomad's 50 GB month at $69 is the cheapest verified rate in the country at $1.38 a gigabyte, with Airalo's 50 GB at $84 next at $1.68, and Canada is genuinely expensive by the standards of the markets on this site — most of them have a floor around half that. An earlier version of this page listed Nomad's entry plan at $4.50; it is $7. The small plans are worse again: Airalo's verified 1 GB for three days is $7, which is seven dollars a gigabyte, and the cheapest verified way in at all is Saily's 1 GB over 7 days at $5.29. Higher up the ladder Saily is the expensive option rather than the cheap one — its verified 10 GB month at $30.99 is $7.99 more than Airalo's $23 for the same allowance and period.

So the honest verdict at Pearson is not the usual one. The airport counter is not being gouged relative to the online market here; the whole Canadian market is dear. A $25 airport SIM sits between the verified 10 GB and 20 GB eSIM months, and unlike them it comes with a Canadian number.

Two Airalo tiers, and what the extra buys

Canada is one of the few countries where Airalo sells two named products: Canada Mobile and Canada Mobile Plus. They cover the same sizes at different prices — 5 GB for 30 days is $18 as Canada Mobile and $24 as Canada Mobile Plus.

We cannot tell you what the difference is. Airalo does not publish a host network for any country, so we have nothing to point at. Do not assume the dearer tier is faster, or on a different network, or better anywhere in particular. If you buy one, buy it knowing that.

What we know about networks, which is very little

Holafly's own product listing points at Rogers. It has not been confirmed against the operator, so treat it as the seller's claim rather than ours. Airalo, Nomad, Saily, eSIM Go and eSIMCard do not publish a host network for Canada at all — an earlier version of this page put Rogers and Telus against Nomad's plans, which came from our own older text.

If coverage on a specific route matters to you, the kiosk has an advantage worth naming: you are buying directly from Rogers, Bell or Telus, so you know exactly whose towers you are on.

The train, and the twenty minutes that matter

The UP Express runs from Terminal 1 to Union Station in about 25 minutes. That ride is the part of the trip where data is most useful — onward directions, checking into somewhere, telling someone you landed — and it is exactly the window a kiosk queue eats into.

That is the real argument for arriving with an eSIM already installed. Not that it is dramatically cheaper in Canada, because it often is not, but that it works the moment the aircraft doors open.

Full Canadian pricing, carriers and the local-versus-eSIM arithmetic sit on the Canada hub.