Four people in the car, four devices that want to be online: the kids' tablets in the back seat, your partner's phone, maybe a laptop for email. Do you need to buy four eSIM bundles? No. One phone with a travel eSIM can act as the router for the whole family. You switch on the personal hotspot, everyone else connects to it, and all traffic runs through your single bundle. In this article you'll learn how to set it up, and more importantly, how to stop that one bundle from vanishing in two days.
How it works: one phone as the router
A hotspot (also called tethering) turns your phone into a small wifi network. Your phone has internet through the eSIM and shares that connection wirelessly with other devices. For those devices it feels like ordinary wifi: connect, enter the password, done.
Good to know: your physical SIM can stay in the phone for calls and texts while data runs over the eSIM. So you're sharing the data from your travel bundle, not the roaming allowance from your provider back home.
Turning on the hotspot on iPhone and Android
Setup takes about a minute:
iPhone: go to Settings, tap Personal Hotspot and enable "Allow Others to Join". The wifi password is shown on the same screen. Do check under Settings, Mobile Data that your eSIM is selected as the line for mobile data.
Android: go to Settings, then Network and internet (or Connections on Samsung) and choose Hotspot and tethering. Turn on the wifi hotspot and set a name and password. Again, make sure the eSIM is your active data line.
Pick a decent password, or half the campsite will happily browse on your bundle.
Why a hotspot burns through data faster
Now for the honest part. A shared connection uses considerably more data than a phone on its own. Not because the hotspot itself costs anything, but because the devices you connect behave as if they're on home wifi. Laptops are the worst offenders: the moment they see a connection, they start downloading Windows or macOS updates in the background, syncing OneDrive, iCloud or Google Drive, and updating apps. A gigabyte can disappear before anyone has opened a single website.
Here's how to keep it under control:
- Turn off automatic updates on laptops and tablets, or pause them for the duration of the trip.
- Pause cloud sync (OneDrive, iCloud Drive, Google Photos, Dropbox) while you're on the hotspot.
- Mark the connection as metered. On Windows, set the hotspot as a metered connection; on an iPad or second iPhone, enable Low Data Mode; on Android it's called Data Saver. Devices will then automatically postpone heavy background tasks.
- Agree on what the hotspot is for. Downloading films in advance on hotel wifi makes a huge difference; streaming in the back seat is the fastest way to empty a bundle.
You'll find more settings like these in our guide to holiday data usage.
Your battery drains faster too
A phone working as a router keeps two radios active at the same time: the mobile network on one side, wifi for your family on the other. That costs power. Expect your battery to drain noticeably faster, especially with several devices connected.
Practical tips: bring a powerbank (in the car, a charging cable will do), switch the hotspot off when nobody is using it, and don't leave the phone in full sun on the dashboard. Heat plus hotspot is an unpleasant combination for your battery.
Does hotspot sharing work with every travel eSIM?
With the vast majority of travel eSIMs, the hotspot simply works, including the bundles we compare. Tethering is enabled by default, with no separate settings and no extra charges. A small number of providers restrict tethering in their terms, so if you're unsure about a specific bundle, check the bundle conditions before you order. Still not sure? Send us a message: you'll get a personal answer from me, not from a bot.
Size your bundle for the whole family
The key lesson: if one bundle is doing the work for three or four devices, that bundle needs to be sized accordingly. Where 5 GB gets you comfortably through a week on your own, two streaming kids in the back seat will burn through it in no time.
A reasonable rule of thumb: count the number of active users and multiply your normal estimate by that, then round up generously if there's a laptop involved. Want a more precise answer? Use our data calculator. It works with your trip length, your wifi situation and what you all do on the road, and shows the matching bundle size right away. For families who spend a lot of time on the move, the answer is often a large bundle or unlimited, and that's usually still cheaper than separate bundles per device.
Conclusion
Hotspot sharing is the cheapest way to keep the whole family online while travelling: one eSIM, one bundle, everyone connected. Turn off automatic updates and cloud sync on the connected devices, use low data mode, bring a powerbank and choose a bundle sized for the number of users rather than for a single phone.
Ready to pick a family-sized bundle? Calculate how much data you need together and then browse the eSIM bundles for your destination.