You are home. What now?
Nothing bad happens if you do nothing at all — a finished profile is inert. But two minutes of tidying avoids a surprise on your next bill and a confusing settings screen next time you travel.
Put your own SIM back in charge
This is the one step worth doing on the plane home. Open your phone’s SIM or cellular settings, switch mobile data back to your usual line, and turn the travel eSIM line off. If you leave data pointed at a finished eSIM, the phone simply has no connection and you will spend a while wondering why — and if you left your own SIM’s data switched off, nothing will work until you turn it back on.
Leftover data does not carry over
A plan is a fixed amount of data for a fixed number of days, and both have to hold for it to work. When the days run out the plan is finished even if gigabytes are left, and there is no way to bank the remainder or move it to a different destination. That is worth remembering when you choose a size: buying far more than you need is not saving for later, it is just paying for more than you use.
Delete it, or leave it
Both are fine. A spent profile takes up one of the phone’s eSIM slots and does nothing else — it cannot connect, cannot be charged for and cannot be reactivated. Phones hold several profiles, so leaving one costs you nothing until you run out of slots. If you would rather have a clean list: on iPhone, Settings › Cellular › select the line › Delete eSIM; on Android, Settings › Network & internet › SIMs › select it › Erase.
Going back to the same place
A finished profile cannot be topped up or reused — a new trip means a new plan, and it arrives as a new profile with its own QR code. So there is no reason to keep the old one for sentimental reasons. There is also no account to close and no subscription running in the background: we hold no payment method, so a trip that ends leaves nothing behind to cancel.
One thing worth checking
If you turned on data roaming for the eSIM line during the trip, that switch belongs to that line and not to your own SIM, so it is harmless once you are home. What is worth a look is your own SIM’s data roaming setting: if you turned it on at any point, turn it off again. That is the switch that lets your home operator bill you at roaming rates, and it is the only one here that can cost you money.