What a cheap SIM card in Colombia actually costs

Colombia's real floor is about a dollar a gigabyte

Read the whole ladder before you buy, because the cheapest gigabyte in Colombia sits at the top of it. Airalo's 50 GB for 30 days costs $49 — $0.98 a gigabyte, and the only Colombian plan we hold that comes in under a dollar. That figure was read off Airalo's own site on 13 August 2026.

Most people will not use 50 GB in a fortnight. The number still matters, because it sets the benchmark: data in Colombia is worth roughly a dollar a gigabyte, and everything below is a premium you pay for buying less.

What the eSIMs charge

Prices marked verified were read from the provider's own site. The rest come from our plan data and have not been re-checked, so treat them as indicative and confirm at checkout.

The shape is the usual one, but the spread here is unusually wide. Airalo's verified 1 GB for three days is $4, which is $4 a gigabyte — four times the rate of its own 50 GB. Buy a week's worth of small plan and you are paying roughly triple the country's floor for the privilege of not over-buying.

An earlier version of this page called Nomad's 20 GB month the best mid-size value in our data at $1.50 a gigabyte, and warned in the same breath that nobody had re-read it off Nomad's site. That warning was justified. The plan has since been read at source and costs $39, not $30 — $1.95 a gigabyte. It is still the cheapest verified rate below 50 GB in Colombia, but the argument we built on it rested on a figure nine dollars out.

Unlimited, and the sum worth doing

Holafly and Airalo both sell unlimited Colombian plans. Holafly's three-day is $12.50 and its 30-day $97.90, both verified. Airalo's verified equivalents are $12.50 and $91.50.

The monthly comparison is the one that decides it. Ninety-odd dollars buys unlimited data for a month; $49 buys 50 GB over the same month. Unless you are tethering a laptop all day, 50 GB covers a month of maps, messaging and video calls with room to spare, and you keep the difference.

The local SIM, and the ID rule that makes it painless

Colombia is one of the easier countries in which to buy a SIM: no ID is required at most retail outlets, so it is a counter transaction rather than a registration form. Claro, Movistar and Tigo SIMs are sold at Bogotá (BOG), Medellín (MDE) and Cartagena (CTG) airports and at carrier stores nationwide; WOM is the fourth operator. A tourist data package at an airport counter runs about $10.

What we cannot tell you is how much data that $10 buys, because we do not hold the allowance. So the honest comparison is not available: at 10 GB it beats everything above, at 2 GB it does not. Ask at the counter what the allowance is, and hold it against $0.98 a gigabyte before you pay.

Which network you end up on

Claro has the widest coverage in Colombia — around 98% of the population, including the coffee region, the Caribbean coast and rural towns. Buying a physical SIM at an airport counter, asking for Claro by name is the one choice that changes your experience.

For eSIMs, the honest answer is that we do not know. Airalo does not publish a host network for any country, Colombia included; its plans appear at checkout as Chimba and Chimba+, which are Airalo's own product names and not carriers. Saily and Nomad publish none either. eSIMCard is the only one of the six sellers that publishes a host network at all — we read that on its Japan page — but the Claro and Movistar pair our own data carried for it here came from this site's generated text rather than from eSIMCard, so we no longer repeat it. Holafly shows nothing, here or anywhere.

Coverage gaps matter more than plan choice, because no eSIM fixes them: the interior trails of Tayrona National Park have dead zones, Leticia has signal while the surrounding Amazon does not, the Los Llanos plains are thin, and some Andean routes above 3,000 m drop out entirely. Public WiFi takes real pressure off a small plan in Bogotá, Medellín and Cartagena, all well covered by the Zonas WiFi programme. Emergency calls work on any Colombian network without an active plan.

What to buy

Under a week and light on data, take the cheapest small plan you trust — Airalo's verified 5 GB for seven days is $15. Two weeks or more, step up to Nomad's verified 20 GB for 30 days at $39, two dollars under Airalo's for the same allowance. Heavy use, or one plan shared between two phones, and the 50 GB at $49 is not a luxury but the cheapest data in the country.

Full provider-by-provider plan lists are on the Colombia hub.