Nomad in Colombia: its second-dearest market anywhere

The plans, and the curve underneath them

Nomad sells five Colombia plans. Four of them run 30 days; only the smallest is shorter.

Every one of those was read off Nomad's own site on 17 August 2026. An earlier version of this page listed the same five plans at $4, $9, $13, $19 and $30, and four of the five were wrong — too low by 50 cents, $2, $6 and $9. The correction changes the story rather than the decimal places: at $1.95 a gigabyte on its cheapest rate, Colombia is the second-dearest of the 47 countries Nomad sells, behind only Argentina.

The Airalo figures used for comparison further down were verified on 13 August 2026, so both ladders on this page are now checked.

Hotspot tethering is supported. No plan includes calls or SMS.

What that curve means when you buy

The discount for buying bigger is real but far shallower than we used to describe. The rate falls from $3.17 a gigabyte at 3GB to $1.95 at 20GB — a third off across the whole ladder, not the halving every two steps this page previously claimed. Nothing in the middle is a trap; you simply pay a little less per unit the more you take.

That has a practical consequence for a two-week Colombia trip. The gap between 5GB at $15.00 and 10GB at $25.00 is ten dollars for five extra gigabytes, at $2.00 each — still cheaper per gigabyte than the plan you were about to buy. Unless you know your usage is light, the 10GB plan is the better default, and the 20GB plan at $39.00 is better still if you tether at all.

The 30-day validity on all four larger plans is quietly useful too. There is no cheaper 7-day or 15-day version to tempt you into a plan that expires mid-trip; whatever you buy lasts a month.

Where Nomad wins, and where it has nothing to sell

Against Saily, the closest competitor in shape, Nomad now loses at every shared size. Saily's indicative Colombian rows are $8.99 for 3GB, $12.99 for 5GB, $19.99 for 10GB and $36.89 for 20GB, against Nomad's verified $9.50, $15.00, $25.00 and $39.00. An earlier version of this page called the bottom a coin-flip and the top a clear Nomad win at $30 against $36.89. On the real Nomad prices it is the other way round at every size, though Saily's figures are still indicative and Nomad's are not.

Against Airalo, Nomad does still undercut at every comparable 30-day size, but by dollars rather than the margins we claimed: $1 at 3GB, $1 at 5GB, $3 at 10GB and $2 at 20GB. This page previously put those gaps at $1.50, $3, $9 and $11. Airalo splits Colombia across two packages, and the 3GB month is the only one of those four that comes from Chimba+ rather than Chimba, so check the package name if a price on its site does not match.

The gaps are at the ends. Nomad sells nothing above 20GB in Colombia — one of eight countries where its ladder stops there — so a month of heavy remote work is out of reach; the only 50GB plan in our Colombia data belongs to another provider and costs under a dollar a gigabyte, half Nomad's best rate. And Nomad sells nothing shorter than seven days, and only at 1GB. For a three-day stopover in Bogotá there is no small, short Nomad plan to buy — you either take the 1GB week or look elsewhere, where 3-day plans and short unlimited packages do exist.

The network question

Nomad publishes no host network for Colombia. An earlier version of this page said its listing pointed to Claro and Movistar Colombia on the smaller plans; nothing we hold supports that and we have removed it. Nomad names no carrier anywhere, and neither do Airalo or Saily, so we do not know which Colombian network you will attach to and the product page does not settle it.

This matters in Colombia in particular places rather than generally. Cities and the main tourist corridor are well covered by everyone. The dead spots are specific: interior trails in Tayrona, the jungle beyond Leticia, stretches of the eastern Llanos, some Andean walking routes above 3,000m. If your itinerary lives in one of those, a travel eSIM cannot promise you the carrier that covers it, because none of them will name one.

The fix, if coverage on a named route is the point of the exercise, is a local prepaid SIM. Colombia requires no ID to buy one — you pay and walk out — and an airport counter charges around $10. That also gets you a Colombian number, which Nomad does not provide.

Verdict

For an ordinary one- to four-week trip with normal phone use, Nomad is a defensible pick but no longer the obvious one: the 10GB month at $25.00 for most people, the 20GB month at $39.00 if you tether a laptop. It undercuts Airalo at every size it sells, and its 20GB month is the best verified per-gigabyte rate below 50GB in this market. But Saily's indicative rows are lower at every one of those sizes, and this page previously recommended Nomad partly on prices that were $6 and $9 too low.

It is the wrong tool for a short stopover, for a heavy month, or for a trip that hinges on coverage in a specific remote place. Full provider comparison on the Colombia hub, and the wider market on cheapest eSIM.