Argentina eSIM
Data for Argentina on Personal and Claro, from $9.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and refills land on the line you already have, with nothing new to install.
- Networks
- Personal and Claro
- Typical speed
- 33 Mbps typical, 8 Mbps at busy times
- 5G
- 4G only
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for Argentina
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $9.89 | $9.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $5.96 | $17.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $5.18 | $25.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $4.19 | $41.89 | |
| 20 GB | Never expires | $3.54 | $70.89 |
Every plan works the moment you land. Unused data returns to your wallet when the line closes, and customers get at least 100 MB of free rescue data a month even at zero balance.
What 33 Mbps actually means in Argentina
Typical download speed on Orbislo in Argentina: 33 Mbps. That sits close to the South America median of 34 Mbps, which makes Argentina an unremarkable place to be connected, in the good sense.
The tenth percentile is 8 Mbps. That gap between the median and the floor is normal and it is where the frustration lives: the connection is quick most of the time and noticeably slow in the busiest few percent of moments, typically at transport hubs at peak hour.
Maps, messaging, ride hailing and payment apps all work without complaint. Video calls connect but will drop resolution, and streaming is better set to standard definition than left on automatic. Tethering a laptop works for email and documents rather than for calls.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in Argentina on Personal and Claro. Your phone is not tied to one of them. When the network you are attached to congests or drops, the profile moves you to the other, and it happens without a prompt and without you noticing anything except that the connection kept working.
This matters more than the headline speed. Almost every travel eSIM sold today resells a single upstream agreement per country, so when that one network has a bad hour you have a bad hour with it and your only option is to buy a second eSIM from somebody else. A profile with more than one network behind it can make a decision you never see.
5G in Argentina: 4G only. A well provisioned 4G cell comfortably outruns a congested 5G one, which is why the figure above is throughput rather than a network generation.
What data costs in Argentina
A 100 MB plan for Argentina starts at $0.46, which is $0.00 a gigabyte. That is the number to compare between providers, because a headline price attached to a different allowance tells you nothing.
The comparison most providers would rather you did not run is cost per gigabyte actually used. Independent surveys of travel data put the share of purchased data lost to expiry between 20 and 35 percent, because a plan that expires on day thirty deletes what you did not get through. Orbislo data has no expiry date, so the gigabyte you paid for is still there on the next trip. At the same headline price that is 25 to 40 percent more usable data, and in Argentina it means the effective cost is nearer $0.00 a gigabyte than $0.00.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for Argentina is to buy slightly less than you think you need and top up if you run out. Topping up takes about ten seconds and does not involve installing anything. Buying too much is the expensive mistake everywhere else and merely a neutral one here.
Landing in Argentina
Install before you fly, on your home wifi. The profile downloads while you still have a connection you trust, then sits dormant until you land in Argentina and it attaches to Personal.
On landing there is one thing to check: data roaming has to be switched on for the Orbislo line. It is off by default on both iOS and Android, and it has nothing to do with roaming charges here, because the plan is prepaid and there is no bill to run up. Turn it on for the Orbislo line and leave it off for your home line, and your home number keeps working for calls and bank codes without costing anything.
Coverage across Argentina
The figures above cover Argentina as a whole, and a national figure hides real variation. We publish separate figures for Buenos Aires, Bariloche and Mendoza, because the difference between a capital and a coastal town is usually larger than the difference between two countries.
Outside the cities, coverage follows the same pattern it does everywhere: the main roads and the tourist corridors are well served, and it thins in the mountains and on the water. No travel eSIM changes that, because it is the same physical network the local population uses. What a multi network profile changes is which of the available towers you get to use.
Getting a local SIM in Argentina
A company selling a mobile line or handset has to record the buyer's personal, family and address details well enough to identify them, and the obligation holds even where the line only ever runs on prepaid credit. Those details go to a national public register of mobile users and customers.
Worth knowing about Argentina
- Carry in a handset you imported yourself and the operator has to ask for the customs paperwork in your own name showing the duty was paid, or the local purchase invoice if you bought it here. It may not activate service on a phone without one of those.
- Operators exchange a daily list of handsets reported stolen or lost and must refuse service to anything on it, so a second hand phone bought locally can turn out to be barred from every network at once.
- Since 17 March 2025, operators must ask anyone opening a mobile line, in a shop or remotely, for the number, procedure number and sex shown on their latest Argentine national identity card (DNI), and check them against the national population register, RENAPER.
- Asking for a replacement SIM card means proving your identity again. Operators have to use a biometric check with a liveness test, or a multi-step verification where that is not possible, and may apply the same checks to other changes they consider sensitive.
- Each prepaid top-up in Argentina must stay valid for at least 180 calendar days from the day it is credited, with no exceptions. Where several top-ups overlap, the one closest to expiry is spent first, and operators may not block use of any remaining balance.
- A prepaid line is not cut off the moment its credit expires. Operators must keep it active for 60 calendar days after the last top-up expires, so a line topped up just before leaving can stay alive for roughly eight months.
- Roaming charges between Argentina and Chile were abolished by the regulator, so a Chilean SIM pays Chilean prices in Argentina. The benefit covers 90 consecutive days or 120 separate days a year, and the host operator must give the same quality and coverage as its own customers get.
- Argentina splits its emergency numbers by service: 107 for an ambulance, 100 for the fire brigade, and 911 or 101 for the police.
- If a phone on an Argentine line is lost or stolen, calling *910 reports it and has both the handset and the line blocked, so the device can no longer be used on any network in the country.
- A prepaid customer can check their remaining credit at any time free of charge, and any operator selling prepaid service must tell the customer how long each amount of credit stays valid.
- Every mobile operator must keep at least one channel open 24 hours a day, every day of the year, for reporting a phone lost or stolen, whoever sold the handset.
- Buenos Aires has a Tourist Police station open 24 hours, reachable by phone and on WhatsApp at +54 911 5050 9260, for visitors reporting a crime.
How Argentina compares across South America
- Regional typical speed
- 33.5 Mbps
- Upstream networks
- 2, Personal, Claro
- 5G
- 4G only
- Next fastest nearby
- Ecuador, 34 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- French Guiana, 32.5 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 3: Buenos Aires, Bariloche, Mendoza
