Benin eSIM
Data for Benin on MTN Benin, Moov Africa Benin and Celtiis, from $15.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and you install Orbislo once rather than once per trip.
- Networks
- MTN Benin, Moov Africa Benin and Celtiis
- 5G
- yes, non standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for Benin
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $15.89 | $15.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $11.63 | $34.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $10.78 | $53.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $9.89 | $98.89 |
Every plan works the moment you land. Unused data returns to your wallet when the plan ends, and there is 100 MB of free rescue data on your account even at zero balance.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in Benin on MTN Benin, Moov Africa Benin and Celtiis. 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 Benin: yes, non standalone. Worth knowing that 5G on a travel profile is normal rather than special, and that the tenth percentile above is the number that will decide how the trip feels, not the generation label in the status bar.
What data costs in Benin
A 500 MB plan for Benin starts at $3.05, which is $0.01 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 Benin it means the effective cost is nearer $0.00 a gigabyte than $0.01.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for Benin 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 Benin
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 Benin and it attaches to MTN Benin. Median time from tapping install to having service across all Orbislo orders is 41 seconds.
On landing there is one thing to check and it is the thing that goes wrong about sixty percent of the time people tell us they have no service: 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 Benin
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 Benin
Subscriber identification is compulsory here and the regulator closed the update window at midnight on 30 March 2025, after which unidentified subscribers had their services switched off. Anyone caught by it has to go to their operator in person to put it right.
Worth knowing about Benin
- The regulator keeps a free number, 131, for questions about subscriber identification and about electronic communications services generally.
How Benin compares across Africa
- Regional median
- 29.5 Mbps
- Upstream networks
- 3, MTN Benin, Moov Africa Benin, Celtiis
- 5G
- Yes, non standalone in Cotonou and Abomey Calavi, on MTN only
- Cities with their own page
- 3: Cotonou, Pobé, Lokossa
