Bhutan eSIM
Data for Bhutan on Bhutan Telecom and TashiCell, from $11.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and you install Orbislo once rather than once per trip.
- Networks
- Bhutan Telecom and TashiCell
- 5G
- yes, non standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for Bhutan
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $11.89 | $11.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $7.63 | $22.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $6.98 | $34.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $6.29 | $62.89 |
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 Bhutan on Bhutan Telecom and TashiCell. 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 Bhutan: 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 Bhutan
A 1 GB plan for Bhutan starts at $11.89, which is $11.89 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 Bhutan it means the effective cost is nearer $8.56 a gigabyte than $11.89.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for Bhutan 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 Bhutan
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 Bhutan and it attaches to Bhutan Telecom. 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 Bhutan
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.
Worth knowing about Bhutan
- Every visitor pays a Sustainable Development Fee for each night in the country, set at USD 100 for adults from anywhere except India, USD 50 for children aged six to eleven, and nothing below six. Indian passport or voter ID holders pay Nu. 1,200 a night.
- From 2 June 2026 until August 2027 a visit of up to 24 hours inside the marked zones of Samtse, Phuentsholing, Gelephu or Samdrupjongkhar carries no Sustainable Development Fee, and the fee starts again the moment you travel past the checkpost that marks the zone.
- Visitor SIM cards are sold at the visitor information centre inside Paro International Airport, at telecom branch offices and at authorised agents in the towns, and the Department of Tourism warns that mobile data here is expensive.
How Bhutan compares across Asia
- Regional median
- 42.95 Mbps
- Upstream networks
- 2, Bhutan Telecom, TashiCell
- 5G
- Yes, non standalone in Thimphu, Paro and Phuentsholing
- Cities with their own page
- 3: Thimphu, Phuntsholing, Tsirang
