French Guiana eSIM
Data for French Guiana on Orange Caraïbe, SFR Caraïbe, Digicel and Free Caraïbe, from $5.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and you install Orbislo once rather than once per trip.
- Networks
- Orange Caraïbe, SFR Caraïbe, Digicel and Free Caraïbe
- Real speed
- 32.5 Mbps median, 1.5 Mbps for the slowest tenth1,573 travellers, rolling 90 days
- 5G
- yes, standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for French Guiana
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $5.89 | $5.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $2.63 | $7.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $1.98 | $9.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $1.49 | $14.89 | |
| 20 GB | Never expires | $1.39 | $27.89 |
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.
What 32.5 Mbps actually means in French Guiana
Travellers on Orbislo in French Guiana see a median download of 32.5 Mbps, measured across 1573 real sessions rather than a speed test we ran ourselves. That sits close to the South America median of 34 Mbps, which makes French Guiana an unremarkable place to be connected, in the good sense.
The tenth percentile drops to 1.5 Mbps, a long way below the median. In practice that means French Guiana is quick when the cell is quiet and difficult when it is not. Download your maps and your boarding passes before you need them.
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 French Guiana on Orange Caraïbe, SFR Caraïbe, Digicel and Free Caraïbe. 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 French Guiana: yes, 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 French Guiana
A 500 MB plan for French Guiana starts at $0.32, 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 French Guiana it means the effective cost is nearer $0.00 a gigabyte than $0.00.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for French Guiana 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 French Guiana
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 French Guiana and it attaches to Orange Caraïbe. 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 French Guiana
The measurements above are aggregated across French Guiana, and a national median hides real variation. We publish separate figures for Cayenne and Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, 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.
Worth knowing about French Guiana
- ARCEP treats French Guiana as a separate market from mainland France, and the European roaming regulation does not apply to roaming inside French territory.
- Article L.34-10 of the French postal and electronic communications code extends the European roaming rules to travel between French territories and names Guyane among them, which ends retail roaming fees on a French plan here.
How French Guiana compares across South America
- Speed rank
- 8 of 12 destinations we have measured in South America
- Regional median
- 33.5 Mbps
- Consistency
- The slowest tenth still reaches 5 percent of the median
- Upstream networks
- 4, Orange Caraïbe, SFR Caraïbe, Digicel, Free Caraïbe
- 5G
- Yes, in Cayenne, Matoury, Remire-Montjoly, Kourou and Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, on Orange and SFR only
- Next fastest nearby
- Argentina, 33 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- Paraguay, 31 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 2: Cayenne, Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni
- tenth percentile
- 1.5 Mbps
- Behind these figures
- 1573 travellers, rolling 90 days
