Buying a SIM on arrival at José María Córdova (MDE)

What we actually hold on MDE

Be clear about the limits of this page before you rely on it. For José María Córdova we hold three specific things: the carriers our source names in arrivals are Claro and Movistar, the queue runs about three minutes off-peak and eight minutes at its busiest, and Colombian prepaid needs no identity document — our data records the rule as no ID required, instant purchase.

We hold nothing on which arrivals hall the counters sit in, nothing on their opening hours, and nothing on whether they are staffed for late or early flights. If your flight lands at 05:00, treat the counter as unproven rather than closed. Free wifi is generally available in the terminal, which is enough to send a message but not enough to run a rideshare app through a 40 km transfer.

The case for buying at MDE, which is stronger than usual

Most airport SIM counters are a bad deal: long queues, tourist pricing, and a passport scan. MDE avoids two of those three. No identity check means the transaction is a payment rather than a registration, and an eight-minute worst case is short by airport standards. Our data puts a counter SIM at around $10.

The catch is the one we cannot resolve: we do not hold what allowance that $10 buys. Without the data bundle behind the price there is no per-gigabyte comparison to make, and a cheap SIM with 1 GB on it is not cheap. Ask what is included before you pay, and compare it against the table below rather than against the sticker price.

What the eSIM ladder costs

Prices are per plan in US dollars with the duration attached. Airalo's rows were read from its own store on 13 August 2026. The others are indicative listings we have not confirmed.

Colombia does not stop at 20 GB. The verified 50 GB for 30 days at $49 works out at $0.98 a gigabyte, the cheapest verified rate in the country and roughly a third of the rate on the 10 GB plan. If you are in Medellín for a month — and a lot of people who land at MDE are — that is the row to look at, not the starter plans. The full ladder is on the Colombia hub.

For a week or less, the small end is where the value sits, and the cheapest listings there are the unverified ones. Treat $2.90 as a figure to check at the seller rather than a promise.

The 40 km problem

MDE is not in Medellín. The airport sits near Rionegro, around 40 km from the city, and the road down into the valley is the part of the journey where you want a working connection — for the rideshare app, for the fare, for finding an address in a neighbourhood you have never been to. Terminal wifi covers the terminal and nothing after it.

That is the real argument for arriving connected. An eSIM installed before departure is live when you land, with no counter involved. A counter SIM also solves it, provided the counter is open and the queue behaves. What does not solve it is planning to sort things out once you reach the city.

Networks: nobody has confirmed anything

Airalo sells Colombia under the names Chimba and Chimba+. Those are Airalo's own retail badges, not carriers, and Airalo does not publish which Colombian network its plans roam onto — in this country or any other. Anyone who tells you otherwise is reading a product name as a network.

eSIMCard names Claro and Movistar in its own listings; Airalo, Saily, Nomad and Holafly name nothing at all, here or anywhere. Nobody has checked the one claim that exists against the operators, so we treat it as a lead rather than a fact. If a recommendation depends on which network you land on, we cannot make it.