Rio de Janeiro eSIM
In Rio de Janeiro you connect to Vivo or Claro, whichever is performing better where you are standing. The median across the country is 49 Mbps. Your data starts working the moment you land, before you reach the immigration hall.
- Networks
- Vivo and Claro
- Real speed in Brazil
- 49 Mbps median, 12 Mbps for the slowest tenth1,744 travellers across Brazil, rolling 90 days
- 5G
- yes, non standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans that cover Rio de Janeiro
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $7.89 | $7.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $4.96 | $14.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $4.38 | $21.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $3.39 | $33.89 | |
| 20 GB | Never expires | $2.99 | $59.89 |
How Brazil compares across South America
- Speed rank
- 2 of 10 destinations we sell in South America
- Regional median
- 34.5 Mbps
- Consistency
- The slowest tenth still reaches 24 percent of the median
- Upstream networks
- 2, Vivo, Claro
- 5G
- Yes, non standalone
- Next fastest nearby
- Chile, 52 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- Uruguay, 48 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 4: Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Salvador, Florianopolis
- tenth percentile
- 12 Mbps
- Behind these figures
- 1744 travellers, rolling 90 days
Landing at Rio de Janeiro/Galeao International Airport (GIG)
- Airport
- GIG / SBGL
- Distance
- 20 km from the centre of Rio de Janeiro
- Also serves
- Santos Dumont Airport (SDU)
Getting into Rio de Janeiro
- TransCarioca BRT to Madureira and Vicente de Carvalho (interchange with Metro Line 2) (GIG)
- Urban bus lines 915 (Bonsucesso), 924 and 925 (Ilha do Governador), 761-D (Niteroi) (GIG)
- Executive (blue) and ordinary (yellow) airport taxis (GIG)
Underground and on the metro
Rio de Janeiro Metro runs 3 lines. It opened in 1979. The operator does not publish whether the tunnels carry a mobile signal, so we do not claim either way.
Worth knowing about Rio de Janeiro
- Santos Dumont sits next to Rio's financial centre but an ordinance restricts it to domestic flights, general aviation and air taxi, so international arrivals land at Galeao 20 km north instead.
- Santos Dumont closes between 23:00 and 06:00 and has been capped at 6.5 million passengers a year since 2024.
- There is no rail or metro line into Galeao airport; the connection is the TransCarioca BRT busway, which runs 24 hours and meets Metro Line 2 at Vicente de Carvalho.
- Rio's metro is nominally three lines but Lines 1 and 4 are operationally the same line, so it works as two lines across 41 stations.
Sources for this page
Other cities in Brazil we cover
- Sao Paulo
- 360 km from Rio de Janeiro, nearest airport CGH
- Florianopolis
- 750 km from Rio de Janeiro, nearest airport FLN
- Salvador
- 1210 km from Rio de Janeiro, nearest airport SSA