🇨🇷Costa Rica registers prepaid users, around a number you will not have

6 plans for Costa Rica, from 1 GB at $7.49 to 20 GB at $40.49. 5 GB for 30 days costs $26.49 — 31st cheapest of 54 in the Americas, against a $22.99 median. Our retail prices from the operator catalogue, checked 28 September 2026.

The prepaid register is built around a Costa Rican number

Costa Rica registers prepaid users, and the record starts from a number the operator gave them. Article 72 of the Reglamento sobre el Régimen de Protección al Usuario Final is titled «Registro de información del usuario final en servicios en modalidad prepago». It has SUTEL provide a platform, the Registro Prepago, which «permite la verificación de la identidad del usuario del servicio prepago, previo a la realización de comunicaciones distintas a la plataforma de registro». Until you register, the only thing the line can reach is the registration platform itself.

The list of what goes into that record settles who it is for. The minimum information is required «además del número de teléfono asignado», besides the assigned telephone number, and the number is therefore assumed rather than optional. A travel profile roaming on a Costa Rican network is assigned no Costa Rican number. There is no first field to fill in. We read the regulation in the official gazette, Alcance 200 to La Gaceta 180 of 22 September 2022, on 8 September 2026.

What the register asks a foreigner for

The requirement is real for anyone buying a local line, and worth knowing before you choose one. Article 72 lists full name, then «Cédula de identidad vigente, documento equivalente o pasaporte a los extranjeros», a valid identity card, equivalent document or passport for foreigners. It then asks for a place of residence by province, canton and district, and an email address. Legal persons add their corporate identifiers.

That is a residence field on a tourist's form. It is the kind of thing that turns a kiosk purchase into an afternoon. Nothing in the article exempts a short-term visitor from it. A travel profile skips the whole procedure. It is never a Costa Rican prepaid line, rather than an excused one.

The regulation does discuss roaming, and every duty runs the other way

Costa Rica has written a whole chapter about roaming, and it is not about you. Chapter XIV of the regulation, Articles 83 to 88, is headed «SERVICIO DE ROAMING INTERNACIONAL». Article 84 obliges each operator to message its user automatically «cada vez que éste se registre o acceda a la red de un país distinto del país de origen», every time the user registers on the network of a country other than their home country. That is a Costa Rican subscriber abroad, not a visitor arriving.

The rest of the chapter keeps that direction throughout. Article 86 makes operators show accumulated roaming consumption, updated at least every 24 hours. Article 87 requires a system holding roaming spend to the limit the customer set, and Article 88 makes them warn at 80 per cent and suspend at 100. Every one of those duties runs from a Costa Rican operator to its own customer. We searched the whole regulation and found none addressed to an inbound roamer.

Border roaming is where a Costa Rican rule touches your bill

One article in that chapter is about the ground you will actually be standing on. Article 85, «Roaming en zonas fronterizas», makes operators coordinate with their counterparts in bordering countries so that «no se habilite el Roaming inadvertido», inadvertent roaming, which it defines as roaming consumption the user is not aware of. Near the Nicaraguan and Panamanian borders a phone can latch onto the wrong country's network without saying so.

The article then fixes the billing consequence. Where border roaming traffic is registered for users «ubicados dentro del territorio nacional», located inside the national territory, the consumption «deben de ser considerados y facturados como tráfico nacional», must be treated and billed as national traffic. That is written for Costa Rican operators, so it does not bind your provider. It does tell you the effect is known, expected and named in the country's own rules.

Your handset meets a live IMEI system

Costa Rica runs a terminal-management system, and it decides whether a handset works at all. Article 80 states that operators «no deben activar o permitir el funcionamiento en su red de equipos terminales que no cuenten con un código IMEI unívoco y válido (IMEI no irregular)». SUTEL maintains the SGTM for administering «las listas positivas, negativas y grises», built from GSMA TAC assignments and the 3GPP TS 23.003 standard. When an irregular IMEI is detected the end user has to be notified.

Article 81 is the blocking half, and it is fast. Operators «se encuentran obligados a bloquear de manera inmediata el IMEI del terminal reportado como hurtado, robado o extraviado», immediately block the IMEI of a terminal reported stolen, robbed or lost, and add it to the negative list. Nothing there asks a traveller to register anything, and no fee or deadline appears. **If you are travelling on a second-hand phone, its history is the thing this system reads, not your SIM.**

The one duty the regulation puts on you concerns the IMEI

Among the end-user obligations there is exactly one about the device. Article 5, «Obligaciones de los usuarios finales o clientes», lists at numeral 6: «Abstenerse de alterar o utilizar equipos terminales de telecomunicaciones de manera que se afecte la prestación del servicio o se imposibilite la identificación unívoca del equipo en las redes de los operadores.» Refrain from altering or using terminal equipment in a way that harms the service or makes unique identification of the equipment impossible on operators' networks.

Read plainly, that is a rule against tampering with an IMEI rather than a rule about carrying a phone. An ordinary handset bought from an ordinary shop satisfies it without you doing anything. It is the only line in the regulation where the reader is the addressee and the subject is the device.

A local prepaid line dies after ninety silent days

If you do consider a Costa Rican SIM instead, one article decides its shelf life. Article 75 says that when a prepaid service generates no chargeable events for ninety calendar days, the operator «debe proceder con la suspensión definitiva del servicio y disponer del recurso numérico». Definitive suspension, and the number goes back into the pool. Any unused main balance triggers a notice about recovery options in the five days before that.

For a returning visitor this is the trap that a local SIM sets and a travel profile does not. Come back in four months and the number is gone, with whatever credit sat on it. Our profile runs a different clock. It waits a year to be installed, and counts validity from first use (our Costa Rica catalogue record, checked 8 September 2026).

No rule found against messenger calls

We looked for a restriction on app calling in the regulation and did not find one. The chapters on quality, on user rights and on operator duties ban no messenger, no voice over IP and no class of application. Article 5 asks you not to send communications that harm other users or network security. That is a rule about abuse, not about apps.

Nothing here is a guarantee about network behaviour, and we will not dress it as one. We read the text and reported an absence in it. Whether a particular Costa Rican operator throttles a particular app is a measurement we have not made.

What the Costa Rica profile actually is

You are buying data on Claro and nothing more. The seller on our Costa Rica catalogue record is Hot Telecom, checked 8 September 2026, and the network is Claro at 4G. No minutes come with it, no texts, and no Costa Rican number in your name. The identity-check field on that record sits empty. Catalogue and Article 72 agree about whom the register is for.

Two clocks run separately here. You get 365 days from purchase to install the profile, and the days you bought start counting at first connection (same record, 8 September 2026). The plan accepts top-ups. Installing it at home therefore spends nothing.

One ladder, six sizes

Costa Rica has no unlimited tiers on our record, so the whole decision is a size. The ladder runs 1 GB, 2 GB, then 3, 5, 10 and 20 GB, with windows of 7 days on the smallest, 15 days on the next and 30 days from 3 GB upward (our Costa Rica catalogue record, checked 8 September 2026). There is no day-tier alternative to fall back on. Your cap is the thing that ends the plan.

Costa Rica eats data in a specific way, and it is not the cities. Arenal, Monteverde and the Osa peninsula are long drives on live navigation. Photo backups queue up for the evening on top of that. A week on the Pacific coast burns more than a week in San José. Pick the size for the driving days, and set a window that outlasts your return flight.

Before you fly

Do the install at home, on your own Wi-Fi, well ahead of the flight. Scan the QR from your order page, give the line a name you will recognise, then switch it off until you land. Buying early loses you nothing: the profile waits a year to be installed (our Costa Rica catalogue record, checked 8 September 2026). San José arrivals is a poor reading room.

Decide the two-line arrangement before departure. Your home line keeps voice and bank messages, and its data roaming goes off. The Costa Rican line becomes the data line once you land. **Enable data roaming for the travel line and for nothing else.**

Your first day, and the APN

This is one of the countries where Android owners type something. Our Costa Rica catalogue record configures the APN automatically on iOS and manually on Android, with the value wbdata, checked 8 September 2026. Enter it exactly, in lower case, with nothing before or after it. On iOS you touch nothing at all.

Then check the line the right way. Open a web page instead of placing a call. This profile carries no voice, so a failed call proves nothing. If nothing loads at all, look at which line is set for mobile data and whether roaming is enabled on it. Emergency dialling stays with your home line or with the handset itself.

Topping up

Recharge from the order page you already have open. The record marks the profile rechargeable, checked 8 September 2026, and no Costa Rican rule reaches that payment. Buy before the allowance empties. On an empty plan the café password comes first.

Watch the gigabytes rather than the calendar here, since the calendar is generous and the cap is not. On this ladder a 30-day window outlives the data inside it more often than not. Check the counter before a driving day rather than after one. Monteverde is a poor place to discover an empty plan.

FAQ

Before you fly: the checklist

Sources and freshness

Reglamento sobre el Régimen de Protección al Usuario Final, Articles 5, 72, 75, 80, 81 and Chapter XIV (83 to 88), in Alcance 200 to La Gaceta 180 of 22 September 2022, published by Imprenta Nacional (used in every legal section, the FAQ and the checklist) — the document, read 8 September 2026.

Our Costa Rica catalogue record: seller, network, plan type, identity check, install window, activation, APN value, recharge and the package ladder, read 8 September 2026.

What we did not check: Nothing below is settled, and none of it is presented as settled. SINALEVI, the consolidated-law system, would not serve article text to us on 8 September 2026, and sutel.go.cr did not answer our requests at all that day, so the regulator’s own Registro Prepago page went unread and is not linked below, so the regulation was read in the official gazette PDF as published rather than in a consolidated version; an amendment made after 22 September 2022 would not have been caught. Resolución RCS-234-2020, which sets the operating details of the terminal-management system, went unread for the same reason, so we describe the SGTM only from Articles 80 and 81 and make no claim about how it treats handsets reported stolen in other countries. We found no published enforcement case applying Article 5 numeral 6 to a traveller, which is an absence in what we could search rather than proof that none exists. Whether a Costa Rican operator applies any check of its own to an inbound roaming handset is not something we could verify. On the product side the record carries no coverage caveat, no Wi-Fi sharing field and no fair-use condition, and it does not say whether a top-up extends the running window or opens a new one. We measured no speeds and tested no coverage on the Osa peninsula or in Monteverde, and silence in a record is not a measurement.