Belize SIM Cards and eSIMs: Every Published Price from Both Carriers

Checked on 26 August 2026, on Digi Belize’s and Smart Belize’s own product and prepaid pages (Digi’s read from the raw page markup rather than a summary), Smart’s eSIM FAQ, and Airalo’s and Holafly’s Belize eSIM pages.

Smart Belize sells a tourist plan and Digi does not. Smart’s Tour SIM “Explore 1” is BZ$45 — US$22.50 at the fixed peg — for unlimited data valid 10 days, plus BZ$35 of talk time, 130 SMS and a local Belize number. The nearest international eSIM equivalent, Holafly’s 10-day Belize plan, is US$68.90 for data only, with no local number — 3.06 times as much, our arithmetic from the two published prices.

A local Belize SIM is dramatically cheaper than an international eSIM. The advantage the international brands publish is that you can buy them before you fly — and that advantage is smaller than it looks, because Smart’s Tour eSIM can be bought before you fly too.

Smart’s tourist plans

Smart labels these prices BZD explicitly on the page — the only carrier page we found that names its currency. The USD figures are our conversion at the Central Bank’s fixed BZ$2 = US$1.

Smart’s own framing: “Travellers visiting from abroad can get their very own local number and enjoy Calls + Text + Data!” and “It’s Cheaper Than Roaming”. On the talk time, verbatim: “Talk-time can be used to make calls to any destination (per minute rates vary by country). SMS can be used to text locally and internationally.”

We searched Digi’s prepaid, SIM and value-services pages: it has no tourist-specific product.

The eSIM distinction that actually matters

Smart sells two different eSIMs, and only one of them can be set up before you arrive.

• Tour eSIM — buy before you fly. Verbatim: “A Tour eSIM is a digital SIM you activate by scanning a QR code sent via email after purchase. Buy it before your trip and activate it once in Belize.”
• Ordinary Smart eSIM — showroom only. Verbatim, from Smart’s eSIM FAQ: “Q: DO I NEED TO VISIT A SMART SHOWROOM TO ACTIVATE MY ESIM COMPATIBLE DEVICE? Yes. Please visit your nearest Smart showroom to request and activate eSIM.”

Two more Smart rules worth knowing before you buy:

• “Our system will automatically deactivate your eSIM phone number after 60 days of inactivity. If you are using a temporary service like the Tourist SIM, it will deactivate in the allotted time.” Sixty days, not a year — relevant if you plan to keep a Belize number between trips.
• A QR code cannot be reused: “if you have already installed your eSim on one device, you cannot install the same eSim (use the same QR Code) on another device.”
• On activation timing: “Plans purchased online are activated upon the first outbound call. Plans purchased in-store through a sales agent are activated immediately.”

Digi sells a “PrePaid SIM/eSIM” as a single product but publishes no statement on whether a visitor can buy and provision it from abroad, the way Smart’s Tour eSIM explicitly can.

Digi’s prepaid data ladder

Digi prints every price as a bare “$” and never states the currency — not on its prepaid page, not on its SIM page, not on its value-services page. Smart, selling comparable products, labels its prices BZD. That is an unresolved conflict and we are leaving it unresolved.

What we can say is what the numbers look like. Two of Digi’s published prices sit on round pre-tax figures once Belize’s 12.5% GST is taken back out: $22.50 is exactly $20.00 plus 12.5%, and $16.88 is $15.00 plus 12.5% — $16.875, rounded up to the cent. The 12.5% is the rate a Government of Belize press release describes as “the 12.5% tax usually applied to most purchases”; the Belize Tax Service’s own site (bts.gov.bz) serves nothing to a non-browser client, so that press release is the readable government source for the rate. That is the shape of GST-inclusive pricing on round local-currency amounts, and Smart confirms GST-inclusive pricing is the local convention. It is evidence, not proof, and we are not going to state a currency that the carrier itself does not state.

Digi’s other published bundles:

The social bundles cover WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger and Instagram, with Social Pro adding X. Digi states a fair usage policy caps the “unlimited” social data at 100 GB. The All-in-One bundles are Digi’s only products that pair voice minutes with data.

Digi SIM prices: prepaid SIM or eSIM $22.50, which includes $10 bonus credit and 1 GB of data; postpaid SIM/eSIM $16.88; replacement SIM $16.88. Digi sells the physical SIM and the eSIM as the same product at one price, tells customers they are “encouraged to research to confirm that your device is compatible with our Digi Network” before buying, and says a device can hold “up to 10 eSIMs”.

Belize telecom prices include the tax

Smart states it twice, plainly — the opposite of the convention our tipping and prices page finds on Belize menus and rate cards: “All prices are inclusive of GST.” and, on its prepay page, “Prices include GST and expire in 30 days.” On Smart’s own published prices, the printed figure is the whole figure.

Topping up once you have a SIM

The two Smart numbers are not interchangeable — the split is by bundle size, not by product.

The two international eSIM brands run on opposite Belizean networks

It takes reading both vendors’ own pages to establish: Airalo’s Belize eSIM runs on “Speednet (SMART)”. Holafly’s runs on “DigiCell”. If one brand’s coverage is poor where you are staying, the other brand is on the other network.

Two things fall out of Airalo’s own ladder. Its 5 GB allowance costs US$46.00 for 7 days and US$48.00 for 30 — two dollars buys twenty-three more days, so there is no reason to buy the short version. And its 3 GB / 3 days at US$25.00 sits within US$1.50 of 3 GB / 7 days at US$26.50.

Holafly states its plan “only comes with cellular data. It does not include a local phone number for phone calls or text messages.” That is the trade against Smart’s Tour SIM, which does include one.

The comparison, and how much of it is safe to publish

Ten days of unlimited data. Smart Tour SIM Explore 1 at BZ$45 = US$22.50, with a local number, BZ$35 talk time and 130 SMS, against Holafly’s 10-day plan at US$68.90, data only. Holafly costs 3.06 times as much. Both inputs are explicitly labelled by their sellers — Smart states BZD, Holafly states USD — so this comparison does not depend on any assumption.

Thirty days of data. Digi XL, 5,500 MB, at $35 against Airalo’s 5 GB / 30 days at US$48.00. If Digi’s $35 is Belize dollars, that is US$17.50 and Airalo costs 2.74 times as much for slightly less data. That multiple is contingent on Digi’s unlabelled currency, and we are flagging it rather than presenting it as settled. The Smart comparison above is the one that stands on its own.

Where to buy in person, and who to call

Smart: +501-280-1000, toll free 1090; head office at 2½ Miles Philip Goldson Highway, Belize City; store locator on its site. Its Tour Kit eSIM is available “from any Smart showroom or GD Agent countrywide”, and its site carries a live phone-compatibility checker covering Apple, Samsung, Google, Oppo, Huawei, Motorola, Microsoft and Nuu.

Digi: WhatsApp 608-8888, [email protected], and a “Locate a DigiStore” tool on its site.

Digi describes itself as “the largest network in the country” on its own prepaid page. That is Digi’s marketing claim about itself, not an independent measurement, and we could not find any regulator-published figure that would verify or refute it — see below.

What the carriers and the regulator don’t publish

• Any coverage map, 4G/5G footprint, subscriber share or speed data for Belize. The Public Utilities Commission of Belize could not be reached at pucbelize.org (DNS failure) and no alternative telecom-statistics source exists that we could locate. Digi’s “largest network” claim is therefore an unverified self-description.
• Whether Digi or Smart covers Ambergris Caye, Caye Caulker, Placencia or Cayo better. Both carriers omit a retrievable coverage map, and we are leaving that gap open rather than substituting an unsourced characterisation for one.
• Belize’s median mobile speeds. The usual global-index source is not fetchable from our environment and we will not quote a Mbps figure from memory.
• Digi’s currency. Bare “$” throughout.
• Whether Digi’s eSIM can be bought and provisioned from abroad. Smart says yes for its Tour eSIM and requires a showroom visit for its ordinary one; Digi publishes nothing either way.
• Hotel and café wifi quality, and whether the cayes have fibre. Sourceable data: none located.
• Roaming rates from US, UK or Canadian carriers into Belize. That lives in each home carrier’s own tariff, not in any Belizean source.

How we researched this

Scope: this page reports source research, not an on-site test. We checked the booking systems, timetables and official sources named below on the date shown; calculations, unresolved disagreements and information we could not verify are labelled explicitly.

Digi’s prepaid ladder, bundle list, SIM prices and short codes were read from the raw markup of its own prepaid and product pages on 26 August 2026, not from a summary of them. Smart’s Tour SIM contents, eSIM rules, GST statement, top-up numbers and contact details came from its travel-plan, eSIM, mobile-data and prepay pages on the same day. The two international eSIM ladders and — critically — the Belizean network each one rides on came from Airalo’s and Holafly’s own Belize product pages, each of which is the primary source for its own product.

Conversions use the Central Bank of Belize’s fixed BZ$2 = US$1 peg, checked the same day. The 3.06× and 2.74× multiples are our own arithmetic; we state which of them depends on an unlabelled currency and which does not. Where Digi does not name its currency, we quote the figure and say so rather than assuming.

Last verified: 26 August 2026. Carrier pricing changes without notice.

Sources:

Figures on this page labelled our arithmetic are calculated by us from the sourced inputs cited below — comparisons, percentages, multiples, differences, per-night and per-person conversions, running totals and currency conversions. Every other figure is reproduced as its named source published it. Where an operator or authority publishes a per-person or per-night rate directly, that is their figure and it is attributed to them at the point it appears.

Sources

• Digi Belize, PrePaid — the full data ladder, social and all-in-one bundles, international bundle, top-up short codes, and the “largest network” self-claim
• Digi Belize, PrePaid SIM/eSIM and Value Services — SIM and eSIM prices, bonus credit, device-compatibility caution, the 10-eSIM limit
• Smart Belize, Travel / Tour SIM — both Explore plans, their BZD labelling, talk-time terms, where to buy the Tour Kit, contact details
• Smart Belize, eSIM FAQ — the showroom-activation requirement, the 60-day deactivation rule, and the one-device QR restriction
• Smart Belize, Mobile Data and Prepay — the GST-inclusive statements and the 638 / 3282 top-up numbers
• Airalo, Belize eSIM — all six Airalo packages and the Speednet (SMART) network
• Holafly, Belize eSIM — all six Holafly packages, the DigiCell network, and the no-local-number statement
• Government of Belize Press Office — the 12.5% GST rate used in the price-shape check above
• Central Bank of Belize — the fixed BZ$2 = US$1 peg used for every conversion here

Written by Estuardo Enriquez. This site is independent, carries no affiliate relationship with any carrier or eSIM vendor named here, and is not connected to any previous owner of this domain.