Claro in Costa Rica

The figures on this page come from SUTEL, Costa Rica’s telecoms regulator, from América Móvil’s annual report and from the trade press, each with its date.

Claro’s place among the three networks

SUTEL’s statistics for 2025 split Costa Rica’s 7.12 million mobile subscriptions three ways: Liberty 40.2%, Kölbi 38.1% and Claro 21.8%. Claro’s share was 21% in 2021 and 24% in 2022. Number porting has run in its favour: in 2025 Claro gained 76,339 more numbers from the other operators than it lost to them, after a net gain of 86,898 in 2024.

How fast is Claro’s 4G?

Claro launched LTE in Costa Rica in March 2014, starting with Uruca, Heredia, Escazú and Santa Ana, and expected to cover the whole country within two years. In SUTEL’s 2025 road tests its 4G averaged 55.1 Mbps down nationally. By province the average ran from 50.4 Mbps in San José to 63.1 Mbps in Cartago, with 57.1 Mbps in Guanacaste, 59.0 Mbps in Puntarenas and 61.4 Mbps in Limón. SUTEL also checked the 4G coverage Claro publishes against its own measurements: they agreed in 84.8% of cases, under the 90% the rules set. Claro’s 3G averaged 5.3 Mbps, and its 3G coverage agreed in 88.3% of cases.

Claro’s 5G

In the auction of 23 January 2025 Claro won frequencies in the 700 MHz, 2.3 GHz, 3.5 GHz, 26 GHz and 28 GHz bands. It paid USD 16.259 million in cash and settles the rest of the price by building network. Claro switched on commercial 5G on 17 September 2025, reaching more than 1.3 million people at launch, and its prepaid and postpaid customers could use it without changing plans. SUTEL tested 5G for the first time between 5 January and 30 June 2026, on drives through the seven provinces: Claro’s 5G averaged 186.6 Mbps down and 98.0 Mbps up, with a local delay of 25.1 milliseconds. Liberty’s 5G answered a little quicker in those tests, while Claro’s moved data faster in both directions. SUTEL adds that 5G networks are still at an early stage of deployment.

How far Claro reaches

América Móvil, Claro’s parent group, reports its coverage as a share of each country’s population. On 31 December 2025 it put Claro’s LTE coverage in Costa Rica at 98.66% and its 5G coverage at 35.27%. The group runs Costa Rica within its Central America segment, together with El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, and Costa Rica was its second market in Central America with 5G, after Guatemala.

Phones brought from abroad

SUTEL’s phone validation platform, fully running since 2023, stops phones reported stolen, irregular or tampered with from connecting to Costa Rica’s mobile networks. Anyone in the country can look up a phone’s IMEI on it. The number of phones blocked fell by 37.7% from 2024 to 2025.

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