Germany data prices, and the network claim we removed

Most European visitors should not buy at all

Germany is in the EU, so an EU or EEA phone plan roams here on your home allowance at no extra charge. Given how many visitors arrive from neighbouring countries, that is most of the people reading a page like this. Check your operator's fair-use roaming cap, which is the only ceiling likely to matter, and spend nothing.

The rest of this is for travellers from the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and further afield, who have to buy German data outright.

The cheapest gigabyte is in the largest plan

Read the whole ladder before deciding. Nomad's 50 GB for 30 days is $32 — $0.64 a gigabyte, read off Nomad's own site on 17 August 2026, and the cheapest rate we hold for the country. Airalo's 50 GB at a verified $36 is second. Everything smaller is a premium paid for buying less.

Verified prices were read from the provider's own site, Airalo's on 13 August 2026, Saily's on 16 August and Nomad's on 18 August. Indicative ones come from our plan data, have not been re-checked, and should be confirmed at the checkout.

Nomad's German rows were checked against its own site for the first time on 17 August 2026, and the figures this page carried were too high. The 20 GB month is $21 rather than $28, and Nomad also sells a 50 GB month at $32 that we were not carrying at all — which is now the cheapest gigabyte in the country, a place this page previously gave to Airalo.

Saily's German rows were checked against its own site for the first time on 16 August 2026, and three of the four we already published were wrong. The 10 GB month is $16.99 rather than $18.99, the 5 GB month is $10.99 rather than $11.99, and the 1 GB week is $4.49 rather than $3.99. A 20 GB month at $22.99 exists that we were not carrying at all.

Ten gigabytes is the busiest tier in Germany — five sellers we track cluster between $14 and $19 for the same allowance over the same month, and the two cheapest are two dollars apart. Five dollars across the whole tier is not worth an evening of research; take the cheapest that is live when you look.

The five-gigabyte tier is equally crowded and equally flat, between $10 and $12, with the cheapest 30-day row in the country now Nomad's rather than Saily's or Airalo's. The bottom is where it stops being flat: a single gigabyte for a week at $4.49 is more than six times the country's floor rate. If you are here for three days, a verified 3 GB for three days at $7.50 buys three times the data of the cheapest single gigabyte for less than twice the money, which is the better side of that trade.

Unlimited, and the sum that decides it

Airalo, Nomad and Holafly all sell unlimited German plans, and unusually the verified prices are the lower ones. Airalo's verified unlimited runs $11 for three days, $18 for five, $24 for seven and $59 for 30. Holafly's verified range is $20.50 for five, $36.50 for ten and $73.90 for 30. Holafly sells six windows and no others — 3, 5, 7, 10, 15 and 30 days — so the 1-day plan this page used to list does not exist.

The seven-day comparison is the useful one. Twenty-four dollars buys a week of unlimited data — or $23 from Nomad, which sells unlimited by duration too, at a verified $11, $18, $23 and $30 for three, five, seven and ten days. Against that, $21 buys 20 GB with a month of validity. Twenty gigabytes is far more than a week of maps, messaging and video calls uses, and it does not expire on day eight. Unlimited is worth the money on a layover, or when you genuinely cannot predict usage; it is not a default.

Buying a German SIM in person

Frankfurt Airport has Vodafone, O2 and Telekom shops in Arrivals B, open 06:00 to 22:00, and Munich Airport is similarly served. In the cities, Telekom, Vodafone and O2 stores are everywhere. A tourist data package at an airport counter runs about $15 in our data.

A passport is required for registration, so expect a form rather than a quick purchase. Fifteen dollars against a verified 10 GB eSIM at $14 with no queue is close enough that the local SIM only makes sense if you want a German number or your phone will not take an eSIM. We do not hold the data allowance on the counter packs, so we cannot settle it for you — ask before you pay.

Networks, and a claim this page used to make

Deutsche Telekom has the best rural and motorway coverage in Germany, the fastest average speeds at around 68.9 Mbps, and 5G availability near 98%. That is a fact about the operator, and it is a good reason to ask for Telekom by name at a shop counter.

It is not a fact about travel eSIMs, and this page previously treated it as one. An earlier version of this page told readers that Airalo's German plans ran on Telekom. Nothing in our data supports that: Airalo does not publish a host network for any country, and its German plans are sold as Hallo! Mobil, which is a product name rather than a carrier. Our data does show Telekom against some eSIM Go rows, and that came from this site's own generated text rather than from eSIM Go, which sells wholesale to resellers and has no consumer page on which it could name a carrier — nor any price a traveller can pay. Saily, Nomad, Holafly and eSIMCard publish nothing at all — earlier versions of this page put Saily and Nomad on Telekom and Holafly on Telekom and Vodafone, and those were errors in our data rather than claims any of them make.

Coverage gaps are worth knowing because no plan fixes them: rural East Germany across Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, some Bavarian Alpine areas, the tunnel sections of the Rhine Gorge railway, minor roads on Rügen and Usedom, and the deeper Black Forest. Emergency calls work on any German network without an active plan.

Full provider-by-provider plan lists are on the Germany hub.