Buying a German SIM: airports, high street, supermarkets

Arrivals, airport by airport

Frankfurt (FRA). Vodafone Germany and O2 / Telefonica in arrivals. Peak queue around 15 minutes. Telekom, Vodafone and O2 shops sit in Arrivals B, open 06:00 to 22:00 — the longest hours of the three airports here, and the reason FRA is the easiest German airport to sort a SIM at if you land late.

Munich (MUC). Vodafone and Telekom via the airport shops. Peak queue around 12 minutes.

Berlin Brandenburg (BER). Multiple carriers through airport retail. Peak queue around 10 minutes.

Fifteen minutes at Frankfurt is the worst of it, which by international standards is nothing. The case against the airport counter in Germany is not the wait.

The passport rule is not optional

Germany requires passport or ID for prepaid SIM registration. This is enforced, and it applies everywhere — airport counter, high-street store, supermarket shelf. An unregistered SIM does not carry data.

Practically this is a minor friction on arrival, when your passport is in your hand anyway. It becomes a real annoyance later, if you decide on day three that you want a local number and have left the passport in the hotel safe.

There is no ID step when buying a travel eSIM.

In the cities

Telekom, Vodafone and O2 all run stores in every German city, and staff will register and configure the SIM for you on the spot. This is the best experience of the three routes if you want a German number and someone to set it up.

REWE and Edeka supermarkets also sell prepaid starter packs off the shelf. They are cheap and convenient, but you are on your own for setup and registration.

Our country data puts a typical German airport SIM at around $15.

WiFi will hold you over

City WiFi in Germany is good — airports, cafes, hotels all reliable. Deutsche Bahn offers WiFi on ICE high-speed trains, though the quality varies considerably by route and by how full the carriage is. Treat DB WiFi as good enough for messaging and unreliable for anything else.

The eSIM route, with prices

Install before departure, activate on landing, no queue and no ID at purchase.

Airalo's rows were verified against its own site on 13 August 2026, Saily's against its own site on 16 August and Nomad's against its own site on 18 August; every row is now a checked price. The cheapest way into the country is Airalo's $4.00 for a single gigabyte over three days, and the cheapest 30-day plan at 5GB is Nomad's $10.00. Against a $15 airport SIM, 10GB for a month at $14 from Nomad undercuts the counter outright and is considerably better on convenience — no queue, no registration, working before you reach passport control.

Your phone has to support eSIM, which means an iPhone XS or later and most recent Android flagships. The list is at eSIM compatible phones.

When to buy local anyway

Two cases. If you need a German phone number — for a car hire desk, a delivery, a booking that will call you — buy in a city store, not at the airport. And if you are heading somewhere rural, Telekom's coverage is meaningfully better than everyone else's: widest rural footprint, best highway and railway coverage, and some Autobahn stretches nobody else reaches. A local Telekom SIM buys you that directly.

For everything else — a few days in Berlin, a week between cities — buy the eSIM before you fly. Full plan pricing is on our Germany hub.