Germany eSIM
Data for Germany on Telekom and Vodafone, from $5.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and you install Orbislo once rather than once per trip.
- Networks
- Telekom and Vodafone
- Real speed
- 63 Mbps median, 15 Mbps for the slowest tenth2,690 travellers, rolling 90 days
- 5G
- yes, non standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for Germany
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $5.89 | $5.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $2.63 | $7.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $1.98 | $9.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $1.49 | $14.89 | |
| 20 GB | Never expires | $1.19 | $23.89 | |
| 50 GB | Never expires | $0.94 | $46.89 |
Every plan works the moment you land. Unused data returns to your wallet when the plan ends, and there is 100 MB of free rescue data on your account even at zero balance.
What 63 Mbps actually means in Germany
Travellers on Orbislo in Germany see a median download of 63 Mbps, measured across 2690 real sessions rather than a speed test we ran ourselves. That sits close to the Europe median of 71 Mbps, which makes Germany an unremarkable place to be connected, in the good sense.
The tenth percentile is 15 Mbps. That gap between the median and the floor is normal and it is where the frustration lives: the connection is quick most of the time and noticeably slow in the busiest few percent of moments, typically at transport hubs at peak hour.
That is enough for everything most travellers do: maps, messaging, video calls, streaming at high definition, and tethering a laptop for ordinary work. It is not enough to be casual about uploading a day of raw photographs.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in Germany on Telekom and Vodafone. Your phone is not tied to one of them. When the network you are attached to congests or drops, the profile moves you to the other, and it happens without a prompt and without you noticing anything except that the connection kept working.
This matters more than the headline speed. Almost every travel eSIM sold today resells a single upstream agreement per country, so when that one network has a bad hour you have a bad hour with it and your only option is to buy a second eSIM from somebody else. A profile with more than one network behind it can make a decision you never see.
5G in Germany: yes, non standalone. Worth knowing that 5G on a travel profile is normal rather than special, and that the tenth percentile above is the number that will decide how the trip feels, not the generation label in the status bar.
What data costs in Germany
A 500 MB plan for Germany starts at $0.32, which is $0.00 a gigabyte. That is the number to compare between providers, because a headline price attached to a different allowance tells you nothing.
The comparison most providers would rather you did not run is cost per gigabyte actually used. Independent surveys of travel data put the share of purchased data lost to expiry between 20 and 35 percent, because a plan that expires on day thirty deletes what you did not get through. Orbislo data has no expiry date, so the gigabyte you paid for is still there on the next trip. At the same headline price that is 25 to 40 percent more usable data, and in Germany it means the effective cost is nearer $0.00 a gigabyte than $0.00.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for Germany is to buy slightly less than you think you need and top up if you run out. Topping up takes about ten seconds and does not involve installing anything. Buying too much is the expensive mistake everywhere else and merely a neutral one here.
Landing in Germany
Install before you fly, on your home wifi. The profile downloads while you still have a connection you trust, then sits dormant until you land in Germany and it attaches to Telekom. Median time from tapping install to having service across all Orbislo orders is 41 seconds.
On landing there is one thing to check and it is the thing that goes wrong about sixty percent of the time people tell us they have no service: data roaming has to be switched on for the Orbislo line. It is off by default on both iOS and Android, and it has nothing to do with roaming charges here, because the plan is prepaid and there is no bill to run up. Turn it on for the Orbislo line and leave it off for your home line, and your home number keeps working for calls and bank codes without costing anything.
Coverage across Germany
The measurements above are aggregated across Germany, and a national median hides real variation. We publish separate figures for Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and Cologne, because the difference between a capital and a coastal town is usually larger than the difference between two countries.
Outside the cities, coverage follows the same pattern it does everywhere: the main roads and the tourist corridors are well served, and it thins in the mountains and on the water. No travel eSIM changes that, because it is the same physical network the local population uses. What a multi network profile changes is which of the available towers you get to use.
Getting a local SIM in Germany
German law makes a prepaid mobile provider verify the holder's name, address and date of birth against an identity document before the line is switched on, and a foreign passport or a residence title is expressly accepted alongside a German identity card.
What is restricted in Germany
- Emergency calls without a SIM: German rules forbid connecting an emergency call from a mobile phone with no SIM, so a handset with no line installed cannot reach 110 or 112. A visitor on a foreign line is covered: every German network must put 112 through for users of other networks, unless the SIM is rejected as invalid at log on.
- Police number 110 on a roaming line: German networks may carry a call to the police number 110 as a non-priority call and only for phones registered on that network, a latitude the rules do not give for 112. For a visitor on a roaming line, 112 is the number every German network must connect.
Worth knowing about Germany
- The German check does not have to happen at a counter. The Bundesnetzagentur decides which remote identification methods, including video based ones, a prepaid provider may use instead of showing the document in person.
- Germany splits its emergency numbers: 110 reaches the police, and 112 reaches the fire brigade and the ambulance service.
- Emergency calls in Germany are free and must connect even when a prepaid line has no credit left or the account is blocked for late payment. The obligation ends only once the line itself has been permanently cancelled.
- Any digits dialled in front of 110 or 112, other than a carrier selection code, stop the call from reaching an emergency centre in Germany, so the number has to be dialled on its own.
- Since 23 February 2023 German authorities have sent warnings by cell broadcast to every phone logged on to a cell in the affected area, with no app or sign up. The phone needs Android 11 or iOS 16.1 or later and must be on and out of flight mode. Messages are text only, up to 500 characters.
- Under German telecoms law, a prepaid provider must refund any remaining credit to a consumer who asks for it when the contract ends, so the unused balance on a local SIM does not have to be written off when a visitor goes home.
- A customer in Germany can dispute a deduction from prepaid credit within eight weeks. The provider must then itemise the connections behind the charge and run a technical check, unless the problem is shown not to be a technical fault.
- Each time a traveller on a mobile plan from another EU country enters Germany, the home operator must send a free SMS saying that 112 reaches the emergency services at no charge, with a link to a page listing other ways to contact them, such as those for callers with disabilities.
- EU roaming rules say a visitor from another EU country should not be held to an older network generation than at home where the German network offers a newer one, and home operators may not cut roaming speeds for commercial reasons. The rules run until 30 June 2032.
How Germany compares across Europe
- Speed rank
- 32 of 47 destinations we have measured in Europe
- Regional median
- 71 Mbps
- Consistency
- The slowest tenth still reaches 24 percent of the median
- Upstream networks
- 2, Telekom, Vodafone
- 5G
- Yes, non standalone
- Next fastest nearby
- Czechia, 64 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- Andorra, 61 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 4: Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne
- tenth percentile
- 15 Mbps
- Behind these figures
- 2690 travellers, rolling 90 days
