Greece eSIM
Data for Greece on Cosmote and Vodafone, from $5.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and you install Orbislo once rather than once per trip.
- Networks
- Cosmote and Vodafone
- Real speed
- 69 Mbps median, 18 Mbps for the slowest tenth1,398 travellers, rolling 90 days
- 5G
- yes, non standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for Greece
| 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 | $1.39 | $27.89 | |
| 50 GB | Never expires | $1.14 | $56.89 |
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 69 Mbps actually means in Greece
Travellers on Orbislo in Greece see a median download of 69 Mbps, measured across 1398 real sessions rather than a speed test we ran ourselves. That sits close to the Europe median of 71 Mbps, which makes Greece an unremarkable place to be connected, in the good sense.
The tenth percentile is 18 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 Greece on Cosmote 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 Greece: 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 Greece
A 100 MB plan for Greece starts at $0.30, 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 Greece it means the effective cost is nearer $0.00 a gigabyte than $0.00.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for Greece 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 Greece
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 Greece and it attaches to Cosmote. 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 Greece
The measurements above are aggregated across Greece, and a national median hides real variation. We publish separate figures for Athens, Santorini, Mykonos and Crete, 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 Greece
A Greek line is registered against a photocopy of an identity card or passport, and the subscriber signs a solemn declaration addressed to the regulator swearing the details are accurate.
What is restricted in Greece
- Anonymous prepaid SIMs: Anonymous prepaid cards were outlawed in 2009. Operators had to cut off every unregistered prepaid line from 30 July 2010, even where the owner had already paid for airtime, and a line can only be switched back on once the holder's identity details are declared.
- Calls showing a Greek landline number from abroad: Under a December 2025 decision of the regulator EETT, operators must block incoming calls from abroad that display a Greek landline number beginning +302, a measure aimed at caller ID fraud. Calls forwarded by a user who is abroad still get through, but with the caller's number hidden.
Worth knowing about Greece
- Greece is inside the European Union roam like at home area, so a plan from another EU country is billed at its domestic rates here, subject to the fair use test an operator may apply over a four month window.
- For a private individual the registration record holds full name, father's name, place and date of birth, a photocopy of an identity card or passport, and a tax number where one exists. A foreign national may instead present an equivalent document such as a Greek residence permit.
- No Greek mobile line, prepaid or contract, may be activated before the subscriber supplies these identity details. The same check applies when a number is ported from one Greek operator to another.
- If someone other than the subscriber will use the line, the subscriber must name that user in the signed declaration. Handing a SIM to a new owner needs a declaration signed by both people, otherwise the original subscriber stays legally responsible for the line.
- A subscriber whose phone or SIM is lost or stolen must tell the operator without delay, and the operator is then obliged to cut service on that line at once.
- Operators delete a subscriber's identity record one year after the contract ends or the service stops for any reason. After that, the same person must register again with full details before the line can be reactivated.
- In border areas a phone with roaming switched on can attach to a neighbouring country's network, which then shows on the screen. The regulator advises switching network selection from automatic to manual and choosing the intended network, to avoid charges from the foreign one.
- Greece's 112 emergency number can be called free from a mobile phone even without a SIM card, from a locked handset's start screen, and by SMS or MMS. It runs around the clock and connects police, fire service, ambulance and coastguard.
- 112 operators in Greece answer in Greek, English and French. If the caller's own network has no signal, the call is carried by any other mobile network covering the area, including through international roaming.
- A 112 call or text from an Android phone on version 4.1 or later, or an iPhone on iOS 11.3 or later, sends the handset's location automatically within seconds. Older software gives only an approximate position based on the serving mast.
- Warnings about wildfires, storms, snow, earthquakes and industrial accidents go out from 112 as Cell Broadcast messages with a distinctive alarm sound on updated smartphones. Phones sold in Greece since December 2019 have this on by default, so a visitor should check emergency alerts are enabled in the phone's settings.
- Anyone without a smartphone can register with the 112 service to get the same alerts by SMS, email or automated voice call for a chosen area. Every alert broadcast is also posted on the official 112 accounts on Facebook and X.
How Greece compares across Europe
- Speed rank
- 26 of 47 destinations we have measured in Europe
- Regional median
- 71 Mbps
- Consistency
- The slowest tenth still reaches 26 percent of the median
- Upstream networks
- 2, Cosmote, Vodafone
- 5G
- Yes, non standalone
- Next fastest nearby
- Malta, 71 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- Poland, 68 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 4: Athens, Santorini, Mykonos, Crete
- tenth percentile
- 18 Mbps
- Behind these figures
- 1398 travellers, rolling 90 days
