We are taking our first trip to Germany, 22 nights in May. To use our unlocked cell phone to call both German cell phone numbers and home to the US is there a phone company that sells sim cards with favorable rates for both local and international? Is a better choice a local phone to buy that we can add minutes at a tabac like the Movistar phone we bought for use in Spain?

I haven't found any recent information on this forum for Germany.

We will have our T-mobile USA phones if nothing else but I think the rates are about $1.50 per minute. We also have an ekit rechargeable phone card but the calls to a German cell phone is about 88 cents per minute plus a 60 cent service fee per call and calls are rounded up to the minute.

Thanks for any help you can give me. Deborah

Hi Deborah,

Lebara has extremely good rates for calling locally and U.S. I am not sure how widespread they are but usually gas stations have them, as do those calling / internet shops. They would be my first preference. Other cheap providers are Fonic (available in Drogerien, i.e. drugstores), or many supermakets have their own SIMs (such as Penny Markt, Aldi). They are all pretty cheap. Avoid the big providers like Vodaphone or T-Mobile. A problem with some providers is that you need a fixed address when you first activate the SIM, certainly true of the big guys; Tchibo is another which is borderline OK - cheapish but requires an address. I have a Tchibo SIM which at the time I bought it didn't need a fixed address, but then when I subsequently went into a Tchibo shop the following year to get another SIM, I was told you did need one. A minor advantage of the Tchibo SIMs is that they retain any call credits for about 6 yrs.
You probably don't need to buy a phone if you have a GSM phone or, in the States, an unlocked quad band phone.

Lavandula

lavandula, I can whip up a great touring plan for just about any travels we do but where I usually come up with assorted problems is with my cell phone usage

I tried to buy Labara sim cards when in France last September beginning at the Paris airport and train station, then tried in LeMans and Angers when I finally gave up. I could not find them anywhere. I thought they were available as a sim but I was only offered Labara phone cards.

I'll start my search regarding Labara online now, maybe there is some way I can get one sent to me in the US before we leave. I remember trying to get one last year without success for our trip to France.

Thanks for suggesting different companies that might work for Germany. Deborah

Lebara is definitely available as a SIM, but I pretty much had the feeling that they aren't everywhere. Your best bet might be one of the others I suggest - every Drogerie has a couple of options (pretty much any town will have several Drogerien) and every town in Germany should have a Tchibo shop. They improbably sell coffee (i.e beans, etc) as their main product, with a selection of other products according to a different theme every week. They will also sell handsets and internet sticks, at reasonably good prices. Other shops you might get a SIM card are Saturn or MediaMarkt, which are electronic goods shops, usually on the outskirts of towns in shopping centres - guaranteed you will get cheap SIMs and/or handsets there.

Lavandula

Lebara SIMs are sold from vending machines in Munich subway stations at the mezzanin level. Cash or debit, cost is 15€ with a calling credit of 10€

You can also order Lebara SIMs via the internet - get one sent to your German hotel:

https://www.lebara.de/kostenlose-sim?isoCode=en_GB

Lavandula