Prepaid SIM card in Croatia: calling and surfing abroad

Crystal clear water, hidden bays, great rocky coast and good food. That’s right, we’re talking about Croatia. A snorkeling tour in the vacation paradise is a dream for many, which they realize year after year. But even on vacation and while traveling, almost all of us are now dependent on the Internet. Be it for online job or researching about travel information. So that you can also make cheap calls and surf during your trip, I have compared some Croatian prepaid cards with each other and picked out the best offers for you in terms of price-performance ratio.

Croatian prepaid SIM cards at a glance

If EU roaming is included in your German mobile plan, it may make sense to continue using your German SIM card in Croatia. If you don’t have a tariff with EU roaming included, or if you don’t have a mobile phone tariff at all, you can get a Croatian prepaid card and still make calls and surf the Internet without draining your travel budget.

There are three major mobile operators in Croatia : “Hrvatski Telekom”, “A1” and “telemach”. These three providers have special offers in store for tourists, some of which are only available during the summer months. These packages are then not directly fixed for 30 days, but can be re-booked every ten days, for example. A good concept, which saves the consumer a few euros.

Hrvatski Telekom

Let’s start with“Hrvatski Telekom“. Telekom has the largest mobile network in Croatia and also the best network coverage. 4G is now said to be available almost everywhere. That’s it! Who wants to spend half an hour checking email?

Prepaid data SIM

• Price: 11,49 €
• Duration: 10 days
• Included data volume: unlimited
• Download speed: 2,000 Mbit/s
• Calls/ SMS: not available

Once the 10 days are over and your data plan expires, you can re-book the package and enjoy unlimited surfing for another 10 days. If there is enough credit on your SIM card, the option is automatically renewed. If there is not a whole week of vacation left after the tariff expires, you have the option to re-book daily. For €1.30, you can enjoy unlimited Internet access for 24 hours. Not bad at all! This way you can really adjust the rate to your vacation duration and not pay extra unnecessarily.

Disadvantage of Hrvatski Telekom:

Nevertheless, the package has one catch! Unfortunately, neither free minutes nor free SMS are included in the data rate. This means that phone calls to the home country can be relatively expensive. Fortunately, nowadays there is the possibility of Internet telephony. Some of the Simpa tariffs also include telephony or SMS messaging.

All detailed information can be found on the Hrvatski Telekom website. The site is available in Croatian and English.

A1

We continue with the network operator“A1“. The tourist rate preset on the SIM card is very similar to the Telekom rate. The price is also almost identical. For 10,00 € you get the prepaid card and the tariff that allows you to surf unlimited.

A1 Tourist 4G

• Price: 10,00 €
• Duration: 10 days
• Included data volume: unlimited
• Calls/SMS: 100 (within Croatia)

The provider’s website can be switched to several other languages, including German. So it’s super easy to find the information you’re looking for. You can find a FAQ at this domain.

Telemach

Finally, I come to “Telemach.” This is a subsidiary of the Swedish mobile communications provider of the same name, “Tele2”. Here again there is a tourist offer. For €9.95, you get the “SIM2GO for tourists” starter package.

Unlike “Hrvatski Telekom” and “A1”, this tariff is valid for a whole month, not just 7 days, and unfortunately does not offer unlimited data volume. For your money you get 10 + 40 GB data volume and 200 domestic free minutes / free SMS.

SIM2GO for tourists

Price: 9,95 €
Duration: 30 days
Included data volume: 10 + 40 GB
Calls/ SMS: 200 (within Croatia)

With this SIM card, the “NET2GO for tourists” rate can also be booked. Here you get 10 days unlimited data volume for 10,00 €.

Disadvantage of Telemach:

The website of the provider is completely in Croatian. Exclusively the“For Tourists” tab redirects you to an English section that only shows the rates presented above.

General information about Croatian SIM cards

It seems to be quite common among Croatian mobile operators not to offer the “normal” rates directly to travelers. Of course, there are other fares that may be slightly cheaper than the tourist options offered for us. But it is made very difficult for visitors to find them at all, since the websites, as already described, are mostly only available in Croatian or, with luck, in English. I think locally it might be a little easier to get a rate that Croatians also use and thus save some more money, but I can’t guarantee that. And whether the effort is worth it financially is questionable.

A sometimes relatively large hurdle is the registration of your SIM card. As is common in other countries, this is only possible in the local language. So the easiest way is to go directly to the store where you bought your SIM card and ask the employee nicely to activate your plan. In my experience, this is rarely a problem. If that’s still not an option for you, there are several blogs on the Internet that deal with the topic and explain step by step how to activate your SIM card.

Buy a Croatian prepaid SIM card

Usually, you only need a few euros to buy a “tourist SIM”. So far, the control of the identity card or passport is still refrained from throughout Croatia. Nevertheless, I would take the precaution of carrying an ID document with you if you want to buy a prepaid SIM card. You never know!

The Croatian SIM cards are available in the respective stores of the providers, in gas stations, supermarkets and kiosks. You can also get credit vouchers there, which you can use to conveniently top up your credit in order to extend your tariff or book a new one.

The network coverage

From my own experience, I can only say that I rarely had problems with too weak a signal and poor reception. Especially in big cities and around, I’ve always had 4G and a good connection. Even in the countryside, things have rarely been worse for the network. Nevertheless, it is of course possible that the signal strength drops in very remote areas.

Here you can find the network coverage map of each mobile operator:

• Hrvatski telekom
• A1
• telemach

Conclusion

It’s a little complicated! During my research, I clicked through several Croatian-only provider websites to get info. In the end, it’s exactly as I described before – you’ll find mostly the tourist offerings.

If I had to choose one of the presented options, I would go for “Hrvatski Telekom”, as it has the largest network and offers unlimited data volume with high speed. Still – if I extrapolate the price called for the weekly rate to a whole month, I come up with the equivalent of €44. Definitely a tourist offer at a tourist price!

I hope that with this article I could give you some overview about the SIM cards puzzle in Croatia.

Have a great vacation and good network all the time!

More information

The Netgear Nighthawk M1 is particularly recommended as a WLAN router, and there is also a more detailed article on it: Internet in the camper: Netgear Nighthawk M1 in long-term test

Those who do not necessarily care about the speed can also reach for these much cheaper devices:

Everything you need to know about mobile communications and the Internet while traveling can be found in the following articles:

• Internet in the motorhome and caravan – the guidebook
• Strengthen WLAN on the campsite
• Internet reception while camping – these routers ensure a stable connection while traveling
• Podcast: Internet on the move

Status (September 2023), as prices and conditions are constantly changing, we do not guarantee that the offers are still available.

Cover image (montage): © CamperStyle
Flag: © Ivsanmas – depositphotos.com
SIM cards: © serezniy – depositphotos.com

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