Prague eSIM — plans from ₹299.00

Vaclav Havel Airport (PRG) has one thing visitors consistently get wrong: there is no metro station at the terminal. You take bus 119 to Nadrazi Veleslavin on metro line A, or the Airport Express coach to the main railway station, or a car. Mobile operator shops in the arrivals hall sell Czech prepaid SIMs and they are perfectly good, but the queue and the activation eat exactly the window in which the bus you wanted leaves.

Bolt and Uber both operate in Prague, and the local Liftago app is widely used too, all of them collecting from marked bays outside. Data matters at that point because the ticketing for bus 119 works differently from a taxi, and because Prague's Old Town addresses use two numbering systems on the same building. An eSIM installed at home over Wi-Fi means none of this is urgent: it activates when your phone registers on a Czech network after landing, and the validity period begins only at that first connection.

O2 Czech Republic, T-Mobile and Vodafone build the networks, and your plan connects to a partner and holds the strongest signal. Prague has 5G across the Old Town, Nove Mesto, Vinohrady, Karlin, Smichov and the airport road, with 4G everywhere else, including the steep lanes below the Castle where line of sight is broken. Metro lines A, B and C carry signal in stations and running tunnels, which is worth knowing on a network where the escalators alone can take a minute. Day trips are well covered: Kutna Hora, Karlstejn, Terezin and the Karlovy Vary road all hold 4G, while the sandstone gorges of Bohemian Switzerland lose signal in the deeper ravines.

Download an offline map of the centre, because Prague buildings carry both a descriptive number and a street number and routing apps sometimes pick the wrong one, which is how visitors end up in the wrong courtyard. Keep data for Bolt, Liftago, the PID Litacka transport app and timed entry tickets at the Castle and the Jewish Quarter. Cafe and pub Wi-Fi is common but sluggish in the tourist core, hotel Wi-Fi is good, and a hotspot runs a laptop from Karlin or Vinohrady. Two local details: crowds around Charles Bridge make phone-in-hand navigation a pickpocket risk, and winter here is cold enough to shorten battery life. Wider Europe and full Czech Republic eSIM details are on the destination page.