The short answer: buy a Bulgaria eSIM for its 4G, not for its 5G. Where 5G reaches you it is genuinely elite — Opensignal measured A1 at an average 5G download of 343.9 Mbps in its January 2026 Bulgaria report — but the European Commission’s own country report puts Bulgaria’s national 5G coverage at 81.3% against an EU average of 94.3%, and at just 38.25% in sparsely populated areas against an EU average of 79.57%. Even the operator that wins Opensignal’s Time on 5G award has its 5G-equipped users connected to 5G only 26.3% of the time. So the thing that decides whether your phone works between Sofia and a village guesthouse is 4G, and — unusually for the EU in 2026 — a 3G layer that nobody has finished switching off.
What you’ll learn on this page: the seven things that actually decide your week in Bulgaria — (1) why the country’s 5G is world-class and its rural 5G is among the thinnest in the EU, with the Commission’s own figures; (2) how A1, Vivacom and Yettel compare on Opensignal’s January 2026 measurements, and which award means what for a traveler; (3) why 3G is still on here when it is gone almost everywhere else in the EU, and what that means for an older handset; (4) what Bulgarian law requires when you buy a local prepaid SIM, and how a travel eSIM sits outside that structure without being “anonymous”; (5) entry for a U.S. passport — Schengen 90/180, the biometric Entry/Exit System, and where ETIAS actually stands; (6) the money change most U.S.-facing guides have not caught up with, plus the one button to press at a card terminal; and (7) what a Bulgaria eSIM costs — with provenance on every figure, the daily fair-use caps all three providers apply to their “unlimited” plans, and the pricing quirk that makes Saily’s 35-country plan the better buy at 20 days and up.
Bulgaria is the country where my usual advice inverts. Most places, I tell people to ignore the 5G marketing and buy on price. Here the 5G marketing is, for once, not marketing — the speeds are real — and it is still the wrong thing to buy on, because the network’s problem is not how fast it goes but where it goes. In the networks I test, that shape of problem is the one travelers actually feel: the headline number is set in the capital, and the trip happens somewhere else.
- Rule #1 for Bulgaria: buy for the 4G footprint, not the 5G headline
- The 5G paradox, in the European Commission’s own numbers
- A1, Vivacom, Yettel: what Opensignal actually measured
- 3G is still running in Bulgaria — and that changes the device advice
- A Bulgarian prepaid SIM needs your passport. A travel eSIM is a different structure.
- Entry, the advisory, the money change, and getting around
- What a Bulgaria eSIM costs in 2026, and the one quirk worth knowing
- FAQ
- References
Rule #1 for Bulgaria: buy for the 4G footprint, not the 5G headline
Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links, from which Cairnroam may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Prices and regulatory details are as of September 2026, compiled from the European Commission’s Digital Decade country report for Bulgaria, Opensignal’s January 2026 Bulgaria report, Bulgaria’s Electronic Communications Act, the operators’ own pages, Bulgaria’s official euro-changeover portal, the U.S. Department of State and EUR-Lex. Where a price came from an aggregator rather than the seller, I say so in the table. — Mara Whitlock
Every travel eSIM sold for Bulgaria is a roaming product riding one or more of the same three national networks. That means no eSIM brand can give you coverage that the underlying operator does not have. What a good plan can do is give you a data allowance that does not panic when you drop from 5G to 4G for two hours, and a price that does not punish you for buying a bigger bucket than you need.
Concretely, for a one-week city trip: a 3 GB or 5 GB 30-day plan is plenty. For two weeks with day trips out of Sofia or Plovdiv: 10 GB. For anything longer, read the unlimited section below before you buy, because Bulgaria has a pricing quirk that makes the obvious choice the wrong one.
The 5G paradox, in the European Commission’s own numbers
The cleanest source here is not a speed-test app but the Commission itself. The Bulgaria 2025 Digital Decade Country Report, published on 16 June 2025 for data year 2024, measures coverage rather than speed, and it tells a story that no eSIM comparison site seems to have read.
| Indicator (2024 data) | Bulgaria | EU average |
|---|---|---|
| Overall 5G coverage | 81.3% | 94.3% |
| 5G coverage, sparsely populated areas | 38.25% | 79.57% |
| 5G coverage in the 3.4–3.8 GHz band | 81.33% | 67.72% |
| Fibre to the premises (FTTP) | 90.4% | 69.2% |
| FTTP, sparsely populated areas | 79.1% | 58.8% |
| Share of SIM cards that are 5G | 24.41% | 35.56% |
Read the first two rows together and the shape of the country appears. Bulgaria is below the EU average on overall 5G coverage, and its rural 5G is less than half the EU rural average. At the same time it is well above the EU average on fibre, including rural fibre — 79.1% of sparsely populated areas have fibre to the premises against an EU average of 58.8%. Bulgaria wired the ground faster than it wired the air.
Two more figures from the same report are worth carrying with you. Bulgaria has more than 4,400 5G base stations, and it is behind its own national trajectory: the 81.3% national figure was supposed to be 91.0% by 2024, with 100% targeted for 2028. Be careful with the one comparison that flatters the country, because I have seen it misquoted: Bulgaria beats the EU average on fibre, on very-high-capacity fixed networks, on 5G in the 3.4–3.8 GHz band specifically, and on the share of pioneer-band spectrum assigned. It does not beat the EU average on 5G coverage overall.
The practical translation: pick your eSIM assuming 4G, and check your specific route on an operator’s own map before you commit to a remote base. Vivacom publishes an interactive coverage map, and the other two do the same. I am not going to name mountain valleys or coastal stretches as dead zones, because no regulator or carrier source supports a list like that, and every article that prints one is guessing.
A1, Vivacom, Yettel: what Opensignal actually measured
Bulgaria has three mobile network operators: A1 Bulgaria (A1 Telekom Austria Group), Yettel Bulgaria (whose radio network is run by the separate infrastructure company CETIN Bulgaria), and Vivacom (United Group). Opensignal’s Bulgaria Mobile Network Experience Report of January 2026, built from data collected between 1 October and 29 December 2025, is the most recent independent measurement I would put my name next to.
| Metric | A1 | Vivacom | Yettel |
|---|---|---|---|
| Download Speed Experience (Mbps) | 113.9 | 96.4 | 89.6 |
| Upload Speed Experience (Mbps) | 18.1 | 16.7 | 17.5 |
| 5G Download Speed (Mbps) | 343.9 | 296.7 | 271.7 |
| 5G Upload Speed (Mbps) | 35.8 | 30.1 | 31.1 |
| Video Experience (0–100) | 73.3 | 70.1 | 72.3 |
| Games Experience (0–100) | 80.2 | 75.7 | 79.9 |
| Coverage Experience (0–10) | 7.1 | 7.5 | 7.1 |
| 5G Coverage Experience (0–10) | 3.3 | 3.8 | 3.5 |
The awards in the same report split three ways, and they split along exactly the line that matters to a traveler. A1 takes Consistent Quality (87.7%) and three of the four speed awards. Worth being precise about that count: A1 posts the highest figure in all four speed metrics in the table above and wins three of them outright; Upload Speed Experience is a joint award shared with Yettel (18.1 against 17.5 Mbps). Yettel takes Time on Network (99.6%), 5G Availability (86%) and Reliability Experience (957 out of 1,000). Vivacom takes Coverage Experience, 5G Coverage Experience and — the number I keep coming back to — Time on 5G at 26.3%. Those last two percentages are not in conflict, and they get misread constantly. Opensignal measures both over the same population — users who have a 5G device and a 5G plan — so the difference is not the denominator but what is being counted. 5G Availability asks what share of the time those users could get a 5G connection; Time on 5G asks what share of the time they were actually on one. Available is not the same as in use.
Sit with that last one. On the network that leads the country in time spent on 5G, a user who already has a 5G phone and a 5G plan is actually connected to 5G roughly a quarter of the time — and only 24.41% of Bulgarian SIM cards are 5G in the first place. Your phone will show a 5G icon far less often than the 343.9 Mbps figure suggests, and the rest of the time you are on 4G. I am not going to tell you how fast that 4G is, because this report does not say: the 89.6–113.9 Mbps figures in the table are Opensignal’s Download Speed Experience, a blend of everything an operator runs — 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G — weighted by the time users spend on each, and pulled upward by the 5G minority. Opensignal publishes a separate 4G Download Speed metric, and it is not on the Bulgaria page I am citing. So take the blended number for what it is, and note that the argument of this page does not rest on it: what decides your week is where the network reaches, not how many megabits it does when it reaches you. Opensignal also notes Bulgarian operators invested over €327 million, and that A1 and Yettel each took a 5G Global Leader recognition in the small-land-area group, so this is not a story about underinvestment. It is a story about geography.
There is a gap here I should close rather than paper over. This page argues that you should choose for the 4G footprint — and then, further down, names three eSIM providers without telling you which of A1, Vivacom or Yettel any of them actually attaches to. Two of the three do publish it. eSIM4Travel names the networks in the product itself — eSIMDB lists its plan as “Bulgaria (MobilTel, Telenor, Vivacom)” — and Nomad tags its Bulgaria plans on eSIMDB with Vivacom and Yettel (A1 shows up on Nomad’s regional Europe and Global plans, not on its Bulgaria-only ones). Saily does not disclose its partner at all. Even where it is published, none of them promises which of the three you will attach to at a given moment, so the thing worth checking is still the operators’ own coverage maps, linked above, against the towns you will actually sleep in. You do not get to choose your host network with most travel eSIMs, and I would not pick one on the basis of this table anyway. Read it instead as a floor: whichever of the three you land on, the speeds are fine. The variable is the map, not the meter.
3G is still running in Bulgaria — and that changes the device advice
In most of the EU, 3G is a museum piece. In Bulgaria it is still carrying traffic, and the operators say so themselves. Bulgarian trade outlet TechTrends put the question to all three on 17 January 2025: A1 had begun a regional 3G shutdown in December 2024, starting with the Varna, Kyustendil and Pernik regions, and declined to fix a national end date. Yettel said it expected technological readiness for a full 3G shutdown in 2027 — the Bulgarian is “през 2027 г.”. Vivacom would not commit at all, expecting 3G traffic to migrate to 4G within five years with no near-term shutdown plan. All three said they intend to keep 2G running for eCall and 112, machine-to-machine devices and payment terminals. TechTrends revisited it on 24 September 2025 and still found no clarity on when 3G will fully cease.
What that means for you depends on your handset. If your phone is recent, nothing: you will sit on 4G and 5G and never notice. If you are traveling with an older device that does not do voice over LTE, Bulgaria is one of the last EU countries where it can still fall back to 3G for calls in many places — but that cushion is being withdrawn region by region, with no published schedule, so do not plan a trip around it. And since essentially every travel eSIM sold for Bulgaria is data-only by default, voice normally goes over WhatsApp or FaceTime anyway and the whole question becomes moot. Saily, for instance, sells a phone number, minutes and SMS as separate add-on plans rather than bundling them.
On bands, I will keep this short, because band lists are where eSIM articles go to pad their word count. Bulgaria runs standard European spectrum: LTE on B1, B3 and B8 with B20 and B28 coming from the 700/800 MHz licences all three operators hold, and 5G principally on n78 with n7 in Yettel’s mix. A U.S.-market phone that supports B1/B3/B8/B20/B28 and n78 should connect without drama. The two things that genuinely break trips are a carrier-locked handset and a phone with no eSIM support. Check those two before you check anything else.
A Bulgarian prepaid SIM needs your passport. A travel eSIM is a different structure.
Bulgaria does have SIM registration, by statute, and I want to state that plainly because a lot of English-language pages say it does not. Under § 80(1) of the 2009 amending act to the Electronic Communications Act, as published in English by Bulgaria’s Ministry of Transport and Communications, undertakings providing electronic communications networks or services have been obliged since 1 January 2010 to “collect data necessary to identify a user of pre-paid services.” Article 251i(5)(2) spells out what gets recorded for prepaid mobile: the date and time of initial activation, a location label identifying the cell the service was activated from, and the end-user identification.
There is also a limit that surprises people. Article 138d, introduced through the transitional provisions of Bulgaria’s Counter-Terrorism Act, says operators may not register and activate more than 10 prepaid voice numbers in the name of one end user. That is a Bulgaria-specific measure, not an EU rule, and it is a fair signal of how the country treats anonymous prepaid lines.
At the counter this is undramatic. Vivacom’s own customer-support FAQ, which I checked on 2026-09-25, tells customers they will need to present a valid identity document — an ID card or a passport. It does not distinguish prepaid from postpaid, or Bulgarians from foreigners. Bring your passport and expect it to be looked at.
Now the part I want to phrase precisely, because it is routinely oversold. Those obligations bind undertakings that provide electronic communications networks or services in Bulgaria. A travel eSIM profile is issued by a provider based outside Bulgaria, and it reaches you here as inbound roaming on A1, Vivacom or Yettel radio. No Bulgarian subscriber account is opened in your name, so the counter step described above is not part of your day. That is a consequence of how the account is structured — it is not an exemption written into Bulgarian law for tourists, and it is emphatically not anonymity. Your identity sits with your eSIM provider under its own jurisdiction’s rules, and lawful-access arrangements exist there too.
Entry, the advisory, the money change, and getting around
The U.S. Department of State rates Bulgaria Level 1 — Exercise Normal Precautions, an advisory issued on 2025-10-09. That is the lowest of the four levels and it is the same rating the department gives most of Western Europe.
Bulgaria is now a full Schengen member: air and sea internal border controls came off on 31 March 2024, and land border controls came off on 1 January 2025. U.S. passport holders travel visa-free in the Schengen area for up to 90 days in any 180-day period, and days spent in Bulgaria now count against that shared allowance rather than against a separate Bulgarian one — which matters if you are stringing several European countries together.
Two border systems are in motion. The biometric Entry/Exit System began a progressive Schengen-wide rollout on 12 October 2025 and, per DG HOME’s Entry/Exit System page, reached full operation on 10 April 2026, so expect fingerprints and a facial image the first time you cross an external Schengen border. Bulgaria’s land borders with Serbia, Türkiye and North Macedonia are external Schengen borders, so a day trip toward Istanbul puts you through EES. ETIAS — the travel authorisation Americans will eventually need before flying — has no announced start date. The Commission’s official ETIAS page gives none and says travellers will get several months’ notice before it applies, so open that page once while you are booking and you will know exactly where it stands for your dates.
Then the money, which is where most U.S.-facing Bulgaria content is now simply wrong. Bulgaria is a euro country. It became the 21st member of the euro area on 1 January 2026, at a fixed conversion rate of 1 euro to 1.95583 lev; the European Central Bank’s changeover pages document the switch, and the Council took the final decisions on 8 July 2025. Lev and euro circulated together for one month, and since 1 February 2026 the euro has been the sole legal tender. Mandatory dual price display — the period when shops had to show both currencies — ran to 8 August 2026 and has ended, per the dated announcement on Bulgaria’s official euro portal. From 9 August traders may still show a lev equivalent voluntarily, for information only. If a guide tells you to budget in lev or to expect two prices on every tag, it was written before this year. One footnote for anyone with leftover leva in a drawer from an older trip: the Bulgarian National Bank exchanges lev banknotes and coins for euro free of charge, in unlimited quantity, with no deadline.
Which brings up the one habit worth drilling before you go: dynamic currency conversion. At a card terminal or an ATM you will be offered the choice of being billed in dollars instead of euros. Decline it, every time, and choose EUR. The house rate is the merchant’s, not your bank’s, and it is reliably worse. The EU gives you a concrete thing to look for here: Regulation (EU) 2019/518 requires the total currency-conversion cost to be shown as a percentage mark-up over the latest European Central Bank reference rate before you confirm. If the screen shows you a mark-up percentage, that is the number to read, and that is your cue to hit “charge me in EUR.”
Getting around: Uber is not here, Bolt is
This one catches Americans out more than anything else on the page. Uber does not operate in Bulgaria. The Commission for Protection of Competition fined two Uber entities a total of BGN 200,000 in July 2015, the Supreme Administrative Court upheld the fine on 28 September 2015, and Uber suspended service in the country in October 2015. It has not come back. Open the app in Sofia and nothing happens.
What does work is Bolt: it is the ride-hailing app people actually use in Sofia, and the same app covers e-bikes, scooters and food delivery. Install it before you fly, while your home payment method is still easy to add. (Sourcing note: the “Available categories in Sofia” block on Bolt’s Sofia city page, checked 2026-09-25, lists only the e-bikes and scooters, with Bolt Food alongside and rides in the site-wide menu rather than in that block.) You will also find that the opposite error circulates — a widely repeated forum claim that Bolt is unavailable in Bulgaria. It is wrong.
On street taxis, the German Federal Foreign Office’s Bulgaria travel and safety page (updated 25 September 2026) is the most specific official source I found: every Bulgarian taxi must display a legally required price sticker on the rear-door window, most charge roughly €0.75 per unit by day and €0.85 at night, higher tariffs in resort areas are legal rather than a scam, all taxis have meters, and in individual cases meters have been manipulated. The ministry’s own recommendation is to use a reputable firm’s app. Read the sticker before you get in.
Public transport routing works, and that is a data question as much as a transit one. Sofia’s buses, trolleybuses, trams and metro are run by the municipal Sofia Urban Mobility Centre, which publishes its schedule feed openly — which is why Google Maps and Moovit both give you real transit directions in the capital. Nothing in the Commission’s report, the Bulgarian regulator’s materials or the major governments’ travel pages indicates any blocking or filtering of messaging, mapping, social or VPN apps; Bulgaria is an EU member bound by the open-internet rules. And 112 is the emergency number nationwide.
What a Bulgaria eSIM costs in 2026, and the one quirk worth knowing
Here is where I have to be careful about provenance, because not all of these numbers are equal. I pulled Saily’s prices from Saily’s own Bulgaria page on 2026-09-25, including the structured pricing data embedded in the page. Nomad and eSIM4Travel both render their plan tables in the browser, so a direct read returned nothing; those figures come from the aggregator eSIMDB, whose Bulgaria pages for the two were last updated on 2026-09-20 and 2026-09-23 respectively. Treat them as dated third-party readings, not as quotes from the seller.
| Tier | Saily (first-party, 2026-09-25) | Nomad (eSIMDB, 2026-09-20) | eSIM4Travel (eSIMDB, 2026-09-23) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB / 7 days | $1.99 | $4.50 | $1.38 |
| 3 GB / 30 days | $4.99 | $9.00 | $2.86 |
| 5 GB / 30 days | $6.99 | $12.50 | $4.23 |
| 10 GB / 30 days | $11.99 | $16.00 | $7.64 |
| 20 GB / 30 days | $19.99 | $20.00 | $14.46 |
| 50 GB / 30 days | not offered | $45.00 | $39.24 |
On the numbers in that table, eSIM4Travel is the cheapest at every tier the three share — $7.64 against Saily’s $11.99 at 10 GB is not a rounding error. I will still say openly that Saily’s row is the one I stand behind, because I read it off the seller’s page myself, and that eSIM4Travel’s is a three-day-old aggregator snapshot. eSIM4Travel plans must be activated within 90 days of purchase; its unlimited plans allow 3 GB of full-speed data per 24-hour cycle, counted from first connection, and throttle to 1 Mbps after that — the figure eSIM4Travel’s own Bulgaria page and eSIMDB both give. Saily’s window is more generous: a 180-day activation window, after which the plan auto-activates on its own.
Before the unlimited plans, one thing that belongs in the open. None of the three sells a genuinely uncapped product. Saily’s unlimited is a fair-use plan with 5 GB a day at full speed and throttling after that; Saily’s throttled speed is about 1 Mbps — both Saily’s own plan data and eSIMDB give that figure, though eSIMDB contradicts itself on the 5-day row, so treat it as indicative rather than contractual. eSIM4Travel gives 3 GB a day then 1 Mbps, and Nomad 2 GB a day then 1 Mbps. On the daily full-speed allowance alone the order is Saily, then eSIM4Travel, then Nomad — but all three are capped, and I would rather say that here than have you meet it on day four. On price the order reverses, and it reverses hard: eSIM4Travel’s unlimited is $21.29 for 10 days and $31.53 for 15 against Saily’s $34.99 and $48.99 — 64% and 55% more for the Saily plan — and it keeps going: $41.76 at 20 days and $51.99 at 25, against Saily’s $59.99 and $65.99. Nomad’s 10-day unlimited is $33.00 (eSIMDB readings dated 2026-09-23 for eSIM4Travel and 2026-09-20 for Nomad). The table just below prices Saily against Saily for a specific reason, which is the next paragraph; it is not a ranking of the three.
Now the quirk, and it is the single most useful thing on this page for a long stay — with one boundary stated up front: it only applies once you have decided to buy Saily. At the same 20 and 25 days, eSIM4Travel’s unlimited is $41.76 and $51.99, 30% under Saily at 20 days and 21% at 25. Saily sells both a Bulgaria-only unlimited plan and a 35-country Europe unlimited plan. At 10 and 15 days the Bulgaria-only plan is a dollar cheaper. At 20 days and beyond, the two prices line up.
| Saily unlimited | Bulgaria only | Europe, 35 countries |
|---|---|---|
| 10 days | $34.99 | $35.99 |
| 15 days | $48.99 | $49.99 |
| 20 days | $59.99 | $59.99 |
| 25 days | $65.99 | $65.99 |
| 30 days | $71.99 | $71.99 |
If you are staying 20 days or more, the Bulgaria-only unlimited plan looks strictly worse: same money, one country instead of thirty-five. Take the Europe plan and get the option value for free — with the caveat that the Europe column is an eSIMDB reading from 2026-07-02, about twelve weeks before this page, so check the two side by side at checkout before you pay. Below 20 days the saving is real but small, so weigh a dollar against the chance of a side trip to Bucharest or Thessaloniki.
The reverse holds for Saily’s fixed-data plans, and it is worth spelling out because the unlimited quirk tempts people to over-generalise. At 10 GB for 30 days, Saily’s Bulgaria-only plan is $11.99 against $35.99 for the Europe regional equivalent — a third of the price. Those regional figures are not first-party and they are not all the same age, so here is where each one comes from: Saily Europe $35.99 is an eSIMDB reading dated 2026-07-02, Nomad Europe $23.00 an eSIMDB reading dated 2026-09-17, and eSIM4Travel Europe $7.93 is eSIM4Travel’s own Europe entry, which eSIMDB lists on that provider’s Europe page as “Best Europe 41 – 10GB/30Days $7.93 / 41 Countries”, read on 2026-09-25. Nomad points the same way as Saily, $16.00 Bulgaria-only against $23.00 for Europe. eSIM4Travel does not: $7.64 against $7.93 is near-identical, so with that provider you may as well take the multi-country plan. Which is the point — “fixed data, buy the country plan” is a Saily rule that Nomad happens to share, not a law of the category. Note too that these regional plans are not the same footprint: eSIM4Travel’s Europe plan covers 41 countries, while Saily’s runs to 35 for the unlimited family but 34 for the fixed-data plans, which is the family the $35.99 row belongs to. They are not interchangeable even where the price matches. Saily also advertises a Europe plan from $4.99, a 9-country Balkans plan from $5.99 and a 121-country global plan from $8.99 if your trip is wider than one region.
The honest comparison: a local SIM is cheaper per gigabyte
I would rather tell you this than have you find it at a Vivacom shop on day two. Bulgaria’s own prepaid tariffs, now priced in euros, undercut the travel eSIMs on a per-gigabyte basis. These are from Vivacom’s Free2Go page, checked 2026-09-25, VAT included.
| Free2Go add-on | Allowance | Validity | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data XS | 2,000 + 2,000 MB | 1 day | €4.00 |
| Data S | 2,000 + 2,000 MB | 7 days | €5.00 |
| Data M | 2,500 + 3,500 MB | 14 days | €6.00 |
| Data L | 6,000 + 6,000 MB | 21 days | €7.50 |
Take Data L. Vivacom writes it as 6,000 + 6,000 MB, both halves “at maximum speed”, for 21 days at €7.50, and says the same 12,000 MB is available in EU roaming at no surcharge. Summed, that is 12 GB for €7.50, or €0.625 per gigabyte. Since everything else on this page is in dollars, one anchor so you can check the comparison yourself: the European Central Bank’s euro reference rate for 24 September 2026 is 1 EUR = 1.1367 USD, which puts Data L at $0.71 per gigabyte. Line the travel eSIMs up on the same measure and the local SIM is under every one of them: eSIM4Travel works out at $0.72 per GB at 20 GB, $0.76 at 10 GB and $0.78 at 50 GB; Nomad is $1.00 at 20 GB; Saily runs from $1.00 per GB at 20 GB to $1.99 at 1 GB, with the popular 5 GB tier at $1.40. Against eSIM4Travel’s best tier that is about the same price — a cent a gigabyte — and against Saily and Nomad it is clearly cheaper. That is the honest trade-off, and it is a real one: a local SIM can cost less, and it requires you to stand at a counter with your passport under the identification rules described above. A travel eSIM costs a little more and skips the counter. For a week or two I take the eSIM; for a month in one place with a Bulgarian number to hand out, the local SIM starts making sense. I am deliberately not quoting A1 or Yettel prepaid prices here, because their pages put the numbers behind a click-through I could not verify on 2026-09-25.
Planning more of the region? See the full country-by-country eSIM guide index, and our neighbouring guides for Romania, Serbia and Türkiye.
FAQ
Do I need to register a SIM card in Bulgaria?
For a local Bulgarian prepaid line, yes. The Electronic Communications Act has obliged operators since 1 January 2010 to collect data identifying prepaid users, and Vivacom’s own support pages tell customers to bring an ID card or passport. There is also a statutory cap of 10 prepaid voice numbers per person. A travel eSIM is issued by a provider outside Bulgaria and reaches you as inbound roaming on a Bulgarian network, so no Bulgarian subscriber account is created in your name and that counter step does not arise. That is a difference in account structure, not a promise of anonymity.
Does Bulgaria use the euro or the lev?
The euro. Bulgaria joined the euro area on 1 January 2026 as its 21st member, at a fixed rate of 1 euro to 1.95583 lev, and the euro has been the sole legal tender since 1 February 2026. The period when shops had to display both currencies ended on 8 August 2026, so do not expect dual price tags. Older leva can still be exchanged at the Bulgarian National Bank free of charge, in unlimited quantity and with no deadline.
Is Bulgarian 5G worth paying extra for?
Not as a purchase criterion, no. Opensignal’s January 2026 report measured A1 at an average 5G download of 343.9 Mbps, which is excellent, but the same report has the country’s Time on 5G leader at 26.3%, and that figure counts only users who already have a 5G phone and a 5G plan — so a quarter of the time, for the best-placed users on the best-placed network. The European Commission puts national 5G coverage at 81.3% against an EU average of 94.3%, and rural 5G at 38.25% against 79.57%. Buy an eSIM on price and data allowance, assume 4G, and treat 5G as a bonus in the cities.
Does Uber work in Bulgaria?
No. Uber suspended service in Bulgaria in October 2015 after the Supreme Administrative Court upheld a BGN 200,000 competition fine, and it has not returned. Bolt does operate in Sofia and is the ride-hailing app most visitors use there; its city page also lists e-bikes, scooters and food delivery, checked 2026-09-25. Regular taxis are metered and must show a price sticker on the rear-door window; the German foreign ministry notes that meters have been manipulated in individual cases and recommends ordering through a reputable firm’s app.
Do U.S. citizens need a visa for Bulgaria?
Not for a short visit. Bulgaria has been a full Schengen member since land border controls were lifted on 1 January 2025, and U.S. passport holders travel visa-free in the Schengen area for up to 90 days in any 180-day period. The biometric Entry/Exit System has been rolling out across Schengen since 12 October 2025 and has been in full operation since 10 April 2026, so expect fingerprints and a facial image at external borders. ETIAS, the pre-travel authorisation, has no announced start date; the Commission says travellers will get several months’ notice, so check its official ETIAS page when you book.
Will my U.S. phone work in Bulgaria?
Almost certainly, if it is unlocked and supports eSIM. Bulgaria uses standard European bands — LTE on B1, B3 and B8, with B20 and B28 from the 700 and 800 MHz licences, and 5G mainly on n78. A recent U.S.-market phone covering B1/B3/B8/B20/B28 and n78 should find a network without trouble. The two real failure modes are a carrier-locked handset and a model with no eSIM slot, so check both before you buy a plan rather than after you land.
References
- European Commission — Bulgaria 2025 Digital Decade Country Report: published 2025-06-16, data year 2024; 5G coverage 81.3%, rural 5G 38.25%, FTTP 90.4%. The figures themselves are tabulated in the accompanying staff working document (PDF), which is the readable source for each number.
- Opensignal — Bulgaria Mobile Network Experience Report, January 2026: operator speeds and awards, measured 2025-10-01 to 2025-12-29.
- Republic of Bulgaria, Ministry of Transport and Communications — Electronic Communications Act (English, PDF): § 80 prepaid identification, Article 251i(5)(2), Article 138d ten-number cap.
- Vivacom — customer support FAQ on subscribing: valid identity document, ID card or passport, required at the counter.
- Vivacom — Free2Go prepaid tariff: euro-denominated data add-ons, checked 2026-09-25.
- TechTrends BG — is this the end of 3G in Bulgaria?: A1’s regional shutdown from December 2024, Yettel’s technological readiness in 2027, Vivacom’s non-commitment, 2G retained for 112 and eCall.
- European Central Bank — Bulgaria joins the euro area: euro from 2026-01-01, fixed rate 1 EUR = 1.95583 BGN.
- evroto.bg — announcement that mandatory dual price display ends on 8 August 2026: the dated source for that deadline.
- evroto.bg — official Bulgarian euro-adoption portal, citizens’ FAQ: one-month dual circulation, free unlimited lev exchange at the central bank. Note its dual-display wording is the older, general one.
- EUR-Lex — Regulation (EU) 2019/518 on cross-border payments and currency conversion charges: the percentage mark-up over the ECB reference rate that a terminal must disclose.
- U.S. Department of State — Bulgaria Travel Advisory: Level 1, Exercise Normal Precautions, issued 2025-10-09.
- European Commission, DG HOME — Bulgaria and Romania join the Schengen Area: land border controls lifted 2025-01-01.
- European Commission, DG HOME — Entry/Exit System (EES): progressive rollout from 2025-10-12, full operation from 2026-04-10, stated in plain text on the page; checked 2026-09-25.
- European Union — ETIAS: no start date announced; travellers to be given several months’ notice. Checked 2026-09-25.
- European Central Bank — euro reference exchange rate, US dollar: 1 EUR = 1.1367 USD for 24 September 2026, the single rate used for every euro-to-dollar figure on this page.
- Vivacom — interactive coverage map: the operator-side check recommended above for a specific route; checked 2026-09-25.
- eSIMDB — eSIM4Travel Europe plans: “Best Europe 41 – 10GB/30Days $7.93 / 41 Countries”, read 2026-09-25.
- The Sofia Globe — Uber suspends services in Bulgaria, 2015-10-06: the suspension itself, after the Supreme Administrative Court upheld the competition authority’s penalties. This piece describes “large financial penalties” rather than naming a figure; the BGN 200,000 total is in the same outlet’s earlier report, Bulgaria’s competition protection commission fines two Uber firms 200 000 leva (2015-07-06), which is linked in the body.
- Bolt — Sofia: the city page’s “Available categories in Sofia” block lists e-bikes and scooters and “Available services” lists Bolt Food; rides appear in the site-wide navigation rather than in either block. Checked 2026-09-25.
- Saily — Bulgaria eSIM data plans: first-party prices and the 180-day activation window, checked 2026-09-25.
- eSIMDB — Nomad plans for Bulgaria (page last updated 2026-09-20) and eSIMDB — eSIM4Travel plans for Bulgaria (2026-09-23): the aggregator readings used for those two columns.
- German Federal Foreign Office — Bulgaria travel and safety advice, updated 2026-09-25: the taxi price sticker requirement, the ~€0.75 day / €0.85 night unit prices, legal regional tariffs, and meter manipulation in individual cases.
- Sofia Urban Mobility Centre: the municipal operator behind Sofia’s bus, trolleybus, tram and metro network and its open schedule feed.
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Last updated: 2026-09-25
