If your phone plan comes from an EU or EEA country, keep it: Sweden falls under the roam-like-at-home rules, so your home allowance works here at no extra cost. Everyone else has a choice between their operator’s roaming package and a Swedish prepaid SIM, which is cheap but must be registered against your passport before it works.
Roaming from home
The EU rules cover all EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, so a Danish, German or Dutch plan behaves in Stockholm as it does at home. Operators may still apply a fair-use limit on data: the wholesale cap they work from is EUR 1.30 per GB in 2025, and if your roaming use outweighs your domestic use over a four-month window they can add a surcharge. Unlimited plans get a capped roaming volume rather than unlimited data abroad, so check the number in your contract before you rely on it for a fortnight of map use.
The UK is not on that list. British, American and other non-EEA travellers need to compare their operator’s daily or weekly roaming pass against a local SIM. For a weekend, the pass usually wins on convenience. For a week or more, a Swedish prepaid card costs less and gives you a lot more data.
Buying a Swedish prepaid SIM
The two prepaid brands easiest to buy on arrival are Telia and Comviq. Both sell 30-day fixed-price bundles with domestic calls and texts included. Telia’s Fastpris starts at SEK 199 for 5 GB, then SEK 249 for 10 GB and SEK 299 for 20 GB; a one-week 1 GB bundle costs SEK 69. Comviq undercuts that with SEK 159 for 5 GB, SEK 199 for 10 GB and SEK 249 for 20 GB on 30 days, and a 7-day 1 GB option at SEK 59. Both include 5G: Telia states that 5G is part of every top-up, and Comviq lists 5G on its fixed-price bundles.
The card itself is free. Telia offers a free prepaid card delivered to a Swedish address or picked up in a Telia shop or from a reseller, and Comviq’s SIM is free at ICA, Pressbyrån, 7-Eleven, Circle K and OKQ8. Comviq’s bundles also carry an EU roaming allowance, so the card keeps working if you continue to Denmark or Norway.
Prices above are for the bundles, not a starter pack. Check the operator’s page before you buy, because bundle sizes and prices change more often than this page does.
The passport rule
Since 1 August 2022 every prepaid SIM in Sweden must be registered to a named person before it can be used; anonymous cards are illegal. The law was written with visitors in mind: the government’s bill says that someone without a Swedish personal number, such as a foreign tourist, should be able to register a date of birth and passport number instead.
In practice that means you register in a shop. Telia’s online route uses BankID, the Swedish digital ID; without one, bring your passport to a Telia store and staff do the registration for you. Comviq accepts a foreign passport, driving licence or national ID card at Pressbyrån, 7-Eleven and Circle K, or online through a photo-ID check. Do not buy a SIM from a kiosk that cannot register it on the spot: the card stays dead until someone does.
Telia registers the card by its 20-digit ICC number printed on the SIM, so keep the packaging until the card is live.
Coverage: cities and roads yes, the fells no
Sweden is large and empty outside the south, and coverage follows the population. The regulator’s 2025 mapping puts basic mobile coverage over almost 90 per cent of the country’s area and good-capacity coverage over just over 81 per cent of populated areas. The gaps are where you would expect: inside the national parks of Lapland, on hiking trails between huts, and on stretches of forest road in the interior. If you are heading north for the Abisko trails or driving between Kiruna and the coast, download offline maps first and tell someone your route.
Emergency calls are the exception. 112 is the number for police, fire and ambulance; 1177 gives non-urgent medical advice and 114 14 reaches the police for anything that is not an emergency.
Wi-Fi
Hotels and cafés generally have free Wi-Fi, so a SIM matters for the hours in between, not for the evening. At Stockholm Arlanda the airport network is free for three hours: you get one hour immediately and two more after confirming an email address, after which it costs SEK 49 per hour or SEK 129 for 24 hours. That is enough to sort out a SIM before you leave the terminal, but not a reason to skip one.
Practical tips
- Turn off automatic app updates and cloud photo backup before you land if you are roaming on a metered pass; Swedish 5G will drain a small allowance in an afternoon.
- If your phone is locked to a home operator, a Swedish SIM will not work in it. Unlock before you travel; you cannot do it in a Swedish shop.
- Keep your home SIM active for bank verification texts. A dual-SIM or eSIM phone lets you run both; ask the shop whether they issue an eSIM for prepaid before you count on it, because the two operators above do not say so on their prepaid pages.
- A Swedish SIM does not give you Swish, the mobile payment app locals use, so bring a card that works contactless; the money page covers how cashless Sweden has become.
What to check before you go
- Your operator’s Sweden roaming terms, including the fair-use data cap if you have an unlimited EU plan.
- Whether your phone is unlocked and whether it supports eSIM.
- Which shop near your arrival point sells and registers SIMs; airport and central-station branches of Pressbyrån and 7-Eleven are the safe bets.
- Offline maps for any region north of Östersund or any hut-to-hut hike, plus the transport page if you are relying on rail apps for tickets.