Buying a SIM card at Cluj-Napoca Airport (CLJ)

What we know, and what we don't

Cluj-Napoca International is a small airport and our record of it is correspondingly thin. Rather than pad it out, here is the whole of what we hold.

Orange and Vodafone SIMs are available in arrivals. Waits run about 8 minutes at peak and roughly 3 minutes off-peak. A passport is required to register the SIM. Free wi-fi is generally available across the terminal. Options are limited.

What we do not have: the name of the outlet that sells them, its location within the building, its opening hours, or the price of the SIM at CLJ specifically. Other pages on this site name the shop and quote the counter price. We cannot do that here, and we would rather say so than guess.

The practical consequence is simple. Do not land at Cluj planning to buy a SIM, because we cannot tell you the shop will be open when you arrive or what it will charge. Treat anything you find there as a bonus.

The passport rule is the real friction

Romania requires a passport or national ID to register a prepaid SIM. That is national law, not an airport quirk, so it applies in Cluj city centre as much as at the terminal. It means the transaction involves paperwork rather than a card tap, and an 8-minute queue is 8 minutes before that starts.

An eSIM bought online has no registration step at purchase. For a short trip, that difference is most of the argument.

If you are flying in from the EU, stop here

Romania is in the EU, and a great many Cluj arrivals are intra-European. If your everyday SIM is from any EU or EEA country, roam-like-at-home applies: your normal allowance works in Romania at your normal price, with no purchase of any kind. Check your operator's roaming fair-use cap, and you are done.

Romanian data prices

An earlier version of this page said Romania's eSIM market stops at 20GB and that no provider sells a larger bundle here. That was wrong. Nomad sells 50GB over 30 days for $45, checked at source, and at $0.90 a gigabyte it is the cheapest data in the country. Airalo is the one that stops at 20GB; above that it sells unlimited plans by the day, at a steep premium.

The 50GB plan is the cheapest data per gigabyte on the list, with 20GB close behind, and the 1GB plans are the most expensive despite the small headline number. The Airalo rows were read from Airalo's own site on 13 August 2026, the Nomad rows from nomadesim.com on 17 August 2026.

A Romanian prepaid SIM runs around $13 at airport prices nationally, which is roughly what a 5–10GB eSIM costs. We do not know whether that figure holds at Cluj.

Networks

Holafly lists no carrier for Romania. The Orange, Vodafone and Digi trio this page used to show against it came from our own data rather than from the seller, which names no operator in any country. An earlier version of this page said Nomad and Saily name Orange and Vodafone; they do not, and neither publishes a host network anywhere. Airalo does not publish one for Romania either — its Romanian product carries the retail name Noroc, which is a label rather than a carrier.

If you need certainty about the network, an Orange or Vodafone SIM bought in Cluj itself is the only way to get it. Full country pricing sits on the Romania hub.