If you’re worried about roaming charges or using up your bandwidth, a free Wi-Fi hotspot would come in useful. Fortunately, Vienna is a wired-up town, with plenty of public and private access points.
- Wide availability of public hotspots
- City-sponsored public Wi-Fi has numerous access points
- Freenet service covers hundreds of locations, too
- Book a VR experience* in Vienna
- See also:
- Top visitor questions
- Introduction to Vienna for visitors
How to find a Wi-Fi hotspot
(Phone notification when Freewave WiFi is available)
OK, the first thing you need to know is Wi-Fi is generally called WLAN here in Austria. So look for Gratis WLAN (“free Wi-Fi”) in museums and other public locations.
In fact, if you search for WiFi in Vienna, you’ll likely discover the Wirtschaftsförderungsinstitut der Wirtschaftskammer, which is a business education and advice facility run by the local Chamber of Commerce.
Anyway, enough of that.
Wi-Fi / WLAN access points are everywhere. Here are your main options, in addition to anything offered by your accommodation.
Note that most obviously require you to agree with terms and conditions before connecting. And you may have restrictions on both speed, availability, and access to particular websites and online services.
Vienna’s public WLAN
The city of Vienna provides hotspots for public use at around 400 locations around town. Here’s their map, which also includes the locations of many non-municipal hotspots, too. Red refers to municipal hotspots, blue to privately-run hotspots.
Accessing the public WiFi brings up a useful page with local information. This includes an option to access the wider Internet.
The city centre has three areas strong on these public hotspots: the Rathausplatz, along the Graben pedestrianised area up to Freyung square, and dotted around the Ringstrasse.
Freewave
(Habsburg history and free Wi-Fi)
Many hotels, restaurants, bars, cafés, shopping centers, etc. work with the Freewave network to provide free Wi-Fi for their customers.
At the time of writing, Freewave manage more than 850 hotspots in Austria, with something like half in Vienna. You can view a full list and map here.
According to that map, the first district alone (the historical centre of Vienna) has well over 100 such hotspots.
At the time of writing, these first district spots include many of the well-known coffee houses, such as Café Central, Café Korb, or Café Landtmann, and even the official tourist information.
Other notable Freewave locations listed as of May 2025 include the Sisi Museum, the MuseumsQuartier, the Leopold Museum, the Furniture Museum, the Austrian National Library, the Sigmund Freud Museum, and Schönbrunn Palace (including the Gerstner-run café-restaurant in the forecourt).
McDonalds & Starbucks
(Popular for coffee and internet)
Two traditional sources of Wi-Fi live in Vienna, too.
- If you pop in for a burger or coffee (most McDonalds have a McCafé section with good coffee and cake), nearly every McDonalds in Austria has free Wi-Fi. Find one of their restaurants here. Search for Wien (which is the word for Vienna in German) and check the WLAN box on the Detaillierte Suche map filter.
- Find Starbucks outlets in Vienna using their store locator (in English, so you can search for Vienna not Wien).
Trains and stations
(Westbahnhof station)
Three options around public transport:
- The Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) have onboard Wi-Fi on selected train services. See here for details
Obviously, you can’t expect perfect connectivity all the time; we have lots of mountains and tunnels in Austria.
- The CAT express train that travels from the airport to Vienna and back again has Wi-Fi as well
- Also check availability of public Wi-Fi hotspots from ÖBB or Wiener Linien (the Vienna transport authority) if at a major railway or subway station
Happy surfing…