The invention relates to a device for buffering a welding wire, whereby a wire buffer, in particular a wire buffer magazine is arranged between a wire advance device and a further wire advance device which is preferably arranged in the vicinity of a welding torch, or in the welding torch and the welding wire is run between the two wire advance devices in a wire core. According to the invention, a simple and compact a buffer device as possible and an improvement in the dynamic behaviour of the wire supply can be achieved, whereby the wire core is attached or fixed at one end and the other end thereof is free to move and the wire core with the welding wire is arranged such as to be free to move within a wire guide tube with a substantially larger cross-section than the outer diameter of the wire core and the buffer volume of the wire buffer magazine is defined by the cross-section and the length of the substantially larger wire guide tube.