One of the critical issues hindering high-quality, high-speed growth of GaN is cluster formation in the gas phase. We investigated cluster formation in tri-halide vapor phase epitaxial growth of GaN. The growth system is equipped with an external GaCl3 gas supply system. We observed cluster formation under certain growth conditions experimentally. A simulation was also carried out to reveal the critical conditions for cluster formation. We propose that increasing the gas temperature is an effective way to suppress cluster formation, and thus achieve a higher growth rate with a flat surface morphology.