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Best broadband deals July 2024 UK; get free Smart TV with Virgin Media broadband

All recommendations within this article are informed by expert editorial opinion. If you click on a link in this story we may earn affiliate revenue.

Published: 11:50, 9 Jul 2024
Updated: 14:58, 12 Jul 2024

IF your broadband contract is up for renewal, then shop around rather than simply signing up for another term with the same provider – you could save yourself a packet.

There are great deals to be had from companies looking to tempt you as a new customer and as most of us in the UK have a number of options when it comes to broadband, it would be silly not to check them out.

Your existing provider will likely come up with a few special offers to persuade you to stay as well, so it’s a win-win situation that will only save you money.

Always ask what deals are available. You could receive a free upgrade, enjoy faster broadband and find yourself paying less each month than you were before.

It’s definitely worth doing your research, especially as switching your broadband provider is an easy process and often includes free set-up. What’s not to like?

Best live broadband deals UK: At a glance

*Prices are correct at the time of writing. Some of the below deals also require a set-up fee and/or a minimum contract term. Prices of some of the packages increase after the initial contract period.

Best broadband deals

Now

Now, Superfast 61mbps average, £24 a month

BUY AT NOW

Now Broadband offers three broadband packages: Superfast, Full Fibre 75 and Full Fibre 100.

Now is part of the Sky network, and although the company doesn't offer any super impressive speeds, they are hard to beat on price.

BT

BT Full Fibre 1, £29.99 per month

BUY AT BT

One solid provider is BT, a well-known brand that has been around for years and is a more than valid choice for those in the market for a decent-priced broadband plan.

There is a range of plans to suit most people's needs, and there are some great incentives, too.

If you want something with a bit of oomph, then we recommend you opt for the BT Full Fibre 100 plan.

It is £10 more per month than the Full Fibre 1 plan but offers three times the speed, 150 Mbps, and you'll receive a £50 reward card.

Or go for the Full Fibre 2 plan, which comes with 74 Mbps, which is a rather decent option for £30.99 per month. It also comes with a nice little extra - the £50 virtual reward card for joining.

Its superfast broadband is slightly overpriced for what it is (you could find better deals from the likes of Virgin), so we think BT are more suited to the average user who just needs a reliable connection that doesn't cost the earth.

READ MORE:

Plusnet

Plusnet, Full Fiber 74, £26.99 per month, £0 set-up fee

BUY AT PLUSNET

Plusnet is a well-known provider of well-priced broadband that doesn't compromise on speed.

In fact, its Full Fibre 500 plan is one of the most reasonably priced currently available and is more than enough for most users.

The provider has often topped Best Buy lists and is recommended by 78% of customers, so you can be sure you are getting a reliable service that will get you online for less.

While these plans and prices are dependent on your location, you can check what is available in your area below.

Virgin Media

Virgin Media, M250, 264 Mbps, £27 per month

BUY AT VIRGIN

One of the best-known providers on the market when it comes to speed is undoubtedly Virgin. They have made a name for themselves in this department, and it comes at a premium.

But there are plenty of plans that come with impressive speeds for those on a budget, like the M250 plan for £27 per month.

If you are heavily reliant on your broadband and need the fastest speeds on the market, Virgin is the provider to choose.

Up to 1130 Mbps is available for £42 per month, which provides lightning-fast upload speeds.

Deals are based on 18 and 24-month contracts.

Community Fibre

Community Fibre Broadband 1 Gbps Fibre, £26 per month

BUY AT COMMUNITY FIBRE

Community fibre has some of the fastest wired download speeds available, making it an unmatched option.

They start at just £21 per month and provide speeds of up to 3GB. Even better, there won't be any bother because they'll transfer you over without affecting your internet access in as little as two days.

In addition, Community Fibre guarantees that there won't be any slowdowns during peak hours, so you'll always be getting what you paid for.

Deals covered are on a 24-month contract length.

Co-op

Co-op broadband, Superfast Plus, 66.8Mbps, £34 per month

BUY AT CO-OP

The Co-op is offering £3 per month off all of its deals this month so currently the cheapest deal is Superfast broadband from £28 per month. Alternatively, Ultrafast Full Fibre broadband now costs from £40 for download speeds of 100 – 900Mbps, which is ideal if your family spends a lot of time streaming movies, downloading music or gaming.

Set-up is free if you take out a two-year contract. If that’s too long a time commitment, you can go for a one-year contract. However, you’ll have to pay £30 for set-up on Superfast and £50 on Ultrafast.

The co-op offers a choice of 12 or 24-month contracts on all its broadband packages.

Three

Three broadband, six months half price from £12 per month

BUY AT THREE

Three is currently offering six months of half-price on its 4G home broadband, with no set-up costs for either. After six months, your broadband will cost you £24 per month.

There’s no need for a landline, and you won’t have an engineer come to your home for set-up as Three describes its packages as ‘plug and play’.

On 4G, you can connect up to 64 devices, whereas on 5G, you can connect up to 30 devices and expect near-instant downloads with an average download speed of 150Mbps.

Sky

Sky Broadband, Ultrafast 145Mbps, £28 per month

BUY AT SKY

Sky often has some great TV packages, and the Broadband deals follow the same pattern.

Currently, you can get the Gigafast broadband for £44 a month, providing you with an average speed of 900Mbps, or if you're looking for a cheaper offer, you can nab the Ultrafast package for just £28 a month, which provides you with an average speed of 145Mbps.

You can check out all of Sky's broadband deals here. All Sky broadband deals are offered as 18-month contracts.

Hyperoptic

Hyperoptic often has a range of deals available

BUY AT HYPEROPTIC

Hyperoptic may not be one of the more well-known broadband suppliers, but they should be on your radar.

They often have great deals, including their Superfast broadband package with 150Mbps for just £29 per month (with a £19 activation fee) so they're worth checking out.

Hyperoptic offers both 24-month and 12-month contracts, as well as monthly rolling packages.

Utility Warehouse

Get first six months free with Utility Warehouse

BUY AT UTILITY WAREHOUSE

With Utility Warehouse’s latest offer you get free broadband for six months on both its Full Fibre 100 and Full Fibre 500 plans. After that you’ll pay £28 per month for Full Fibre 100 and £35 per month for Full Fibre 500.

What’s more, you don’t even have to switch your provider as you can run the offer at the same time as your current broadband, giving you time to see if the deal is as good as it seems before you switch.

If you cancel within the first six months then you can do so without any termination fees, otherwise the contract is for 18 months in total.

There are conditions attached: you have to be a homeowner, not currently a Utility Warehouse or CityFibre customer, and as the service is delivered over CityFibre’s full fibre network you need to be in a CityFibre area. You also have to switch to Utility Warehouse for your energy, boiler cover, or mobile.

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What is broadband?

Generally speaking, broadband refers to a high-speed internet connection that can be used to browse the web, stream films, play online games, and work from home. This is much more commonplace than it was pre-COVID.

Broadband replaced the old dial-up connections (also known as narrowband) in the early 2000s, ushering in the era of always-on, unlimited internet.

The first broadband connection in the UK was installed by NTL (today Virgin Media) in Basildon, Essex, in 2000. By 2007, approximately half of all UK internet users possessed a broadband connection.

What types of broadband are there?

According to Ofcom, there are three types of fixed-line broadband in the UK: ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line), cable, and fibre. ADSL speeds oscillate between 8 and 24 Mbps (megabits per second), but they are heavily affected by your distance from the nearest telephone exchange.

Cable networks, on the other hand, use fibre optic and coaxial cables to deliver superfast broadband services, which are not affected by distance and can reach speeds of up to 152 Mbps.

Finally, fibre connections work through clusters of fibre optic cables and come in two different flavours: fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) and fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP).

In FTTC setups, the cables run from the telephone exchange to street cabinets before entering your home, while FTTP's cables connect directly to your home, providing the fastest speeds available on the market.

For context, most FTTC connections in the UK provide speeds between 28 and 76 Mbps, while FTTP can reach up to 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps); that's a 4K film downloaded in a few seconds! In addition to these three types of broadband, there also are satellite and mobile options, but they are less reliable and generally slower than fibre connections (although that can depend on your location).

Mobile broadband is set to improve drastically with the deployment of 5G around the country, but coverage is still patchy, so it may take a while for mobile broadband to become a true alternative to fibre.

What other services can you get with broadband?

There are many broadband providers today that offer lots of additional services alongside their basic internet packages.
Perhaps the most common additional services are broadband and landline phone packages. However, some providers now also offer unlimited calls towards both mobiles and landlines, together with vast amounts of mobile data to call family and friends via the internet.
To offer competitive deals, broadband providers bundle up a variety of additional services to appeal to potential customers. Of these, perhaps the most popular are deals on TV packages, but mobile phone contract deals and streaming services subscriptions are also hugely popular.

What is a good broadband deal?

Many factors define a good broadband package. Of course, speed is the most relevant, as, without a decently fast connection, you won't be able to stream films on Netflix or play online games with your friends.

Price usually goes hand in hand with speed, but there are a few providers who offer substantial discounts on top packages.

For example, Virgin Media's 108 Mbps fibre costs only £28 per month, but if you add £5, you can get the company's Big Bundle, which includes Virgin TV 360 with more than 100 channels.

As a rule of thumb, the best broadband deals are the ones that cost around £30 per month and include both broadband and TV, with speeds of at least 59 Mbps.

What broadband speed should I go for?

If one or two people in your home use the internet to stream TV shows and films or upload odd photos to Facebook or Instagram, you won't need much more than 5-10 Mbps to avoid buffering.

If you've got a larger family, all of whom are streaming, online gaming, and/or uploading videos to Instagram and TikTok, you're going to want something in the range of 20-40 Mbps. You'll want to consider faster broadband options if you're regularly downloading whole films or games to your devices or you need to upload substantial digital files to the web.

We reckon it's a good idea to get a bit more broadband speed than the bare minimum, though, because if you find yourself stuck in your house for a few months (something we've all become familiar with), it's nice to have a decent connection so your Zoom calls and House Party gatherings can continue without a hitch.

How do I choose the best broadband deal for me?

Once you know what broadband speeds you need and how much you're willing to spend, the next step is to select the best extras for you.

Most UK broadband providers today feature TV deals, but the channels they offer are different. For instance, Sky offers the most channels, but its broadband speeds are slower than Virgin's or BT's. In addition, when picking the right broadband deal for you, you should also consider mobile and streaming services offers.

EE is a good example of this since the company offers several broadband deals, including Apple TV subscriptions, as well as discounts for paying monthly customers.

How to compare broadband deals

To compare broadband deals in the best possible way, you have to assess their value for money. In other words, when comparing a broadband and TV package with another one, you should check which has the lower price for the basic package and how much the extra costs.

For example, Sky's Ultrafast package includes Sky TV, Sky Stream, Netflix and 145 Mbps broadband for £40 per month, while BT's all-inclusive deal costs £20 per month for three months, then £52.99 and offers speeds of 50 Mbps.

As you can see, the prices of these two deals are similar, but while you'll get more channels, Netflix, and faster speeds if you pick Sky, you'll get a free Now subscription included with most BT packages.

What are the most popular broadband providers in the UK?

In terms of speed, Hyperoptic, Three and Virgin Media offer the best deals, but their coverage is not entirely uniform across the UK.

On the other hand, Now, BT and Sky offer the best options when it comes to TV and broadband combos, and don’t forget about phone calls. Many households still have a landline, so a provider offering a combined broadband phone package is going to appeal to many people.

Other popular broadband providers in the UK are Plusnet, Zen, and Utility Warehouse. For a whole list of them and more details about each, you can read our guide on the best UK broadband providers.

Will I get the advertised broadband speed?

From March 2019, Ofcom's updated code of practice requires broadband providers to guarantee a minimum speed when you sign a contract with them.

The code is voluntary, but having said that, most UK broadband providers adhere to it, including BT, Sky, and Virgin, among others.

You just need to keep an eye out for minimum guaranteed speeds when looking at broadband deals with different providers before taking out your contract. If your broadband is slower than the minimum speed after signing up, you can cancel your contract immediately, and it won’t cost you anything in penalty fees to do so.

Can I get fibre broadband?

According to an Ofcom estimate, roughly 12% of UK households were served by fibre broadband at the end of 2019, and their latest research shows this had risen to 52% in 2023. So over half of UK homes now have access to full-fibre broadband – 15.4 million households – a massive jump from just four years ago.

Ofcom states that 97% of homes in the UK have access to superfast broadband, and most households can access ‘decent’ broadband, which they define as at least 10Mbps download and 1Mbps upload speeds.

Most of the fibre packages available are FTTC connections, with FTTP still being the exception. If you want to make sure whether you can get fibre or not, you can use these fibre checkers from Openreach and USwitch.

Which broadband deal is currently the cheapest in the UK?

When it comes to broadband, there isn't generally the cheapest option as it depends on the mb/s you're after in your home and if the provider services your area.

However, if the mb/s doesn't matter to you and you're not broadband-reliant going for an option like Now's 63mb/s package will only set you back £23 a month.

Currrently, the cheapest deal we've found is Three's half-price broadband for 6 months, for which you'll be paying £11 per month for the first six months before it changes to £22 per month.

Is it cheaper to get a broadband bundle?

Yes, it generally is cheaper to go for a bundle, offering broadband, TV and even phone services.

Basic broadband packages cost on average around £30 per month (though Now starts at £20 per month, including phone line), and TV bundles can cost between £10 and £15 extra each month.

For example, Sky's basic broadband package costs £27 per month, but for £40 per month you can get a bundle that includes TV, Netflix and Ultrafast broadband.

Shop around before buying, however, and always check the length of the contract you're signing up to, as well as for extras, such as set-up fees.

Should I get a new broadband deal?

Most broadband deals last for 18 or 24 months, after which you’re out of contract, but unless you switch to a better deal with a new provider or renegotiate with your existing provider, you could well find yourself paying more money each month for the same package.

If you do your research just before your contract ends, you’ll find a bunch of great deals that may offer more services and packages while at the same time costing you less each month.

Once you’re out of contract, you can speak to your provider about their deals for existing customers or see if they can match the deal you’ve found with their competitor – it’s amazing how quickly costs can come down if they think they’re going to lose your custom.

What happens when my broadband contract ends?

At the end of your contract, your broadband service will likely continue as normal on a month-by-month basis but with a significant price increase unless you do something about it.

Many people do not know exactly when their existing contract ends and, therefore, start paying more unwittingly and unwillingly when they could be getting way cheaper deals.

Make a note somewhere of when your current contract ends so you’re prepared in advance, and you can shop around for the best deals when you’re out of contract.

Alternatively, to check when your contract ends, you can check your account settings on your broadband provider's website or call their customer service number.

How do I switch providers?

To leave your current provider without incurring any extra expenses, you have two options. The first one is if your broadband does not reach the minimum guaranteed speed.

In this case, you can rescind your contract immediately and without any extra charge. The other one is that you must have completed your minimum contract term (when you sign up for a package, you'll often sign on for 18 months or two years), and if you haven't, you might have to pay a substantial fee to end your contract early.

If you're not sure, check your contract to see how much time you have left or if your contract has expired. If your initial contract has expired and you've been moved onto a rolling contract, you should be able to switch providers without any fuss.

But if you've still got some time to go before your contract expires, you could look at upgrading your contract with your existing provider to boost your broadband speed.

Should I choose a broadband package based on price?

Price should be a factor in your choice of broadband provider, but it shouldn’t be the only aspect you take into account before making your decision.

Often, the speed available at your home will be down to the infrastructure of the wiring near you rather than the provider (find out your available speed using a checker, such as this one).

While price should be one of your primary concerns also take account of your potential provider’s customer service ratings and how long it takes them to install your broadband. We've picked out the best broadband providers if you’re looking for extra inspiration.

What else can I do to get good broadband?

If the speed of your broadband is good, but the WiFi is patchy in your home, it could be worth looking at getting a new router, a signal booster, or a mesh wifi system, which uses multiple routers to ensure a steady internet connection wherever you are in your home.

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