Best SIM Card & eSIM for the UK: 13 Tested and Compared

Travelling to the UK soon and you need mobile data? Since Brexit the UK no longer falls under the roam like at home rules, which means your provider is allowed to charge you for roaming outside your bundle. If you are not paying attention, that can get expensive quickly. Not every provider does it, though: whether the UK still sits inside your Europe bundle differs per country and per provider. So check your terms, or ask your provider, before you buy an eSIM. There is a fair chance it is still included.

Is UK roaming not included? Or would you like a British phone number for your trip? Buying a local British eSIM online turns out to be remarkably easy. I tested several of them and the differences are big, so in this article I explain what to look out for and which eSIM came out best in my testing:

• Some local prepaid plans come with a strict speed cap
• An eSIM with a local phone number is easy to buy online, with no ID check
• Plans for the UK work in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but not always elsewhere in Europe

I tested 13 eSIMs. You can see the results below, and I talk you through my 4 favourite options.

Short on time? My tip is an EE or Lycamobile eSIM through Sim Local. Use code FYESIM15 for 15% off. Those two I can recommend without reservation. Worth knowing: Sim Local also sells Three eSIMs, and prepaid Three comes with a speed limit that some people never notice and others find unusable. Read the Sim Local review below before you pick that one.

How to choose the best eSIM for the UK

First check whether you do not already have data in the UK. Since Brexit your provider is no longer obliged to include it, but plenty of European providers still do. One look at your own terms may save you the purchase altogether.

Which eSIM suits you best depends on how you travel, so I looked at the 4 things that actually matter on a trip to the UK: the best choice for most travellers, the best for small bundles, the best unlimited plan and the best credit that does not expire. These are my picks:

• Best for most travellers: EE or Lycamobile through Sim Local. A genuine British eSIM on a local network, with your own +44 number.
• Best for small bundles: Amigo. The sharpest option if you need 5 GB or less, and the biggest discount code of the four.
• Best unlimited: Maya Mobile. For anyone whose trip does not stop at the British border: the same eSIM keeps working in 180 countries.
• Best credit that never expires: Bcengi. You buy credit instead of a bundle, so nothing goes to waste at the end of your trip.

Most people get by on around 10 GB for a trip: browsing, messages, maps and the occasional call over WhatsApp or a similar app. Not sure how much you need? Our data calculator works it out for you.

One thing worth knowing up front: in the UK the local option is the easy one. There is no registration and no passport check, so a British eSIM with its own +44 number is set up just as quickly as a data-only travel eSIM, and it is often cheaper per GB. That is why my top pick is a local eSIM from Sim Local rather than a travel eSIM.

Want to compare prices yourself? Browse all 45+ providers for the UK in our comparison tool, with plans from €0.50.

Unlimited data in the UK

Looking for unlimited data for your trip to the UK? There is no shortage of options, but they do not all give you the same value for money, and they are certainly not all equally open about what you get. I tested 4 unlimited plans in England:

• EE, through Sim Local
• Lycamobile, through Sim Local
• Maya Mobile
• Holafly

EE was by far the best, but you buy it for at least 30 days. Maya and Holafly are more flexible in that respect. Do keep in mind that Sim Local also sells 80, 150 and 200 GB plans, and because of the fair use policies elsewhere those often get you closer to unlimited than a competitor's eSIM that is advertised as unlimited.

EE, Lycamobile and Maya all performed well. Holafly performed by far the worst, not only of the unlimited eSIMs but of all 13 eSIMs I tested. Its upload was close to unusable and it was slow to respond. All 4 gave access to the local 5G network, but Holafly never delivered 5G speeds.

* Lycamobile is only sold in blocks of 15 days, so this price covers 2 of them.

Prices checked in August 2026. The response times in the Customer service row are ones I measured myself.

Holafly stated 90 GB a month in its FAQ until recently, which comes down to 3 GB a day, but that has been taken down. It now points at the local network instead.

I did ask Holafly about it: why the hotspot would not work at all, and why the speeds, the latency and the upload in particular, stayed so low. That became half an hour of sending screenshots to chatbot Emma that did not really bear on my question, and it took over 4 hours before someone replied in person. They could not tell me much, and the conversation I had already had with the AI was not visible to them, so we started over. I did get a refund, though, without having asked for one. In Spain I ran into the same slow connection over Cogent, so it does not look like a one-off. Holafly used to route through Orange Roaming in Europe, and that worked better for me.

That is the pattern across this whole comparison. The difference is not so much the word unlimited, it is whether a provider is willing to tell you what sits behind it.

So do ask yourself whether you need unlimited data at all. Our data calculator helps you work out what you actually use. And whatever you pick, make sure you know what you are getting, because truly unlimited data does not exist while travelling.

UK eSIM speed test results (London, 2026)

EE stood out, but the honest summary is that nearly everything did the job. Almost every eSIM I tested got onto 5G and delivered speeds you would never run into a problem with on a trip.

Two things to know. At Three the speed is capped, so you get a fraction of what the network can actually do. And Holafly was the one real disappointment, not only among the unlimited plans but across all 13.

Do not fixate on download speed. It is the number every provider advertises and it tells you the least. Past roughly 30 Mbps you stop seeing the difference on a phone: a map, a video call and a stream all fit comfortably. What you do feel is latency, the time between your phone asking for something and the first byte coming back. That decides whether a video call sounds natural, whether a page opens the moment you tap it and whether a payment goes through at the till. A connection with 400 Mbps and a slow response feels worse than one with 80 Mbps that answers instantly.

One caveat: I tested under optimal conditions, with full signal in Shoreditch, London.

All providers were tested in Shoreditch, London, in May 2026, on an iPhone 16 Pro Max, with the Ookla Speedtest app and meter.net, alongside normal everyday use. The order is based on how steady and responsive a connection felt in daily use, not on raw download speed alone. Routing (the country your data travels through) is listed too, but providers can change this at any time.

Local networks in the UK

The UK has 3 mobile network operators:

• EE, part of BT
• VodafoneThree, the result of the 2025 merger between Vodafone and Three
• Virgin Media O2

EE is the best of the 3, and that is not really disputed: it has the widest geographic coverage and it was also the quickest to respond in my own test. Heading for the Highlands, the Welsh coast or the Yorkshire Dales? Then EE is the one to go for.

In London, Manchester or Edinburgh that advantage largely disappears. In central London nearly every eSIM I tested got onto 5G, and the differences between them were small enough that you would not notice them while using your phone. The network only really becomes a deciding factor once you leave the cities.

The merger is worth knowing about. Vodafone and Three completed theirs in 2025 and now trade as VodafoneThree, but you will still come across both brands separately: their own shops, their own plans, and eSIMs that simply say Three or Vodafone. The 2 networks are being combined step by step, so for now where you are still decides which of the 2 masts you end up on.

Travel eSIMs usually have agreements with more than 1 British network and often switch to whichever is strongest, which is why network quality is rarely something a visitor has to worry about.

Going somewhere remote? Check the coverage first. Both nPerf and Opensignal are good for that, and every British network has a coverage checker of its own.

Buying a local SIM card or eSIM in the UK

A local eSIM is the easy part: you buy it online before you leave, through Sim Local, and you are connected the moment you land. No shop, no queue and no identity check.

Would you rather have an old-fashioned physical SIM? At Heathrow Terminal 5 there is a Sim Local shop, with a second tourist shop selling SIM cards right next to it. Smaller airports are more limited, but even at London City there was a convenience store by the exit with local SIM cards. And in town you are never far from a shop belonging to one of the networks.