Comparing Prices for 1Gbps UK Home Broadband – 2022 vs 2023
We’ve today returned to conduct our brief annual study of how much UK broadband ISPs are charging consumers for their top gigabit broadband (1Gbps+) tiers. The good news is that prices – driven by aggressive competition – broadly continue to fall, albeit not by as much as we saw between 2021 and 2022.
For the purpose of this article, we’ll only be covering residential networks delivered via either Full Fibre (FTTP/B) or Hybrid Fibre Coax (Virgin Media’s cable) infrastructure. At present, around 73% of UK premises are estimated to be within reach of such a gigabit-capable broadband network (here), which drops to 48% when only considering FTTP (i.e. Virgin’s HFC is currently responsible for most of the gigabit coverage).
However, assuming the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit rural broadband rollout programme achieves its targets and commercial rollouts continue at pace, then we should see gigabit coverage reach around 85% by the end of 2025, before possibly achieving universal coverage by 2030 or later (here). Ofcom’s own prediction, based on planned deployments (here), suggests that gigabit coverage will hit 92% of the UK by March 2025.
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Suffice to say that, within a few short years, most of us will have been given an option of one or more gigabit-capable broadband networks. But such speeds are not an automatic upgrade for existing connections, thus you’d need to order the package from a supporting ISP in order to receive it.
The amount that ISPs will charge you for such a package also continues to vary quite a lot, which isn’t just a reflection of the competitive market. Different packages often come attached to different features (e.g. static IP addresses, better routers, public WiFi etc.) and some networks have also been deployed using different methodologies or technologies, which can impact how much they cost.
For example, B4RN adopts the community benefit society approach and operates a closed network, where the community helps to build and fund the infrastructure – this tends to result in a cheaper service (i.e. not profit orientated). By comparison, Openreach (BT) runs a commercial open access network, albeit one that has the baggage of heavily regulated copper infrastructure to balance – this can be more expensive, but recent discount schemes have narrowed the gap to rivals.
In addition, providers that build almost exclusively in rural areas also tend to be more expensive, as this reflects the higher cost of deployment. On the other hand, the new generation of commercial and urban-focused alternative network (AltNet) providers, many of which are trying to peel customers away from established players, are often still aggressive on price.
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The Gigabit Comparison (May 2023 Data)
Firstly, we will not be adding any new 1Gbps providers to this year’s list, and there are a couple of reasons for that. A large number of new providers have launched gigabit plans since last year’s update, thus we’d end up duplicating work on our ISP Listings page. Secondly, the goal of this update is to check how prices for existing services have changed, if at all, over the past year.
Much like last year, our 2023 summary will generally only take a standalone package from each operator, except in cases where the package is unavoidably bundled alongside a voice (phone) product. We’ll also reflect the post-contract pricing after any discounts, provided those discounts last the full length of the operator’s initial minimum term (shorter partial-term discounts will be ignored as they’re harder to compare).
The list also excludes gigabit plans that cost more than £100 per month – partly to keep our workload down and because £100+ is considered to be business level pricing. We’ve also excluded plans where the ISP is unclear about who is building their underlying network(s) and, for providers with multiple underlying networks (each with different prices), we’ll only cover the two largest networks to reduce complexity and repetition.
Overall, this list isn’t intended to be exhaustive, but it should help to illustrate common trends and changes over time. At present, the only truly mass-market gigabit providers are Virgin Media (16.27 million premises) and Openreach (10.3m), but there are also several rapidly growing AltNets that are now achieving serious scale (e.g. CityFibre [2.6m], Hyperoptic [1.15m] etc.).
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In order to save space, we aren’t listing upload speeds, although it’s worth noting that while many providers will give you symmetric uploads, a few often offer much slower uploads (e.g. Openreach-based networks, as well as Virgin and a few others etc.). On most gigabit (1Gbps) plans this will still be 100Mbps+, which is more than enough for the majority of people.
Summary of UK 1Gbps Home Broadband Plans (Alphabetic)
| ISP | Network | Price 2023 | Price 2022 | Contract (Months) |
| B4RN | B4RN | 33.00 | 30.00 | 12 |
| Box Broadband | Box Broadband | 44.95 | 59.95 | 24 |
| Broadway Broadband | Broadway Partners | 69.99 | 69.99 | 12 |
| BT | Openreach | 44.99 (59.99) | 59.99 | 24 |
| Cambridge Fibre | Cambridge Fibre | 59.00 | 69.00 | 24 |
| CommunityFibre | Community Fibre | 29.00 (31.00) | 49.00 | 24 |
| County Broadband | County Broadband | 69.99 | 80.00 | 24 |
| Ecom | Ecom | 96.00 | 96.00 | 12 |
| EE | Openreach | 49.00 (58.00) | 49.00 (57.00) | 24 |
| Exascale | Exascale | 48.99 | 48.99 | 24 |
| Fibrus | Fibrus | 59.99 | 29.99 (59.99) | 24 |
| Freeola | Openreach | 58.99 | 58.99 | 1 |
| G.Network | G.Network | 51.99 | 48.00 | 24 |
| Gigaclear | Gigaclear | 49.00 (79.00) | 49.00 (79.00) | 18 |
| Giganet | Cityfibre – Openreach | 40.00 | 40.00 | 12 |
| Grain | Grain | 32.99 (49.99) | 44.99 (55.00) | 12 |
| Hyperoptic | Hyperoptic | 45.00 (60.00) | 40.00 (60.00) | 24 |
| InternetTY | InternetTY | 45.00 | 45.00 | 18 |
| Jurassic Fibre | Jurassic Fibre | 40.00 | 40.00 | 24 |
| KCOM | KCOM | 59.99 (69.99) | 69.99 | 24 |
| Leetline | Openreach – CityFibre | 52.99 – 36.99 | 64.99 – 40.99 | 24 |
| Lightning Fibre | Lightning Fibre | 39.00 | 59.00 | 24 |
| Lothian Broadband | Lothian Broadband | 74.99 | 59.99 | 24 |
| Optify | Optify | 60.00 | 60.00 | 12 |
| Pine Media | Pine Media | 41.00 – 47.00 | 49.99 | 12 |
| Pure Broadband | Cityfibre (Connexin being added) | 45.00 | 45.00 | 24 |
| Quantum Air Fibre | Quantum Air Fibre | 60.00 | 60.00 | 24 |
| Swish Fibre | Swish Fibre | 50.00 | 75.00 | 18 |
| Telcom (WeFibre) * | Telcom | 35.00 | 20.00 | 12 |
| toob | toob | 25.00 (29.00) | 25.00 (29.00) | 18 |
| Trooli | Trooli | 68.00 (80.00) | 68.00 (80.00) | 18 |
| No One | Openreach – CityFibre | 49.99 – 36.99 | 62.99 – 38.99 | 24 |
| Truespeed | Truespeed | 49.00 (70.00) | 54.99 (*69.99) | 12 |
| Village Networks | Village Networks | 70.00 | 70.00 | 18 |
| Virgin Media | Virgin Media | 47.00 (62.00) | 62.00 | 24 |
| Vodafone * | Cityfibre – Openreach | 46.00 – 49.00 | 35.00 – 70.00 | 24 |
| Wessex Internet | Wessex Internet | 79.00 | 84.00 | 12 |
| WightFibre | WightFibre | 49.95 | 54.95 | 1 |
| Wildanet | Wildanet | 59.95 | 59.99 | 24 |
| YouFibre | YouFibre | 29.99 (40.00) | 40.00 (50.00) | 24 |
| Zen Internet | Cityfibre – Openreach | 45.00 – 55.00 | 47.99 – 59.99 | 18 |
| Zzoomm | Zzoomm | 39.95 | 59.00 | 12 |
Overall, many more ISPs reduced their prices than increased them over the past year, while a few others maintained the same pricing they had last year. But in this climate of surging inflation, we must consider how any provider that opts to keep its prices frozen has, in real terms, technically introduced a price cut.
Some of the biggest price reductions came from Zzoomm, CommunityFibre, County Broadband, Grain, Lightning Fibre and Swish Fibre – many of these fell by well over £10 per month (sometimes double that). But there were some price increases too, such as from Virgin Media, WeFibre, Lothian Broadband and B4RN etc.
Overall, the average price for a 1Gbps package seems to be sitting somewhere around the £40 to £60 mark, which only a few years ago would have been close to the pricing of some 80Mbps consumer FTTC packages. Finally, we should point out that Pure Broadband was acquired by Connexin last year, and since then we’ve been unsure about what networks they still offer under their brand (i.e. we could only include the CityFibre pricing, while some other products redirect to the Connexin site).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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not sure how to contact admin but interesting interview the other day between ceo of openreach and ceo of zen
Reach out to them via Facebook messenger
So you have a link to the interview?
wasnt sure i was allowed to put links, its on you tube –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54kJs2_l0Q
1gb is overkill & will likely be in the medium term, so that range seems reasonable to me. Though I’m stuck on 24mbps ADSL at £30
YMMV on whether it’s “overkill”.
If you regularly deal with large file downloads e.g. 50-100GB games/updates or regularly do large file uploads, then the faster speeds can be nice to have.
It’s definitely not overkill if you’re regularly downloading large files/updates etc. The amount of time you can save by not needing to wait long for updates/downloads etc makes the speed worth while.
24Mbps ADSL for £30 a month, just shocking in 2023.
If you have a load of people in the house using the internet at the same time then 1Gb/s may be a godsend, but i do agree for most people it will be an overkill.
£30 for ADSL? You can get ADSL cheaper than that. If you are getting the 24Mbs, you must be very close to the exchange.
1Gbps on Openreach is the only way to get the faster 110Mbps upload
@Ryan @Tech3475
You both are correct, depending on one’s needs it can save a fair bit of time, but for the average person I’m not sure if it’s a must have. Perhaps luxury is a better term.
@James
That does seem slightly low, can see some being compelled to get the 1gb plan for that upload speed. Especially for those who do hybrid work, my workplace mandates cloud only storage.
@Ad47uk
Yeah, I’m a stones throw away from a London exchange. Though neighbouring buildings have FTTC / Virgin
@Buggerlugz
ISPs have been withdrawing service, only remaining options are the BT Group & Talktalk, who offer reduced speeds.
@Obi 1Gbps is not overkill.
Many providers are now testing beyond 1Gbps – 2Gbps will soon be the flagship for many companies.
Content is getting bigger and bigger, we need to speed up to keep up with the demand.
James, Virgin Media’s 1gbps Hybrid Fibre in most areas has 110mbps provisioned upload on residential now. The final few areas will be rolling out as soon as they are done.
Overkill in your opinion only. My house hold is reliant on both stable and fast connection as we all WFH.
I myself are dealing with TB’s of data a day for my work!
Just because YOU don’t need it, doesn’t mean others are in the same boat as you. That’s just ignorant.
@Cognizant, I think most people overestimate what they need. I know some people who have gone to 500Mb/s ish because they thought it was required and now release they did not need tom, the same with 1Gb/s. You say about content but what content are we really going to have to make use of 2Gb/s? 8K video? Around 50Mb/s I think, so a good 100Mb/s FTTP connection will solve that. Granted if more than one person in the house is streaming that at the same time, then more bandwidth is required. But I doubt there are many people who have anyway of displaying 8K and I doubt there is much if any content anyway.
what you have to remember is that these internet providers use sales tactics to get people like you and me to update, to spend more money, just like mobile network providers keep telling us we need more data and should update. Some people may, but some don’t .
Sale tactics and sadly some people full for it and then realise that they made a mistake. My one worry problem with Fibre is upselling and if that is going toi happen.
Oh yeah, I am not saying that some people don’t need the higher speeds or more data, just saying that some people fall into the trap
I think many people conflate speed (and “fibre”) with reliability.
And reliability (including the WiFi reach inside the home) is, for most, the more important requirement than speed, which, as others have said, is a mixture of demand vs. ability to spend (no point wanting a 2kg chicken if you only have enough money for a 1.2kg chicken).
What’s missing from Mark’s table in the article is:
* is there a WiFi coverage guarantee (and how is it achieved–e.g. rental of specific or generic repeaters/mesh)
* does the router support the latest standards
* how “open” is the router for self config for more advanced uses
* static IP available.
Which I know is a lot of work to discover but useful to see how this has evolved in the last year
Some of those prices, far too much for me, ok if you have a few people in the house paying.
When I went to ADSL, I paid half and my lodger I had here at the time also paid half, as I said to her, either that or we stay with dial up.
I know people will no doubt bite my head off for this, but I think for the majority of people they should be ok on the 100-150Mb/s
I won’t bite your head off because I largely agree with you. I would even go as far as to suggest that up to 100 Mbp/s is basically perfect even for a household of 3/4, with the exception being on those who want large downloads to complete more quickly.
No biting heads off here either, person above is spot on also.
@Name, well a lot of people have had to cope with much lower speeds over the years, I have been using 34Mbs for around 5-6 years and works for me. I do understand why some people want to go faster, but as far as I can see the majority of full fibre providers are giving 100Mb/s is as the minimum speed, Plusnet offers 74Mb/s for £24.99, 145Mb/s is available for an extra £2 a month, so after going through the hassle of installation may as well get 145Mb/s, unless the extra £2 is really breaking the bank.
Providers are more or less forcing people onto fibre due to the prices, I phoned up Plusnet to see what they could do for me as my contract is out at the end of next month. Staying on FTTC will cost me more than going onto FTTP, all he kept on about was I could get FTTP.
As i have said many times, i don’t need the speed and phoning up Plusnet have not really done any good, they will not move on the 24month minimum contract for FTTP and the only way I can The alt net provider round here have given me a offer of 150Mb.s up and down for £24 a month for 12 months. I need to make up my mind by the 31st of this month. My other option is going to onestream that does FTTC for £22 amonth, 12 month contract.
The other thing is are those prices offer prices and what will they be after the contracts?
Completely depends on your priorities in life I guess. Given the amount of time I spend online etc, I feel the £40/m I pay Giganet (no phone line, just 1000/1000 CF broadband) is excellent value.
But I have no interest in going to the pub/club which can easily be £40/night which I see as a pointless waste of money, no interest in paying sky £lots for TV or sport, no interest on £lots/month for an iPhone etc.
£40 is pretty cheap really.
@Rich I agree that it depends on your priorities in life, but saying £40 an is cheap depends on disposable income. Not sure where people get the idea that not having as phone line makes a difference to price, it doesn’t, according to my bill breakdown, £26.53 of my bill is line rental, so I am paying £1.59 for my broadband according to my bill. If I went to FTTP, then because of no line rental, my bill for the same speed should be about £1.59ish. It is a way to make us think we are getting better value.
i doubt many people are paying £40 a night to go out clubbing and drinking, sure they may go out once a week and spend it, Not for me either these days, I have a few on some Wednesdays, depending on how I feel. But it is not £40. I go to spoons, which is far cheaper. These days I can’t seem to drink that much, must be this age thing.
What do you really use your broadband for? People think they need gigabit speed, but a lot don’t, so paying money for something they don’t really need. At the end of the day it is up to them, but I prefer not to spend my money on something I don’t really need.
The only reason I am looking going to FTTP is that providers seem to having put FTTC prices up higher and it works out cheaper to go to FTTP.
@Ad47uk maybe look at the Onestream reviews before considering them, plenty of complaints about extra charges and terrible support. They make Virgin and TalkTalk look good…
Right now you can have a 12 month contract, cheap service or FTTP but not all 3 (apart from Onestream or Zzoomm, though I can get not wanting to deal with an additional install with an altnet). NOW broadband would be a good choice though they don’t other FTTP, if you are willing to go to a longer contract then I’ve found Vodafone’s Openreach FTTP service very good.
Mark, VM’s 1Gb is an 18 month contract but it’s price fixed for 24 months
Where’s Hull Fibre?
1Gbps – 24Month – £45 per month – MS3 Networks
Errm.. in Hull?
Infinics on the MS3 Network is even better value @ £30 for Gigabit too.
Back in October I told Virgin I had been offered 1gb fibre from Community fibre for £21 a month and was thinking of leaving , my contract was also due to end that November, Community fibre had offered no such deal but Virgin matched it, now pay £21 for 1gb internet fixed for 24 months and made sure they sent me that in writing
lmao
I’ve had community fibre installed a few weeks ago. 1gb ‘Full Fibre’ not part Fibre like virgin media. The difference here is the upload speed is exactly the same as download using community fibre, which virgin will never be able to match because of its part fibre infrastructure. A 24 month contract with 9 months free at £29 a month which works out around £17 is awesome. Was paying Virgin £65 for 500mb download and upload barely reached 30mb. Finally got rid of virgin after 12 or so years 🙂
My deal is actually real though not made up because I think it’s a competition and want to look like the better person, no company is going to give its customers 9 months free service
I was offered 6 months by Lightspeed when I started, 6 yes but 9 not sure on that one.
Ogi missing off this too?
£60 a month, 24 month contract but first 6 months free.
Extra £10 a month for symmetrical speed.
I’m looking forward to 2.5Gbs. I hope the next set of consoles upgrade their ethernet ports.
Uncertain of how this will be beneficial. Whether it’s 1GB or 2.5GB, it holds little significance for gaming beyond a certain threshold. What truly matters is maintaining a low ping and jitter, especially for optimal gaming performance.
@Anon. Except large game updates would be 2.5 times quicker!
The likes of Call of Duty these days have frequent 70 to 100GB patches.
Those are frequent, Bob? That’s ridiculous. Many developers really have completely abandoned even a loose pretence of quality control.
@Bob, I doubt very much if console producers will update the Ethernet anytime soon, it is just not a case of putting a different socket in, and they may have to change a lot more internally. I thought games consoles would update their games when not being used by now.
Even if you had 2.5Gb/s and your games console supported it, doesn’t mean your download will be 2.5 times faster. Servers could be overloaded, for a start.
Anyway, is it really worth paying that amount, just to wait for another 8 minutes, maybe less?
And have 4TB SSD’s as standard Daza…….
Seems every time I turn my Xbox on there is a 800-900MB update. Then when there is game updated then yes it can really help having GB
@Bob,
You are absolutely correct. The download speed is indeed crucial, especially when it comes to game updates. However, whether you have a download speed of 50Mb/sec or 30Mb/sec, it might not make a significant difference for most people, considering the time it takes for the update to install.
A low ping and jitter hold greater value when it comes to online gaming. As others have pointed out, it’s highly likely that the servers of Microsoft and Sony won’t be able to consistently deliver the speed your connection is capable of due to congestion issues.
Heybroadband is missing.
24 Month Contract – £28 / Month for 1Gbit connection.
That’s a temporary offer, good until the end of June. I agree they should be added though.
Actual price is £43/mo for a 24 month contract (fixed price) with 900mbps symmetrical.
Would of been nice to see the avg price of each year with the difference as a percent and actual value.
I’m getting 400-700 Mbps with a 5g SIM card and router, cost is £5.52 a month guaranteed until December 2025.
Yes – of course it is.. I can well believe the speed but the price, hmmm
Thank you, Peter, for sharing. However, I believe you may have overlooked mentioning that it has limited usage. Given my work requirements, I typically download approximately 10 terabytes per month which no Mobile operator would allow or at least they would limit the speed.
I’m trying to emphasise here that while this might be suitable for your use case, it may not be ideal for everyone. Additionally, the coverage is somewhat inadequate in the area where I reside, despite being just a five-minute drive from a large town on the outskirts of London.
Here are the internet speeds I currently experience with different providers:
EE:
Download: 12.8 Mbit
Upload: 5.56 Mbit
Smarty (Three Network):
Download: 2.54 Mbit
Upload: 0.11 Mbit
As you can see, these speeds are insufficient, making a fibre connection necessary for optimal performance.
Why no commenting on fibre in water pipes?
By default we disable the comments on Guest Editorials, although if the author asks for them to be enabled then I’ll happily do that.
Smart move, Mark.
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