Starlink Launch Cheaper £55 Lite 250Mbps Broadband Plan in UK
Good news. SpaceX’s Starlink internet service, which reflects a mega constellation of ultrafast broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), has quietly launched a new “Residential Lite” package for consumers in the UK that drops the price of their unlimited usage plan to just £55 per month and offers speeds capped at up to 250Mbps.
Starlink currently has around 9,100 satellites in orbit (c.5,600 are v2 / V2 Mini) – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km. Residential customers in the UK usually pay from £75 a month, plus £299 for hardware (currently free for many areas) on the ‘Standard Residential’ unlimited data plan (kit price may vary due to different offers) directly from Starlink, which promises UK latency times of 26-33ms, downloads of up to 400Mbps and uploads of c.15-35Mbps. Cheaper, albeit more restrictive (data capped), options also exist for roaming users (e.g. £50 per month for 50 GigaBytes of data).
However, we recently reported that Starlink seemed to be experimenting with a more affordable package in the USA (here), which we indicated could soon be coming to the UK; albeit probably not in an identical form to the USA as Starlink tends to structure their packages differently between countries (due to differences in ground stations, capacity / spectrum allocations, coverage etc.).
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The good news today is that Starlink appears to have just refreshed their main unlimited residential packages and launched a more affordable option. This suddenly makes the service much more attractive to the mass market, although they do state that it’s currently only available in “select areas” (we’ve yet to find a UK location where it isn’t available).
New Starlink Plans for Unlimited Data
Residential Lite – 250Mbps
(Average peak hour download speeds of 175 Mbps)£55 per month
£0 hardware
£19 shippingTypical Speeds for this Package:
Download: 80-200 Mbps
Upload: 15-35 MbpsResidential – 400Mbps+
(Average peak hour download speeds of 250 Mbps)£75 per month
£0 hardware
£19 shippingTypical Speeds for this Package:
Download: 135-305 Mbps
Upload: 20-40 Mbps*Typical speeds are calculated globally and represent the 20th to 80th percentile of real user data. Speeds may vary based on your location.
The move doesn’t just reflect the ongoing enhancement of Starlink’s network, but it could also potentially be seen as an early shot toward staving off future competition from Amazon’s Leo service, which is due to launch a consumer package sometime later in 2026. But unlike Amazon, SpaceX can leverage the advantages of a more mature network via competitive pricing. Credits to Stewart on our forum for spotting the change (here).
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Not available in West London – I can only see the £75/m package. Plus to add insult, there is a £195 one-time demand surcharge!
Yes, because they don’t want you to get it, because you’re in London LOL. Why would you get Starlink in London.
@Tom
Maybe you live in a part of London where you can’t get a decent alternative? I know someone whose only landline option is FTTC and in the summer that does have issues.
Yep – it sounds ridiculous, but we only get 50Mbps here. And I know around the corner they only get ADSL2 speeds.
The alt-nets have been slow to install in London. Community Fibre are obviously the largest, but they don’t do everywhere and have stopped building. The VM cable network is very old, and skipped a lot of areas.
So we’re left waiting for Openreach to finish up. But they didn’t prioritise London for some reason.
why when I get nearly 3 times the speed for one third the cost via 5g
Because it’s obviously not for the those like you that can….
Well, somewhat obviously, then it’s not the right product for you. However, your situation is not experienced by the entire country. Not by a long chalk.
I can get 500Mbps on 1p/EE if I walk 300m uphill. At home, it’s band 21 only and not libe-of-sight, so 2-3 Mbps, about the same speed as DSL.
So Starlink IS the right product for me – although finding a dish location was challenging thanks to the topography.
So, that is “why”.
It’s moving in the right direction.
The main use if this kind if service, is for the 1% or so, of people in the UK that are likely to remain stuck on ADSL or slower, for the foreseeable future, with no access to 5G either.
If they can a package for around £30-£35, they’ll be on to something.
I have had Virgin in for year and it’s been great but they’re wanting upwards of £50ppm now and I’m getting sick of playing the “I’m not happy with your pricing” game every year to try and keep it at a minimum (would be £70+ for 500mb otherwise).
Until now they know I’ve had no alternative than ADSL and have been milking it, this kind of pricing from Spacex will give me real leverage for once.
Rural Hampshire, currently on VDSL 20 down 2 up. Only offered the standard £75/mo package with a demand surcharge.
Promising if they extend it though…
PO20 9xx postcode only has the £75 option ATM
Also includes a one time demand surcharge of £195!!!
Currently three months into a 12 month Residential plan that came with free equipment. I’ll see if I can change to the new rate though probably unlikely until the end of the 12 months – shame!
You can but they will charge you £120 I think. I have it and the speeds are anything from 110-350 I see little difference in performance just the price.
I’m in a rural area.
I do have 4g and 5g. However I find both to be extremely slow. Probably due to contention, distance and how the mast connects back to the main network. It seems to be way slower than FTTC. I see a nice strong signal and can see a very nice connection speed using the usual apps, but trying to read emails or perform simple browsing is a painful.
I’m unlikely to get FTTP any time soon.
At the moment FTTC is just about liveable, but I have to consider when I upload data carefully and that’s now becoming a bottle neck.
I’ve considered Starlink several times now. My main hesitation is that there are too many tall trees nearby blocking a large part of the sky.
However the cost of a terrestrial service with 4g backup is not reducing, only increasing in price. While Starlink speed is improving with the price lowering.
Ruralish Hampshire near Andover and signed up to lite with free installation. Currently get good FTTC but believe we’ve been de-scoped from the Cityfibre contract so giving this ago. Even if we averaged out at 120-150 it’s be a little below double what we get now, for about half as much more than we pay currently.
I was surprised to see this article as I’ve had Residential Lite since April. I don’t know when it was introduced in my area I just noticed it in the app one day. It’s been great. When I had friends over in the summer they had concurrent streaming and video meetings going on without issue.