nPerf Name EE and Three UK as Fastest Mobile Broadband Networks for 2026
French internet connection benchmarking firm nPerf has this morning published the results from their annual 2026 crowdsourced study into UK mobile broadband (4G, 5G) performance. The results see both EE and Three UK being named as delivering the country’s “best Mobile Internet performances“.
The latest nPerf study (PDF) is based on masses of tests carried out – between January and December 2025 – exclusively by customers of the various mobile network operators, using tools on both nPerf’s website and via their dedicated mobile testing apps for Android and iOS. The results are said to reflect “users in real conditions” from across the United Kingdom, although they only include the major national operators with a test share above 5%.
However, there are caveats to this sort of data, such as the fact that it could be impacted by any limitations of the devices being used, which hampers the ability to adopt a common type of hardware in order to establish a solid baseline of performance. But those caveats are shared by all operators in the study.
Advertisement
Overall, EE and Three UK were both top of the pack and virtually neck and neck for performance. The United Kingdom’s mobile internet sector displays an average score of 78,222 nPoints. EE and Three UK share the leadership positions with 86,470 and 84,993 nPoints respectively, dominating across download speed (both exceeded 110Mbps in download speeds), upload speed, and latency.
By comparison, Vodafone scored 74,892 points, while O2 once again found itself at the bottom of yet another mobile performance study with a score of just 66,557 points. The full results can be found below, which includes a second set of results for 5G-only connections (Three UK pulls out in front on that one).
2026 nPerf UK Mobile Benchmark (All Connections)
Advertisement
2026 nPerf UK Mobile Benchmark (5G-only Connections)
One other thing to consider above is that Vodafone and Three UK began to merge their networks during the latter half of 2025. This is a slow multi-year process, but it may well start to impact the results for next year’s study.
“The UK mobile market demonstrates strong competition at the top, with both leaders delivering comprehensive performance and user experiences that benefit from high-speed connectivity across all key indicators“, states Sébastien de Rosbo, CEO of nPerf.
Advertisement
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.
« The Curious Case of Openreach’s Vanishing UK FTTP Broadband Coverage UPDATE
Three and EE are the only networks with IPv6, which means that any traffic to v6-capable sites will bypass the CGNAT gateways needed for legacy traffic. This will have some impact on performance and likely a contributing factor to their higher scores.
As someone who’s used all four of these networks recently I 100% agree with their findings!
EE is without a doubt the best network for service in this country which is a shame as I refuse to pay their eye watering prices so opt for an MVNO. It has been known to be utterly rubbish in some areas likely due to congestion.
Three 5G is excellent, but their 4G service can suffer in some places due to congestion, although this has been improving a lot recently there are still places where absolutely nothing will load.
Vodafone, well it’s the only network I’ve used in the last 5 years that still swaps over to EDGE in built up areas (not good!) – It is however the only service I’ve used that does actually keep working in congested areas, all the others just stop working for data completely.
O2… Well I lasted about an hour on O2 as I was getting speeds of around 0.03Mb (slower than Dial-Up!!) and in built up areas it will refuse to work at all.
I’ve also tried the big four and here’s my ranking:
Outdoors: EE > Vodafone > O2 >>>>>>>>> Three
Indoors: Vodafone > O2 >>>>>>>>> EE > Three
I left EE after four years and I’m not going back. Final straw was that they didn’t support HD calling abroad.