Vodafone UK Named Best Broadband ISP in Expert Reviews Awards 2026
Consumer website Expert Reviews has published the winners of their annual Best Broadband Awards 2026 event, which surveyed UK consumers in an effort to identify the best Internet Service Providers (ISP) across a range of categories. Overall most of the awards were scooped up by Vodafone, followed by Plusnet.
The results were drawn from fairly small sample of 1,544 UK adults, which was undertaken during September 2025. Respondents were then asked about the performance, value, support, reliability and quality of the service they received etc.
Across the 12 award categories, Vodafone managed to come top in half (6) of them, while Plusnet won 4 and the last two were split between BT and EE. But with a sample size this small, we’d take all the results with a big pinch of salt.
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Expert Reviews Award Winners for 2026
Best Broadband Provider
Winner: VodafoneBest Value Broadband Provider
Winner: PlusNetMost Recommended
Winner: VodafoneBest for Customer Service
Winner: PlusNetBest for Families
Winner: BT BroadbandBest for Speed
Winner: VodafoneMost Reliable
Winner: PlusNetBest for Bundles
Winner: VodafoneBest Provider Equipment
Winner: PlusNetBest for Streaming
Winner: VodafoneBest for Online Gaming
Winner: VodafoneBest for Working From Home
Winner: EE
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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It would be interesting to know how they can weight such a small sample to ensure fairness for snaller providers. Without a sample of at least 1000 customers for each ISP it seems impossible this could be a fair survey.
This – and I will say certainly not best for speed, refused to offer me 1.6! – long story short wouldn’t order an ONT upgrade because ‘not in my area’. proven wrong as soon as EE went live with zyxel ont, voda site now offers 1.6 again….
The ONT makes no difference to whether you can get a 1.6 service or not.
@Cognizant of course it does the OP Might only have had a ONT with a 1Gb port so would be impossible to use on a 1.6Gb service and if VF refused to arrange a ONT swap / upgrade that means the ONT made a difference in service available
Best provider equipment, Plusnet? They give you a rebadged BT Smart Hub 2. Nothing fundamentaly wrong with the Smart Hub 2 but it’s a 7 year old design now & hardly cutting edge. Don’t think a pinch of salt is nearly enough, more like the whole bottle.
7-year-old that works fine as long as it can connect in the first place. The Plusnet version is better than Bt, it is not full of bloat for a start.
People will want Wi-Fi 7, even if they don’t have any equipment to take advantage of it, because they have been told Wi-Fi 7 is better.
These awards do provide a little bit of laughter though. So there is a bit of goodness from them
Be interesting to see how Plusnet score next time after the Greenby email debacle that’s still ongoing.
Lots of complaints on the forum from customers using Plusnet email addresses.
Vodafone are regularly one of the most complained about providers. Not to mention people having ping problems, routing issues and people describing Vodafone hardware as being absolutely rubbish.
I had CityFibre installed recently and I had heard enough horror stories with the likes of Vodafone that I decided to go with Sky, which if anyone is interested, seems to be going quite well so far.
I hear Plusnet are pretty good though, even if their hardware is a little dated and they don’t offer as many services as they used to.
I’ve been with Plusnet about 4 months and so far pretty good, but they are now unashamedly a bare bones service. When I switched to them from BT it was a toss up between them & Vodafone and I’d heard a couple of horror stories about the latter.
Sky have the fastest speeds and the router is phenomenal, Quad-Core beamforce creating 4 channels which measure device usage and automatically add to the right channels.
They have City Fibre lines which are the top rated fibre lines for speed and kevelar protection, and bundle deals are phenomenal too – I got 1gig (gig up and down) sky sports, sky kids, ultra HD, whole home coverage, add free subscription upgrades, utv package for just £71 for broadband and TV.
I’m telling you now, it’s absolutely banging, I’m extremely happy with everything Sky have done
LOL this is the funniest thing I’ve read in ages.
Who are these so called “Experts”?
Who ever is giving out the biggest back handlers lol
1,544, that is it then, we all know that Vodafone must be the best, I will change to it right now.
LOL
Nah, I don’t think so, I will stay where I am.