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- Simple, low-cost plans
- Cheap high-data deals
- Good speeds
- Free EU roaming
- Average customer service
- No extras, if that’s what you want
Owned and operated by the same company as Three, Smarty has now become part of the VodafoneThree joint venture, alongside Three, Vodafone and Vodafone’s own budget offshoot, Voxi. Since its launch in 2017 it has made waves as one of the leading no-frills networks, winning our overall Best Mobile Network award in 2022 and awards in 2023 and 2024. This year it isn’t quite so lucky, but it still has plenty to celebrate, coming third in the Most Recommended category and second for Fastest Mobile Network. Our survey places it as the fourth best network overall, while it’s nearly always in the fourth or fifth position in our other award categories.
Customers seem to like Smarty’s combo of straightforward plans and low prices. 54% of those we surveyed would actively promote it, while only 9% would recommend potential users look elsewhere. That leaves a Net Promoter Score of 45%, putting Smarty ahead of every other network except Giffgaff and Lebara, including established awards favourites Tesco Mobile and Sky Mobile.
Smarty review: What do you get?
Smarty keeps things simple with an eight-strong line-up of voice, data and text plans for phones, plus five data-only plans for laptops, mobile routers and tablets. A trio of Data Discount plans give you money back for unused data. All the voice plans come with unlimited minutes and texts and run on a 30-day rolling contract, meaning you can cancel at any time or upgrade or downgrade from month to month.
Smarty promises no annual price rises, and if you run out of data, you can add more on for just £1 per GB. You don’t get any tempting extras, but also no catches or long-term commitments. The only thing to watch for is that you can’t call certain premium numbers, or service numbers (with an 084 or 087 prefix) without buying an out-of-plan add-on to cover the cost of the call.
What’s more, the plans are very competitively priced. The voice plans start at just £6 with 5GB of data and rise to an Unlimited data package for £20/mth. You can have 100GB for £10 or 150GB for £15, and Smarty often goes big on data-boosting offers that might give you 50GB for the price of 16GB or 250GB for the price of 100GB.
This year, Smarty didn’t get a win or a runners-up place for value, but it only lost out to Giffgaff and Sky Mobile by a single percentage point. 63% of Smarty users told our survey that they were very satisfied with the value for money of their service, while a further 32% were satisfied. Only 4% of users said they were dissatisfied on this point.
Smarty review: Customer service
Last year we noted that Smarty was lagging behind the leaders when it came to customer service. That’s still the case this year, with Smarty somewhere in the middle of the pack, far behind winner Tesco Mobile and runners-up Giffgaff and Sky Mobile. 80% of Smarty’s customers who’d complained to Smarty said they were satisfied with the way the network handles complaints, but 6% were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. You can’t please everyone, but that doesn’t mean that Smarty couldn’t try a little harder.
Ofcom doesn’t currently cover Smarty in its Comparing customer service annual report, so we’re unable to drill down into how many complaints Smarty gets in proportion to its customer base, or how quickly Smarty picks up incoming support calls.
Smarty review: Coverage, reliability and speed
Smarty runs on top of Three’s host network and now has access to Vodafone’s as well, yet it actually did better than either when we asked its customers whether they were satisfied with the speed of their service. In fact, 95% of Smarty users told us they were satisfied, while 82% said that they were confident or very confident that the network could maintain high speed connectivity when performing demanding tasks, like video streaming or downloading large files, while in a busy urban area. This makes Smarty the runner-up in the Fastest Mobile Network category, just behind Giffgaff.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get enough responses to score the network for reliability, though it’s worth noting that Three and Vodafone had the worst and second-worst scores in this awards category.
Independent speed tests from RootMetrics show that while both Three and Vodafone lag behind EE on coverage and speed, both still offer fast connections, particularly on 5G. Here Three has the second-fastest UK-wide median download speed and the fastest 5G connection for those users in the top 5% for speed, with some tests showing connection speeds over 900Mbps. Between them, Three and Vodafone plan to cover 71% of the UK population with 5G by the end of 2025, and 99% of the UK population by 2030.
Smarty review: Roaming
All Smarty plans include free EU roaming subject to a 12GB fair use limit. If you want to use your full allowance you can, but it will cost you £3 per day or £7 for three days. Outside of the EU you can buy out of plan add-ons on a pay as you go basis, giving you £5 to £15 of extra credit you can spend on international calls, texts and data. This doesn’t come cheap, though, with calls costing between 50p and £2.50 per minute to make and 5p to £1 to receive, and data costing anywhere between 10p and £5 per MB, depending on your destination.
Smarty didn’t reach the threshold for responses to be included in our Roaming category, but it’s a good option in the EU, but not so great outside it.
Smarty review: Other features, services and spending caps
As a no-frills network, Smarty doesn’t go big on free entertainment subscriptions, perks or any of that stuff. Spending caps aren’t useful when you’re effectively paying for your calls and data upfront, even while you’re away.
The one thing Smarty does offer is group plans, where two to eight of you, friends or family, can join together in one group plan, with the group owner paying full whack but every additional member adding to the discount. Split the cost equally, and everybody saves. For instance, five people could have unlimited data for £80/mth rather than £100, or £40GB of Data for £45 rather than £50. You can even mix and match plans within the same group.
Given this, it’s a shame that Smarty didn’t meet our eligibility threshold for the Multi-User Plans category.
Smarty review: Verdict
You don’t get all the bells and whistles with Smarty, but it’s hard to grumble when you’re getting all the basics at such low prices. Its only real problem is that Giffgaff, this year’s overall winner, matches it for value, while doing better in our survey on customer service and satisfaction. It’s still worth checking Smarty out if you’re looking for a simple, low-cost plan. At the worst, you’re not tied into anything should an even better deal come along.
