The best broadband providers in the UK, from our annual survey

• We recommend broadband providers based on the results of our annual customer survey of over 1,500 UK adults.
• Each provider is rated on the speed of the connection, the value for money, reliability and the efficacy of the customer service.
• Based on the results of our latest survey, the best broadband provider in the UK overall is Vodafone. It offers strong performance, cheap full-fibre packages and it scored the highest customer satisfaction rating of all providers in the survey.
• Plusnet came in second, scoring highest for value for money and customer service.

Vodafone is the undisputed winner of this year’s Expert Reviews Broadband Awards survey and our favourite broadband provider for 2026. Across 12 categories, Vodafone picked up six wins and six second place gongs, earning high praise for its speed, bundles and performance when gaming and streaming. It was also named our Most Recommended provider by its customers.

Our annual broadband survey and awards are designed to give you all the crucial information you need to make an informed buying decision. We seek the opinions of thousands of broadband customers from the leading providers so that you know precisely how well they perform. 

Below, you can find out who’s picked up wins in this year’s Expert Reviews Broadband Awards. We’ll also run you through the many different factors you must consider when choosing a broadband provider and the little gotchas to look for, such as the annual price rises that are baked into pretty much every broadband contract these days. 

Read on to find out which broadband providers deserve your custom.

Best broadband provider: At a glance

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	Customer satisfaction	Reliability score	Router supplied	Speed rating	Value rating
Best Buy	Recommended
69%	68%	58%	63%	40%	55%	57%
75%	83%	67%	74%	63%	72%	68%
Power Hub (Wi-Fi 6), Ultra Hub (Wi-Fi 6e/7)	Plusnet Hub 2 (Wi-Fi 5)	BT Smart Hub 2 (Wi-Fi 5)	Smart Hub 7 Plus/Smart Hub 7 Pro (Wi-Fi 7)	Wi-Fi Hub 3 (Wi-Fi 6), Eero 6/Pro 6 mesh (Wi-Fi 6)	Hub 5/Hub 5x (Wi-Fi 6), Hub 4/Hub 3 (Wi-Fi 5)	WiFi Max Hub (Wi-Fi 6), Broadband Hub (Wi-Fi 5)
5.0	4.0	2.0	3.0	1.0	4.0	3.0
5.0	5.0	2.0	4.0	1.0	3.0	3.0
Check prices	Check prices	Check prices	Check prices	Check prices	Check prices	Check prices

How we test broadband providers

Our reviews and buying guide are based on the results of the annual Expert Reviews Broadband Awards survey, as well as coverage and pricing data obtained freely online.

Expert Reviews Broadband Awards survey

This year we surveyed over 1,500 UK residents aged 18 or over, asking them a series of questions about their broadband provider to determine winners across 12 categories. The questions covered topics such as value for money, customer service, speed, reliability, bundles, hardware (ie. routers) and performance while gaming, working from home and streaming. We gathered data on eight broadband providers, of which seven achieved statistical significance (at least 50 individual respondents). Those were:

• BT
• EE
• Plusnet
• Sky
• TalkTalk
• Virgin Media
• Vodafone
• Zen Internet (did not achieve significance)

The results of this survey informed both this buying guide and the star rating awarded in our individual reviews.

The best UK broadband providers in 2026

1. Vodafone: Best broadband provider

best buy

One glance at the list of award winners is enough to confirm why Vodafone claims our overall award in 2026, for the second year in succession. 

It ticks all the key boxes: speed (more than 90% of customers satisfied), value (only narrowly beaten by winner Plusnet) and reliability (again, second to Plusnet). Customer service is decent too, with 86% of customers happy with the service on offer.

Vodafone offers phone and TV bundles with its broadband, and the customers we surveyed were exceedingly happy with the value on offer from those, earning Vodafone another award. It also has the best router equipment of any of the providers on test, rounding off a superb all-round performance. 

Read our full Vodafone review for more details

2. Plusnet: The best value broadband provider

recommended

Plusnet is the first port of call if you’re looking for broadband on a budget. It offers some of the cheapest tariffs out there, but that doesn’t mean making huge compromises on the service itself. 

As well as winning our best value award, Plusnet also picks up the award for best customer service, which is normally one of the first things to suffer when prices are cheap. It’s an award winner for reliability too, shoving ahead of far more expensive rivals.

It’s not the greatest when it comes to raw speed. You won’t find Plusnet offering the multi-gigabit speeds available from rivals such as Vodafone and Sky, nor does it offer the latest and greatest router equipment. But it’s a solid service that won’t let you down.

Read our full Plusnet review for more details

3. BT Broadband: Best broadband provider for families

If you have children in the home, you’ll want to keep them away from the many dark corners of the internet. All of the major broadband providers offer network-level parental controls that allow you to block access to certain categories of websites, such as pornography and gambling sites. 

We surveyed parents to find out which of these filters worked best and 100% of the BT Broadband customers we spoke to were satisfied with the company’s parental controls.

BT’s performance in the rest of our awards categories is best described as middling. It doesn’t excel for speed, value or reliability, but it doesn’t stink the place out, either. Its prices are a little more expensive than stablemate Plusnet’s and its router equipment could urgently do with an update, but if protecting the family is your top priority, BT should be on your shortlist. 

Read our full BT Broadband review for more details

4. EE: Best broadband provider for working from home

Working from home remains almost as ubiquitous as ever, and if you’re one of the millions still enjoying a fully remote or hybrid arrangement, EE’s broadband offering should be high on your list. With an average score of 55% in this category (the highest of the lot), and an impressive 80% of customers happy with their speeds when working from home, EE is certainly a network worth considering among the seven we reviewed this year.

Elsewhere in our survey, EE also produced thoroughly acceptable results, with second-place medals for Streaming, Online Gaming and Bundles. It also scored fairly highly for Value – despite higher prices than many of its rivals – as well as Reliability and overall Likelihood to Recommend. Given the exceptional performance of our leaders Plusnet and Vodafone, EE’s consistency should be commended.

Read our full EE Broadband review for more details

How to choose the best broadband provider for you

Are you in a full-fibre area?

• Full-fibre (or FTTP) broadband promises speeds of over 1Gbits/sec
• Ofcom claims over 80% of British households are eligible

The key to whether you can get the fastest possible speeds is whether you live in an area covered by a full-fibre network.

The good news is regulator Ofcom estimates that well over 80% of British households are within reach of gigabit-capable service, and the full-fibre networks continue to expand, so chances are you can enjoy the fastest speeds – or will be able to soon.

There are a few different providers of full-fibre broadband working in the UK:

• Openreach is the largest, reaching around 63% of homes;
• Virgin Media‘s own fibre network also sits at around 63%;
• CityFibre covers around 30% of homes across the UK;
• Community Fibre is London-centric and covers about 5% of homes

Note that even if the seven major providers we judge in our survey cannot supply you with a full-fibre connection, you may be able to get a faster service elsewhere. 

Increasingly broadband providers are striking deals with more than one fibre network. For example, the award-winning Vodafone and Sky both have deals with Openreach and CityFibre, meaning they can offer faster speeds to a greater chunk of the country than they could do if they relied on Openreach alone (as BT Broadband, EE and Plusnet do). 

What speed of broadband do you need?

• Small households (one or two people) will be fine on 100Mbits/sec
• Large households (four or more people) should look for 500Mbits/sec
• Only the most demanding users need Full-fibre (1Gbits/sec)

It’s very easy to end up ordering a faster broadband connection than you actually need. Companies will always try and talk you into the fastest tariffs, perhaps offering introductory offers that make it cheaper for the first few months, but you can easily find yourself wasting hundreds of pounds per year on a connection faster than your requirements.

For example, if you’re a small household (one or two people) who just uses the internet for basic browsing, email, watching Netflix or iPlayer in the evenings, you really don’t need an internet connection faster than 100Mbits/sec. 

The gigabit (1,000Mbits/sec) or even multigigabit connections being offered today will only really be exploited by large households with several people doing bandwidth-sapping tasks: downloading video games, watching multiple 4K video streams, downloading/uploading large files when working from home. 

However, these top-notch connections can cost upwards of £50/mth, so make sure you’re really going to need those speeds before placing the order, as it’s not easy to downgrade within a contract.  

What kind of router is best?

• Some providers (such as TalkTalk) supply routers that are multiple generations old
• You may lose access to customer support if you buy your own router
• Wi-Fi 7 is the latest standard, so ensure your chosen provider has updated their hardware

The router supplied by your broadband provider is critical to the home internet experience. A poor router can mean Wi-Fi struggling to reach every room in the home and you only getting a small fraction of the speed you’re paying for on your devices. 

There’s a wide range of router equipment supplied by broadband providers. Some are still supplying Wi-Fi 5 routers that are now two generations old and won’t give you the best experience. Others are offering the latest Wi-Fi 7 equipment, although there’s usually a premium to pay for such routers, which are only offered with the fastest gigabit-speed connections.

Make sure to read our reviews carefully to find out which router equipment is supplied by each provider. Many broadband providers don’t support customers who buy their own router equipment, so you could be stuck with whatever they supply, unless you’re technically competent enough to deal with your own Wi-Fi issues.

For the first time this year, we’ve got an award for best broadband provider equipment, which was voted on by customers. 

Do I need a broadband, TV and/or mobile package?

Although the days of broadband/TV/mobile bundles are fading, most providers will still package together different services. These can be cost effective if you’re already subscribing separately, but it’s always worth checking the price of the individual components first, as the bundle deals aren’t always the bargain they might seem.

Broadband providers will also often try and tack on extras, such as “whole-home coverage” or security packages. These can be very expensive and there might be cheaper ways of achieving the same thing. For example, you can often buy Wi-Fi extenders for a one-off fee, rather than paying your provider, say, £10 a month for whole home coverage. Compatibility can be an issue, though, so read reviews carefully.

How do broadband price rises work?

Regulator Ofcom’s new broadband rules prevent providers from imposing inflation-linked price rises. Now, providers are required to state any mid-contract price rises in pounds and pence before you sign up. Most providers list these on their websites at the point of sign-up, so check that small print carefully, and be prepared for your deal price to increase before the contract expires. Some providers don’t impose mid-contract price hikes, so although they may look more expensive to start with, the prices may be better over the two-year term of most deals.

Survey methodology

Our survey, conducted in September 2025, targeted a representative sample of 1,544 UK residents aged 18 and over.  

Across 14 questions, our survey captured data on  8 broadband providers. To ensure the integrity of our analysis, we applied a minimum sample size of 50 respondents, which qualified 7 of these for analysis. 

Analysis Brands:BT, Sky, Virgin Media, Vodafone, Plusnet, TalkTalk, EE, Zen Internet

Eligibile brands: BT, Sky, Virgin Media, Vodafone, Plusnet, TalkTalk, EE

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Written By

Stuart Andrews

Stuart Andrews has been writing about technology and computing for over 25 years and has written for nearly every major UK PC and tech outlet, including PC Pro and the Sunday Times. He still writes about PCs, laptops and enterprise computing, plus PC and console gaming, but he also likes to get his hands dirty with the latest gardening tools and chill out with his favourite movies. He loves to test things and will benchmark anything and everything that comes his way.

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Reviewed By

Barry Collins

Barry Collins has been a technology writer, editor and broadcaster for more than 25 years. He was assistant editor of The Sunday Times’ technology section, editor of PC Pro and has written for more than a dozen different publications and websites over the years. He’s made regular TV and radio appearances as a technology pundit, including on BBC Newsnight, ITV News and Sky News. Now a senior contributor at Forbes.com, he also presents and produces tech-related podcasts.  

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