Best broadband deals 2023: Get SUPERB savings from the best UK internet service providers

It’s important to keep your eyes peeled for the best broadband deals. All of the internet service providers (ISPs), whether they’re big or small, are jostling for your attention by including eye-boggling download speeds and extra goodies such as gift cards. But which one should you pick? We’ve scoured the web to bring you the best broadband deals on the market.

You’ll first need to consider your requirements: do you live in a house full of gamers? Or do you just want a reliable connection for your home office? After all, there’s not much point paying for mounds of megabits or extra features you’ll never use.

To help you find the best broadband deal for your needs, we’ve rounded up the best below in a handy comparison tool – just type in your postcode to see how much money you could save on your current tariff.

Compare the best broadband deals in your area – LIVE!

The best broadband providers in the UK

1. Plusnet: Simply the best ISP

Plusnet now has a remarkable track record in the Expert Review Best Broadband Awards, having won the crown for two years in a row.

As well as winning our overall prize, it won the individual awards for customer service, contact centre and reliability, as well as a highly commended award for value. In short, nobody came close to touching it. That’s why 78% of Plusnet customers we surveyed said they would be happy to recommend the broadband provider to friends and family.

Elsewhere, 74% of Plusnet customers said they were satisfied with its customer service, and even when things do go wrong, the company’s contact centre has a good record of sorting out problems. Some 81% of the customers we surveyed said they were satisfied with how the contact centre dealt with their issues.

Reliability is another of Plusnet’s strong suits, being the only provider of the eight major ISPs in our survey to score more than 80% for the reliability of its connections.

Plusnet might not have the fastest connections on the market, but it delivers a friendly, reasonably priced service that customers can clearly rely on.

2. Now Broadband: The best ISP for value

Now Broadband won our Best Value award for 2023, as well as finishing in second place overall. This Sky-owned broadband provider is tightly focused on the budget end of the broadband market and you will do well to find a provider offering cheaper tariffs, with deals starting from only £20/mth.

In fact, at the time of updating, there wasn’t a single Now Broadband tariff with a monthly cost higher than £24/mth. It’s not hard to see why 71% of the company’s customers were satisfied with the value for money on offer.

It’s worth noting that Now Broadband doesn’t yet offer full-fibre connections, which are the faster lines with the more premium price tags. If you want download speeds in the hundreds of megabits per second, you will have to look to providers such as Virgin Media.

The flexibility of Now Broadband’s contracts is also worth noting. The company offers deals on one-month rolling contracts, which is very unusual. Most providers want to tie you down for 18 or 24 months. That could make Now Broadband the perfect choice for students or anyone in short-term lets.

3. BT: Fast and generous with freebies

Why should you go for BT? In a word: speed. The ISP finished in second place behind Virgin Media in the Best Speed category of the Best Broadband Awards. In fact, an impressive 68% of the BT customers we surveyed said they were satisfied with their speeds.

This was backed up by our most recent review of the service, where the variable stopping BT from being the best ISP overall was its lacklustre customer service. Still, it’s by no means alone in this respect as other big providers struggle when it comes to support.

There’s a wide array of BT broadband deals to suit every budget and bandwidth requirement, which often come with generous gift cards worth up to £50.

4. Virgin Media: Blistering speeds and regular discounts

In our review, we praised Virgin Media’s class-leading speeds (you can go up to a whopping 1,130Mbits/sec), while highlighting its lacklustre customer service ratings – although, again, it’s hardly alone in that respect.

That was backed up by the Best Broadband Awards, where Virgin Media once again scooped the Best Speed prize after 74% of its customers said they were satisfied with their download rates. If you’ve got a need for speed, it’s the one to pick.

How to choose the best broadband deal for you

Coverage

When it comes to getting the best broadband, location makes a big difference. The speed and reliability of both fibre and ADSL connections will depend on the quality of the line between you and the nearest streetside cabinet and the distance between your home and the local exchange. Faster full-fibre connections may or may not be available, depending on whether the necessary cabling has been installed in your area. This makes checking your coverage essential, but we’ve made the process as easy for you as possible: simply enter your postcode in the live widget above and you’ll see the available in your neck of the woods.

Contract length

Some broadband contracts still last 12 months, but ISPs are increasingly trying to push new customers towards 18-month or two-year deals. That might be fine if you’re happy with the service, but if you want to jump ship to a faster or cheaper provider, you could be looking at a long wait.

However, Ofcom regulations mean you can now back out of your contract if your provider fails to deliver a promised minimum speed and most providers will allow you to back out of your contract within the first month if you’re not getting what you pay for.

Lifetime costs

All ISPs will bill you on a monthly basis, but if you’re comparing different packages it’s smart to tally up how much you will pay in total over the course of the contract, including any upfront setup fee.

If you’re shopping around for a new ISP, review prices right up until the minute where you sign up. The market is fluid and deals frequently come along that can dramatically reduce the cost of certain contracts or see you get a higher speed for the same price as a lower-cost service.

Keep an eye on what happens after your initial contract term ends, too. Some ISPs hike the price up after the first year or 18 months, sometimes inflating the monthly charge. This is often negotiable, though, if you phone them up and say you’re planning to move to a different provider. If they won’t budge on the price, find an alternative.

Speeds

ISPs are obliged to advertise average download speeds for their internet packages. These give you a good idea of which packages are faster than others but it doesn’t tell you much about how consistent or reliable the service is.

This allows us to see how the different providers stack up across the board via our handy tool above. Just remember that the speed data from the Ofcom survey refers to the connection speed between the ISP and your router – if your laptop or smartphone is connected over Wi-Fi, that could slow things down.

How do we track down the very best broadband deals? At Expert Reviews, we put a lot of thought into the offers we recommend and want to get the most for your money. We’ve outlined our full deal-hunting strategy in an article, which you can read by clicking on this link.