Expert Reviews Mobile Network Awards 2025: The results

Expert Reviews reveals the UK’s top mobile networks, as chosen by you
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Published on 26 November 2025

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Mobile network coverage in the UK has never been better, and yet we all know someone – or worse still, are that someone – who struggles to get decent reception. The fact is, no matter how well-equipped your smartphone is, choosing the wrong mobile network provider can leave you in the lurch while your friends bask in surplus 5G.

Instead of simply regurgitating Ofcom statistics and marketing guff to pick the best providers around, we go straight to you, the consumer, to find out which brands are living up to their promises and which are falling short. For our fifth annual Mobile Network Awards, we surveyed over 1,500 UK residents and had them spill the dirt on their providers from soup to nuts – speed, reliability, customer service, value for money, the works. 

So which network provider is best for those on a budget? Which will give you the blazing fast speeds you need to keep your mobile gaming edge? Which will keep you from banging your head against a brick wall when you have to call customer service? And, perhaps most importantly, which is the best pick overall? Read on to find out all this and more in the 2025 Expert Reviews Mobile Network Awards.

Highly Commended: Lebara

We’ve been seeing trends over the past few years that clearly show favour towards no-frills, no-contract SIM plans, so it’s not all that surprising to see Giffgaff emerge as the overall favourite in this year’s awards. This virtual network piggybacks on Three and performed very well across all of our categories, also winning the award for speed and ranking highly for customer service and value for money.

A whopping 92% of respondents were satisfied with the prices offered by Giffgaff and 95% were happy with the speeds. As a one-two combo, being fast and cheap is a recipe for success. Even when things do go wrong, 87% of users were complimentary about the customer service – the second best score overall, behind Tesco Mobile – and 50% were likely to recommend the network to others. 

That might not sound like a massive number but, compared to the competition, it’s a very strong result. The only network to be more recommended is our impressive runner-up – Lebara. This is another virtual network (operating on the Vodafone network, this time) that excels in offering bargain SIM-only deals, and 57% of those surveyed said that they would recommend it to others, while a phenomenal 97% were satisfied with the value. 

Read our 2025 Giffgaff review for more details

Read our 2025 Lebara review for more details

Highly Commended: Sky Mobile

One of the main reasons why Lebara proved to be such strong competition for the overall winner is that it offers incredible value for money. Prices for the rolling 30-day plan start as low as £5/mth and that bargain pricing is clearly resonating with consumers: 66% of those surveyed responded that they were very satisfied with the value offered by Lebara and 31% were recorded as satisfied. Moreover, the remaining 3% were neutral – nobody responded as dissatisfied or very dissatisfied by the value for money. 

Most of the bigger names in mobile networks score relatively low here, so it’s impressive to see Sky Mobile taking the silver. 92% of respondents were satisfied with the value for money, with 45% of them saying that they were very satisfied. Once again, nobody was very dissatisfied here, with only 1% of those surveyed selecting dissatisfied.

Read our 2025 Lebara review for more details

Read our 2025 Sky Mobile review for more details

Highly Commended: Giffgaff

As well as taking the gong for best value, Lebara is also the network that is most likely to be recommended by its users. Considering their overall experience of using the network, 57% of those surveyed said that they would recommend Lebara to others. 

The runner up is Giffgaff, with one in two people confirming that they would recommend it. This is another area in which we see these rolling monthly contract, cheap and cheerful virtual networks outperforming the bigger, more traditional names. For example, Vodafone and Three, the networks that these two winners piggyback off of, scored 23% and a measly 14%, respectively. 

Read our 2025 Lebara review for more details

Read our 2025 Giffgaff review for more details

Highly Commended: Giffgaff

Nobody wants to need customer service but, in case you do, it’s important to know that you won’t have an awful experience. According to our readers, Tesco Mobile is your best bet for helpful and straightforward assistance – and I’m not just talking about this year. This is now Tesco Mobile’s third consecutive win for customer service, with a fantastic 88% of customers responding positively to the survey.

Giffgaff is an extremely close second place, with 87% of respondents being satisfied with the customer service. Even more impressive is that nobody surveyed responded negatively, with 0% for both dissatisfied and very dissatisfied. These are great results for Tesco Mobile and Giffgaff, with no other networks scoring over 80% – the next best result was a three-way tie between Sky Mobile, Vodafone and EE, which all scored 76%.

Read our 2025 Tesco Mobile review for more details

Read our 2025 Giffgaff review for more details

Highly Commended: Sky Mobile

For our survey, reliability was canvassed over three categories: web browsing, streaming and online gaming. Tesco Mobile took the top spot in the latter two categories – with 88% positive responses in both – and was a strong second place for web browsing, with 79% of users being satisfied with the consistency of the service. The average response was 85% positive overall, making Tesco Mobile the only network surveyed to score over 75% in total.

Sky Mobile also performed very well, with 73% positive responses overall and delivering the best results for web browsing, at 80%. Streaming and gaming weren’t quite as strong but still very good, with 71% positive responses for the former and 69% for the latter.

It’s worth noting that the likes of Giffgaff and Lebara – the top two rated mobile networks from this survey – aren’t missing from this section due to being unreliable. The survey limited results here to respondents who use their network for web browsing, streaming and gaming, which simply didn’t return enough responses to represent proportional results. 

Read our 2025 Tesco Mobile review for more details

Read our 2025 Sky Mobile review for more details

Best Mobile Network for Speed: Giffgaff 

Highly Commended: Smarty

We don’t have Kevin Bacon to talk about the UK’s fastest network, so instead we’ve asked users two questions: How satisfied are you with the speed of your data and how confident are you in its ability to maintain said speed when performing demanding tasks?

Giffgaff took the win here by quite some distance, with a total score of 91%. A whopping 95% of respondents were satisfied with the speed of their data but what really secured the win here is that 88% expressed confidence in the reliability of the connection – lightning fast peak speeds aren’t worth spit if it’s slowing to a crawl every other second. 

Once again, the preference towards no-frills virtual networks shows here, with second place going to Giffgaff’s fellow Three network piggybacker, Smarty. Here, we have the same impressive 95% approval rating for the speeds provided but confidence was a little lower than Giffgaff’s, at 79%, bringing the total rating to 87%. So the overall feeling is that it’s just as nippy as Giffgaff but perhaps more prone to periods of slowdown. 

Read our 2025 Giffgaff review for more details

Read our 2025 Smarty review for more details

Best for Multi-user Plans: Tesco Mobile 

Highly Commended: O2

It’s hard to argue with a 100% positive response, so Tesco Mobile takes the win as the best for multi-user plans without contest. 60% of customers responded that they were very satisfied with the service provided to everyone in their multi-user plan – the highest result in this tier by quite some way – and the remaining 40% were still satisfied. Nobody dissatisfied, nobody even on the fence – that’s a stellar endorsement for Tesco Mobile. 

O2 wasn’t far behind either, with an excellent 98% overall positive rating. Again, we have no dissatisfied customers here, with only 2% responding with neutral scores. Of the positive responses, 45% were very satisfied with the service for their multi-user plan and the remaining 53% were satisfied. 

Read our 2025 Tesco Mobile review for more details

Read our 2025 O2 review for more details

Highly Commended: Vodafone

No-frills, no-fuss networks may be the current belles of the ball but there are still plenty of added perks to be found, and our survey concluded that the best of them come from Sky Mobile. More people responded positively about the perks offered here than any other network in the survey, with 50% being satisfied and 45% being very satisfied. 

It’s not hard to see why, either: Sky Piggybank lets you roll-over unused data for up to three years, either using it another month as data or accruing enough to get money off a new phone, and Sky TV customers can stream Sky apps without eating into their data. If you already use Sky for your TV package, there’s a strong incentive to loop your phone into the same ecosystem. 

Coming in second place is Vodafone, with 42% very satisfied respondents and 43% satisfied. Again, you can see the thinking here: Vodafone has several optional extras that augment its data plans, including global roaming, device health checks and choosing a 24-month plan to either Disney+ or Amazon Prime Video to go along with your contract.

Read our 2025 Sky Mobile review for more details

Read our 2025 Vodafone review for more details

Highly Commended: O2

Free roaming is becoming more rare by the year but it clearly remains one of the most important things to users – as evidenced by our two top scorers both offering it. Tesco Mobile’s support for free roaming in 48 countries – including all of the EU and places like Switzerland, Iceland and Norway – earned it the highest number of “very satisfied” responses, at 55%. Add on the 41% who were satisfied and that’s a massive 96% positive results, with only 2% apiece scoring at neutral or dissatisfied.

While Tesco Mobile was far out in front, second place was a particularly tight race, with O2 and Sky Mobile both neck-and-neck at 80% overall rating (after balancing the positive responses against the negatives). O2 offers free EU roaming in 45 countries, however, whereas Sky Mobile includes a small fee. That could be why O2 ended up with more positive responses overall, with 37% being very satisfied and 49% being satisfied. 

Read our 2025 Tesco Mobile review for more details

Read our 2025 O2 review for more details

Highly Commended: Giffgaff

Unsurprisingly, our value king also emerged as the nation’s favourite choice for SIM-only plans. Of the respondents who stated that they had a SIM-only contract, a whopping 96% were satisfied with the value offered by Lebara and 55% said that they would recommend the network to others. Customer service didn’t fare quite as well, with 74% of customers being satisfied with it, but aggregating the three scores had Lebara topping the rankings overall – no doubt due to it getting the best results in both value and recommendations.

Giffgaff is a strong runner-up, with an equally impressive 94% positive responses for value and an excellent 88% satisfaction rating for customer service – the joint-highest result, alongside Tesco Mobile. Only 41% of customers replied that they would recommend the service, however, which knocked it down a couple of points behind Lebara overall.

Read our 2025 Lebara review for more details

Read our 2025 Giffgaff review for more details

Highly Commended: Tesco Mobile

Averaging results across the value, customer service and recommendations categories, Sky Mobile takes the win, earning an overall positive response rating of 76% from customers who have a plan that bundles in a device with their data. Breaking that down, we have a fantastic 96% of customers reporting satisfaction for value, 85% being happy with the customer service and 46% who would recommend the network. 

The latter is the joint-highest result in its category, matching our close runner-up, Tesco Mobile. 88% of users found that the value offered by their contract was satisfactory and 82% had no issues with the customer service, yielding an aggregated overall result of 72%. These two were the only networks to earn over 70% for their total scores, with the next highest result – from EE – landing at 66% overall.

Read our 2025 Sky Mobile review for more details

Read our 2025 Tesco Mobile review for more details

Our survey, conducted in September 2025, targeted a representative sample of 1,527 UK residents aged 18 and over.  

Using a 15-question methodology,our survey captured data on  12 mobile network providers. To ensure the integrity of our analysis, we applied a minimum sample size of 50 respondents, which qualified 10 of these for analysis. 

Analysis Brands:Vodafone, O2, EE, Three, Sky Mobile, VOXI, giffgaff, SMARTY, Lebara, Tesco Mobile, iD Mobile, Plusnet Mobile

Eligible Brands: Vodafone, O2, EE, Three, Sky Mobile, giffgaff, SMARTY, Lebara, Tesco Mobile, iD Mobile

Written By

Reviews writer Ben has been with Expert Reviews since 2021, and in that time he’s established himself as an authority on all things mobile tech and audio. On top of testing and reviewing myriad smartphones, tablets, headphones, earbuds and speakers, Ben has turned his hand to the odd laptop hands-on preview and several gaming peripherals. He also regularly attends global industry events, including the Snapdragon Summit and the MWC trade show.

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