Plans and devices
Right-size the data allowance before comparing UK SIM-only deals, check coverage where you use it, and treat signal or battery problems as diagnoses rather than reasons to buy a new contract.
Start with the decision
Every route starts with the free checks and the trade-offs that narrow the choice.
Diagnose before you buy
Turn video, music, maps and calls into a monthly range before looking at plans.
Ad · Affiliate provider options
Not ranked or exhaustive. Circle Utility does not yet hold enough current price, coverage and service data to rank these providers.
AdMobile
Review the plans and current eligibility offered by 1pMobile.
Circle Utility has not verified a price, allowance, coverage result or plan fit. Check all current details with the provider.
Live price on their site
Check this providerAd — Circle Utility may earn a commission if you use this link. This does not change the price you pay or the order shown.
AdMobile
Review the plans and current eligibility offered by Chattr.
Circle Utility has not verified a price, allowance, coverage result or plan fit. Check all current details with the provider.
Live price on their site
Check this providerAd — Circle Utility may earn a commission if you use this link. This does not change the price you pay or the order shown.
AdMobile
Review the plans and current eligibility offered by Ecotalk.
Circle Utility has not verified a price, allowance, coverage result or plan fit. Check all current details with the provider.
Live price on their site
Check this providerAd — Circle Utility may earn a commission if you use this link. This does not change the price you pay or the order shown.
AdMobile
Review the plans and current eligibility offered by Lyca Mobile.
Circle Utility has not verified a price, allowance, coverage result or plan fit. Check all current details with the provider.
Live price on their site
Check this providerAd — Circle Utility may earn a commission if you use this link. This does not change the price you pay or the order shown.
AdMobile
Review the plans and current eligibility offered by Rewild Mobile.
Circle Utility has not verified a price, allowance, coverage result or plan fit. Check all current details with the provider.
Live price on their site
Check this providerAd — Circle Utility may earn a commission if you use this link. This does not change the price you pay or the order shown.
AdMobile
Review the plans and current eligibility offered by Grade Mobile.
Circle Utility has not verified a price, allowance, coverage result or plan fit. Check all current details with the provider.
Live price on their site
Check this providerAd — Circle Utility may earn a commission if you use this link. This does not change the price you pay or the order shown.
AdMobile
Review the plans and current eligibility offered by Lebara.
Circle Utility has not verified a price, allowance, coverage result or plan fit. Check all current details with the provider.
Live price on their site
Check this providerAd — Circle Utility may earn a commission if you use this link. This does not change the price you pay or the order shown.
AdMobile
Review child-safe / parent-friendly mobile SIM plans and current eligibility offered by ParentShield.
Circle Utility has not verified a price, allowance, coverage result, parental-control feature set or plan fit. Check all current details with the provider. This is not a medical, safeguarding or emergency service.
Live price on their site
Check this providerAd — Circle Utility may earn a commission if you use this link. This does not change the price you pay or the order shown.
AdMobile
Review the phones and current terms offered by TTfone.
Circle Utility has not verified a device fit, price or specification. Check all current details with the provider.
Live price on their site
Check this providerAd — Circle Utility may earn a commission if you use this link. This does not change the price you pay or the order shown.
Awin membership, programme status and link capability rechecked 12 August 2026. Confirm current provider terms before ordering.
Start here. Every other decision on this page depends on it, and it is the one figure nobody is told after the day they sign up.
You have no idea how much mobile data you actually use, or how much you need.
The monthly price is an instalment, not the price. These work out the total, which is the only figure two contracts can honestly be compared on.
A contract is quoted at a monthly price and you want to know what it costs in total.
You cannot tell whether buying a phone and taking a SIM-only plan beats a bundled contract.
Nothing to do with contracts. Both of these usually end somewhere free — a setting, a battery, or a SIM the network will replace for nothing.
Your signal is poor and you do not know whether it is you, your phone or the network.
Your phone is getting old and you do not know whether to fix it or replace it.
Roaming is cheap if it is chosen deliberately and expensive if it is defaulted into. The difference is one number, worked out before you leave.
You are going abroad and cannot work out what using your phone there will cost.
What a realistic month looks like at each allowance size, why the honest answer is a range, and how to find what you actually used.
The activities that dominate a monthly allowance, in order, and the two that account for most of the usage nobody can explain.
What a bundled contract actually bundles, why the comparison is usually made wrongly, and when bundling genuinely wins.
Upfront payments, mid-contract increases, out-of-bundle charges and cashback that has to be claimed — and how to get to one comparable number.
Why a full signal and slow data is the normal case rather than a contradiction, and how to tell congestion from everything else.
What buildings do to mobile signal, why newer buildings are often worse, and the free setting that solves it outright.
Where 5G genuinely helps, where it makes no difference on a phone, and the case where it is slower than the 4G it replaced.
The changes that actually move the number, in order of how much they save and how little you will notice them.
How to compare a repair against a replacement per year of use, and the three cheap explanations that get mistaken for an old phone.
Compare an inclusive allowance, provider pass, pay-as-you-go roaming, travel eSIM and local SIM, then set up a dual-SIM phone safely before travel.
We do not list networks, tariffs or prices, and we do not rank them. Every figure here comes from the contract or the offer you are actually looking at.
We do not hold a table of roaming rates. They change without notice and differ by tariff, so a stale table would be worse than none — you enter the rates from your own contract.
We do not check whether your phone still gets security updates. We cannot verify your model, so we take what you tell us and point you at the manufacturer.
We do not connect to your network or your phone. Nothing is measured, and nothing you enter leaves your browser.
Right-size allowance, coverage and contract shape before opening a provider link.
Separate the handset cost from the airtime deal before you commit.