We priced a single 7-day trip across the four major UK networks and a SIMOVO eSIM, for ten of the most popular destinations. The same week of mobile data costs anywhere from £0 to £56 - and most travellers have no idea which until the bill lands.
Data collected 7 August 2026 · All prices in GBP, taken directly from each provider's published rates.
Key findings
- On a 7-day trip, the cost of mobile data on a UK network ranges from £0 to £56 for the same week, depending only on which network you are with, where you go, and if you are on a pay monthly plan.
- A SIMOVO unlimited 7-day eSIM is cheaper than both Vodafone and Three in all 10 destinations tested on pay monthly.
- In Japan, a SIMOVO eSIM costs £18 for 7 days versus £42-£56 on every UK network (pay monthly) - a saving of up to £37 on a single trip.
- Three of the four major UK networks - EE, Vodafone and Three - have reintroduced daily charges for EU roaming. Only O2 still includes it (for customers who signed up after summer 2021).
- On EE, a pay-monthly traveller outside the EU who buys no roaming pass gets no mobile data at all; voice calls fall back to £2.46 per minute.
- Across 10 representative trips, SIMOVO totals £142 against a four-network average of almost £300 on pay monthly - that’s more than 50% less.
- Japan is the most expensive mainstream destination on a UK network: EE charges £8 a day with no weekly pass (pay monthly), so a week costs £56 in data passes alone.
Why this matters
The era of the phone that just works abroad is quietly ending. After Brexit removed the EU guarantee of surcharge-free roaming, three of the UK four largest networks brought daily EU charges back: On pay monthly contracts, that’s EE at £2.72 a day, Vodafone at £2.75 a day, and Three at £2.75 a day on its entry plans (if you signed up or upgraded after 18th December 2025 - it is £2 a day otherwise).
Only O2 still includes EU roaming up to 25GB (unless you bought an EE, Vodafone, or Three plan before a certain date) - and even that has strings attached, as we explain below.
For long-haul travel the numbers are far steeper, and far less visible. Most people discover what their network charges in Japan or the USA only after they have landed, switched their phone on, and started a clock running at up to £8 a day. This report puts the actual, current numbers side by side so the choice is made before departure, not after the bill.
The headline comparison
The table below shows the cheapest published way to get usable data for a 7-day trip on each network on pay monthly plans - the best daily charge, pass or bolt-on available - against the SIMOVO unlimited 7-day eSIM.
Please note, costs are based on basic advertised rates for customers with basic pay monthly plans on each of the four major UK networks. Rates vary, for example, if using Pay As You Go. Rates may also vary depending on the date you registered your plan, which is noted in footnotes. Always check your network’s fine print if you are unsure.
| Destination | EE | O2 | Vodafone | Three | SIMOVO | Cheapest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spain | £16.50* | £0.00 | £16.00** | £12.00*** | £11.00 | O2 |
| France | £16.50* | £0.00 | £16.00** | £12.00*** | £14.00 | O2 |
| Italy | £16.50* | £0.00 | £16.00** | £12.00*** | £11.00 | O2 |
| Greece | £16.50* | £0.00 | £16.00** | £12.00*** | £11.00 | O2 |
| Portugal | £16.50* | £0.00 | £16.00** | £12.00*** | £11.00 | O2 |
| USA | £30.00 | £49.00 | £56.00** | £30.00*** | £17.00 | SIMOVO |
| Japan | £56.00 | £49.00 | £56.00** | £42.00*** | £18.00 | SIMOVO |
| Thailand | £30.00 | £49.00 | £56.00** | £42.00*** | £18.00 | SIMOVO |
| Turkey | £30.00 | £49.00 | £56.00** | £42.00*** | £5.00 | SIMOVO |
| UAE | £30.00 | £49.00 | £56.00** | £42.00*** | £26.00 | SIMOVO |
Carrier figures: cheapest published 7-day pass or bolt-on for basic pay monthly packages. SIMOVO: unlimited 7-day single-country eSIM (2GB/day high-speed, then unlimited). Sources listed at the end.
* EE pay monthly customers with plans that started before 7th July, 2021 have the European destinations listed covered in their allowances. The network also offers add-ons such as Roam Further and Roaming Inclusive Extra, along with Full Works and Max plans, which can affect coverage. Full details are available on EE’s website.
** Vodafone offers inclusive coverage up to 25GB for the European destinations listed if you bought a plan on or before 11th August 2021, and costs vary by destination otherwise. Full details are available on Vodafone’s website.
*** Three charges £2.75 per day in Europe and £8 per day elsewhere in the world unless you joined before 1st October 2021, when these rates are inclusive. Daily roaming charges may also vary depending on your contract and when you registered. Certain tariffs, such as the Complete and Value plans, include some roaming fees in customer allowances. The prices listed cover the basic Pay Monthly rate for seven days of the network’s Go Roam pass, which frees up 12 GB of your Pay Monthly allowance to use in specific zones. You must top up with data thereafter. Full details are available on Three’s website.
The pattern is consistent. Against Vodafone - which charges a flat £56 for a week of long-haul data - SIMOVO is cheaper in every single destination, by as much as £50 on a single trip. Where SIMOVO does not take the top spot, it is beaten only by O2’s inclusive EU roaming and Three’s Go Roam tariff for France.
How much you could save
| Destination | SIMOVO | 4-network average | Saving vs average | Saving vs dearest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spain | £11.00 | £11.13 | £0.13 | £5.50 |
| France | £14.00 | £11.13 | -£2.87 | £2.50 |
| Italy | £11.00 | £11.13 | £0.13 | £5.50 |
| Greece | £11.00 | £11.13 | £0.13 | £5.50 |
| Portugal | £11.00 | £11.13 | £0.13 | £5.50 |
| USA | £17.00 | £41.25 | £24.25 | £39.00 |
| Japan | £18.00 | £50.75 | £32.75 | £38.00 |
| Thailand | £18.00 | £50.75 | £32.75 | £38.00 |
| Turkey | £5.00 | £50.75 | £45.75 | £51.00 |
| UAE | £26.00 | £50.75 | £24.75 | £30.00 |
| All 10 trips | £142.00 | £299.99 | £157.90 | - |
Buy a SIMOVO eSIM for each of these ten trips and you would pay £142. Pay the four-network average each time and you would pay £299.99 - £157.90 more for the same ten weeks of data.
Where a SIMOVO eSIM comes out ahead
On these five destinations, a SIMOVO eSIM is the cheapest option in the whole study. Tap through to the eSIM for your trip:
What each network actually charges
EE
EE includes EU roaming for a £2.72 daily charge, or £16.50 for a weekly pass for customers who joined or upgraded on or after 7th July, 2021. Long-haul, it splits the world into zones: the USA, Thailand, Turkey and the UAE sit in ROW Zone 1 at £30 for a 7-day pass - which is competitive. Japan is the outlier: it falls in ROW Zone 3, which has no weekly pass at all, only an £8-a-day option. A week in Japan on EE therefore costs £56 in data passes before you make a single call. Crucially, outside the EU, EE provides no mobile data whatsoever unless you buy a pass - and voice falls back to £2.46 a minute.
O2
O2 is the only major UK network still including EU roaming at no extra charge up to a limit of 25GB, which is why it shows £0 across the five EU destinations. But free deserves scrutiny - see the next section. Outside its Europe Zone, O2 charges a flat £7 a day through its Travel Bolt On, which covers the USA, Japan, Thailand, Turkey and the UAE at £49 for a week.
Vodafone
For customers on a plan bought on or after 11th August 2021, Vodafone charges £2.75 a day in its Europe zone (or £16 for an 8-day pass), and £8 a day everywhere else that matters - the USA, Japan, Thailand, Turkey and the UAE all land at £56 for a week. It is, alongside Three, the most expensive option for long-haul travel in this study.
Three
Three’s Go Roam packages start from £12 for seven days for European destinations and scale up to £42 for the same period for many international regions. The add-ons allow existing Pay Monthly customers to use 12 GB of their allowances while they are abroad. Otherwise, daily charges and/or top-ups apply. As mentioned in the data above, rates can and do vary depending on when you registered, and the plan you’re registered with, so check the fine print carefully.
What the O2 free roaming really means
The O2 £0 in Europe is real, but it is not a gift, and it is far narrower than it looks. Four things every traveller should know:
It is paid for by everyone. Included roaming is recovered across the entire O2 customer base. The millions of customers who rarely leave the UK are subsidising the minority who travel often - you only come out ahead if you are a frequent traveller.
It is Europe-only, and capped. The £0 applies solely inside the O2 Europe Zone and stops at 25GB. It is not a worldwide benefit.
It disappears the moment you go long-haul. Leave the Europe Zone - for the USA, Japan, Thailand, Turkey, or the UAE, for example - and O2 charges £7 a day.
O2 is the last network doing it. EE, Vodafone and Three have all reintroduced EU daily charges. The O2 inclusion is a competitive loss-leader, not the market norm.
This is the real distinction. Network roaming - free or not - is something you pay for every month, whether or not you ever board a plane. A SIMOVO eSIM costs the same whether your UK SIM is a £60 contract or a £6 SIM-only deal, and you only pay on the weeks you actually travel.
The hidden cost: doing nothing
The most expensive roaming mistake is not choosing the wrong pass - it is choosing none. On EE, for example, switching your phone on in the USA or Asia without a pass gets you no data at all and £2.46-a-minute calls. Across every network, the traveller who assumes their UK allowance simply follows them abroad is the one most exposed to bill shock - which is precisely the ignorance this report is named for.
Where the networks still win - and why we are telling you
A study that claimed SIMOVO was cheapest everywhere would not survive contact with a journalist's own phone bill, so here is the honest picture. The O2 included-EU roaming beats SIMOVO across the five European destinations, and there are pre-2022 plans where some roaming data is already included.
The SIMOVO advantage is sharpest, however, where it matters most for the unprepared traveller: long-haul destinations on the three networks that charge full price for them, and anywhere a customer would otherwise pay £8 a day.
Methodology
Scenario. One traveller, on a standard Pay Monthly contract taken today, on a 7-day trip, needing usable mobile data for the whole trip.
Carrier basis. The cheapest published 7-day option for pay monthly customers - daily charge, weekly pass or travel bolt-on - for each network and destination.
SIMOVO basis. The unlimited 7-day single-country eSIM (2GB a day at high speed, then unlimited at a reduced speed), chosen as the closest like-for-like to the networks' unlimited or full-allowance passes.
Destinations. Spain, France, Italy, Greece and Portugal (EU), plus the USA, Japan, Thailand, Turkey and the UAE (long-haul) - high-volume UK outbound destinations spanning EU and long-haul.
Currency and dates. All figures in GBP. EE, Vodafone, O2, Three and SIMOVO collected live on 7 August 2026. Every figure is taken directly from the provider - no third-party or reseller pricing is used - so the study is fully reproducible.
Conclusion
The roaming market has quietly split in two: networks that charge you every month for a benefit you may rarely use, and pay-as-you-travel data you buy only when you need it. For European city breaks on O2, the included roaming is genuinely hard to beat. But for long-haul travel - and for anyone on EE, Vodafone or Three - a SIMOVO eSIM is cheaper in every destination we tested, by as much as £51 on a single week. The one thing that is never cheap is finding out the hard way.
Sources (all provider-direct, collected 7 August 2026): EE Plan Price Guide (eff. 31 March 2026) and live data from roaming guides; O2 Using your phone abroad and O2 Travel Bolt On pages; Vodafone Charges Guide (eff. 14 April 2026) and Global Roaming zones and guides; Three Go Roam pages and roaming-cost guide; SIMOVO destination eSIM pages (GB store). SIMOVO Research, 2026. Figures are accurate as at the collection date and subject to change by the providers.
