BT vs Virgin Media broadband: two years that land level, and the twenty-fifth bill that separates them

Which one to choose

Direct answer: For the first two years, Virgin Media: it is cheaper, it is faster, and it charges nothing to set up. For the third year and after, BT, and by a wide margin, because BT has published a ceiling on what the price can become and Virgin Media has published a standard price roughly double what you were paying. Over two years the two bills land within sixty pounds of each other. The difference arrives in month twenty-five, and it is the size of a second broadband bill.

That is the answer, and the rest of this page is the working. Before any of it, though, one practical point that decides the question at a great many addresses. These two do not share a line. BT sells over Openreach and Virgin Media over its own cable network and nexfibre's fibre, so at a great many addresses the choice is not between them at all. A head-to-head between two networks is only a real choice where both networks arrive, and that is what the postcode box above is for.

It is worth being clear about what this page is not saying. Virgin Media's standard price is published, it is printed in the small print beside the deal, and you are told before it starts. Ofcom requires both to write to you between ten and forty days before the term ends, saying what you have been paying, what you will pay next, and what their best deals are, including the ones advertised to new customers only. Nothing about it is hidden. It is simply the part of the deal that almost nobody reads at the point of sale, and on the tier most households buy it is worth £444.12 a year.

Run your address through our comparison before you decide between two brands, read our full BT review and our full Virgin Media review for either one on its own, and how we rank deals explains why we compare on the average across a term rather than on the headline.

Two networks, and which one reaches you

Direct answer: These two do not share a line. BT sells over Openreach and Virgin Media over its own cable network and nexfibre's fibre, so at a great many addresses the choice is not between them at all. Openreach reached 23.4 million premises with full fibre at 30 June 2026 against a 25 million target for December; Virgin Media O2 reported 16.2 million homes passed on the same date, of which 9 million were full fibre. Neither figure tells you about your address, and a national footprint is not an availability check.

Virgin Media states the limit in its own words: “Virgin Media services are only available in eligible Virgin Media network areas.” BT has no equivalent sentence, because Openreach reaches almost everywhere. That asymmetry is the first way this comparison differs from a BT against Sky one, and it changes what the rest of the page can tell you. Two retailers on an Openreach line sell the same physical connection, so the only variables are price, contract and customer service. BT and Virgin Media sell two different physical connections, built by two different companies to two overlapping but far from identical sets of addresses. Where only one arrives, there is no comparison to make.

Owning the network is also what lets Virgin Media publish a number nobody else on this page can. It claims 99.88% network reliability, measured from customer routers across its own network over January 2026 to June 2026. Treat it as what it is: the company’s own measurement of its own network, not an independent scoreboard like the four further down. BT publishes no equivalent figure, and on a network it does not own it could not publish one on the same basis, so the absence says nothing about how BT performs.

A word on the third network in this story, because the numbers invite a wrong conclusion. nexfibre reported 2.6 million premises at 31 December 2025, and that figure had not been refreshed when we read it, so it is the best published number and it is nine months old. The original joint venture target was five million by 2026. We are not going to tell you whether that has been missed, because nexfibre has not published a current figure or a revised target, and the honest thing is to give you both numbers with their dates.

Our guide to full fibre against Virgin cable explains what the two technologies do differently, moving from Openreach to Virgin Media covers what installation day looks like, and moving the other way covers the switch back.

What each one costs today

Direct answer: BT advertises six packages, from £26.99 for Fibre Essential to £31.99 for Full Fibre 900. Virgin Media advertises six too, from £23.99 for M125 to £49.99 for Gig2. Both print two future prices for the term, because both raise the price by £4 a year and both are obliged to say so before you sign.

On set-up the two differ in Virgin Media's favour. BT's activation is £10, cut from £30 and shown on the price list as a saving. Virgin Media charges £0 on a broadband-only package, and £30 only if a self-install would have worked and you ask for an engineer anyway. Over a 24-month term that is the whole of BT's activation fee back in your pocket before the first bill.

Offers move faster than prices, and both companies had one running on the day we read these figures. BT was offering £200 as bill credit on Full Fibre 500 and Virgin Media was closing a switching credit on the day we read the prices, so check both before you decide. Virgin Media's switching credit is a refund rather than a discount: it pays back the early termination fee your old provider charged, up to £300, and nothing if that fee was nothing. BT's bill credit is a discount on money you are going to spend either way, so the two are not the same kind of thing and should not be added together in your head.

Our price and contract checker totals any deal across its term, our hand-checked deals table carries every figure with the date it was verified, and the Virgin Media price rise covers this year's increase in detail.

Upload speed, and where the cable story stops being true

Direct answer: BT is the better of the two on upload through the middle of the range, and barely better at the top. At around 500 Mbps down, BT's Full Fibre 500 averages 73 Mbps up against 52 Mbps on Virgin Media's M500. At the top, BT's Full Fibre 900 averages 110 Mbps against 104 Mbps on Gig1, a gap of six megabits on a tier where Virgin Media is faster down and cheaper.

Upload is the one place where the underlying technology genuinely shows through, so it is worth explaining before the table rather than after it. Openreach's full fibre carries traffic both ways on the same glass, which is why BT's upload rises in step with its download. Virgin Media's older network is coaxial cable, which was built for television and gives far more of its capacity to the downstream direction, which is why its upload sits at roughly a tenth of its download at every tier. That is a real difference and it has a real effect on video calls, cloud backups, game uploads and anything that sends large files out of the house.

What the usual version of this story gets wrong is the top of the range. A tenth of a very large number is still a large number, and Virgin Media's Gig1 delivers 104 Mbps against BT's best consumer figure of 110 Mbps, for £29.99 a month against £31.99. Anyone who tells you Virgin Media is bad at upload has stopped reading the price list two tiers early.

The table below compares only the tiers whose download speeds are close enough to set against each other, because comparing upload across different download speeds tells you nothing. For completeness, the tiers it leaves out: BT's part fibre plans carry 8 to 9 Mbps on Fibre Essential, 10 Mbps on Fibre 1 and 20 Mbps on Fibre 2, and Virgin Media's entry tiers carry 20 Mbps on M125 and 25 Mbps on M250. Virgin Media's numbers are the larger ones there, and they should be: M125 is a 132 Mbps line where Fibre 1 is a 50 Mbps line. At the bottom of both ladders the question is download, not upload.

One more thing the table cannot show you. BT names a figure in megabits for every plan and Virgin Media names a fraction of the advertised speed, so the two promises are not the same shape and cannot be compared line by line. BT publishes a guaranteed minimum speed on every plan and calls the promise its Stay Fast Guarantee: if speeds are not back to normal within thirty days it will let you leave without an early cancellation fee. Virgin Media guarantees half the advertised download speed to your hub, and if it stays below that for three days in a row and is not fixed within thirty days of you reporting it you may leave without an early disconnection fee. On a 500 Mbps package that is the difference between a promise of a named figure and a promise of half of what was advertised, and the second one is easier for a provider to meet.

Our guide to upload against download speed explains which of the two actually limits what you are doing, broadband for large file uploads covers the heavier end, and minimum guaranteed speeds covers what each provider's promise is worth.

What 24 months actually costs

Direct answer: Take the tier most households buy and the two are remarkably close. BT's Full Fibre 500 totals £825.76 across the term, an average of £34.41 a month. Virgin Media's M500 totals £767.76, an average of £31.99. Virgin Media is £58 cheaper over two years, and slightly faster down for it.

Both sums are real rather than illustrative, which is worth pausing on, because it is not true of every pairing in this series. BT prints the price from 31 March 2027 and the price from 31 March 2028 beside every plan. Virgin Media states its increase as £4 a month every April in its own terms. Neither figure is an estimate, neither is indexed to inflation, and neither company can surprise you with a different number inside the term.

Do the same sum at the top of each ladder and Virgin Media's advantage holds and grows in usefulness. BT Full Fibre 900 comes to £873.76 over the term for 900 Mbps down and 110 Mbps up. Virgin Media Gig1 comes to £815.76 for 1,130 Mbps down and 104 Mbps up. That is £58 less for 1,130 Mbps against 900 Mbps, and six megabits less upload. On the first two years alone, that is not a close call.

One caveat that applies to both columns and to every provider in this market. The arithmetic assumes the annual rise lands where it usually lands relative to a term starting now, about six months in. Sign in February and the first increase arrives within weeks, which pushes the average up. Sign in April or May and you get almost a full year at the opening price. Because both of these providers raise prices in the same fortnight of the year, the month you order moves both columns the same way, which at least makes the comparison stable.

Our price and contract checker does this sum for any deal and any start month, and the cheapest deals ranks the whole market on the average across a term rather than on the headline.

Month 25, which is the whole difference

Direct answer: BT publishes a ceiling and Virgin Media publishes a list price. BT's price guide says, in full: “After your contract ends your price will increase by no more than £5.” Virgin Media's own small print for its entry tier reads “£23.99 a month for 24 months, then £62 a month thereafter”. On the 500 Mbps tier that is £42.99 at most against £80, a difference of £37.01 every month.

Everything above this section has the two providers within a few pounds of each other. This is where they part, and the size of it surprises people who have read the rest of the page. Virgin Media's saving over the whole 24 months at the 500 Mbps tier is £58. The gap between the two twenty-fifth bills is £37.01 a month. So the saving is gone 7 weeks into the third year, and everything after that is the difference.

Virgin Media's position, in its own words, is that “Your monthly cost may change after your minimum term ends” and that you should read the notification it sends. That is accurate, and it is also the whole of it. Virgin Media publishes a standard price for every tier and no cap on the rise to it. The standard prices themselves are not hidden, they are in the small print beside every deal, and they run from £62 on the entry tier to £92 on the fastest.

On leaving early the two are also different shapes. BT's early termination charge is the remaining amount you would have paid up to the end of your minimum period, which is the ordinary formula and easy to check against a final bill. Virgin Media does not publish a per-month early disconnection fee. It publishes a worksheet, says the amount depends on your package, your discounts and the time left, and adds VAT. Both give you 14 days to change your mind at the start, which is the statutory cooling-off period rather than a courtesy from either company.

Our guide to out-of-contract broadband prices covers what every provider charges once a term ends, exit fees and setup fees compares the cost at both ends, and leaving a contract early explains what an exit charge may and may not include.

The annual rise, where there is nothing to choose

Direct answer: Both raise the price by £4 a year during the term, so the annual rise is the one thing on this page that does not separate them. BT applies it on 31 March and Virgin Media in April, so a household with both would see the two land within days of each other. Virgin Media writes its increase into the contract as a cash amount in the same way BT does, so this is the one part of the comparison where there is nothing to choose between them, which is why this page had to look at month 25 to find a real difference.

It is worth stating plainly, because the in-contract price rise is the angle almost every comparison of these two reaches for, and on current contracts it does not separate them at all. Virgin Media's own wording is this: “The monthly subscription charge for your main services will increase by £4, which will apply every April.” BT's is the same amount on the same kind of contract, applied on 31 March 2027. A household with one of each would see the two increases land within a fortnight of one another.

There is one place where the two do differ, and it affects long-standing Virgin Media customers rather than new ones. Three sets of terms are running at once: contracts from 2 October 2025 rise by £4 each April, contracts between 9 January and 2 October 2025 by £3.50, and anything older by the Retail Price Index plus 3.9%. A customer who has not re-signed since before January 2025 is still on an inflation-linked formula, and Virgin Media publishes what that produced last time: 7.5% in April 2025. BT moved off inflation linking for everyone, so BT has no equivalent cohort.

The last row is the one worth sitting with. Both companies disclose the increase in pounds and pence before you sign, which is what Ofcom's rules require of a contract that builds one in. Having disclosed it, the increase is a term you agreed to rather than a change imposed on you, so neither contract gives you a right to walk away when it arrives. That is the trade both are offering, and it is a reasonable one: you get to total the commitment in exchange for being held to it.

Our guide to in-contract price rises covers which providers raise prices before a contract ends and how, and the Virgin Media price rise covers this year's in detail.

Why the £28 million fine belongs on this page

Direct answer: The fine matters here because of where it lands. The one thing that protects you from the standard price is leaving or renegotiating, and that is the exact thing Ofcom found Virgin Media made hard. Ofcom's decision of 8 July 2026 covered 1 January 2022 to 11 September 2024 and fined Virgin Media £28 million. The fair answer sits in the same section: switching today does not depend on getting anybody on the telephone.

We would not normally put a regulatory fine in the middle of a price comparison, because most of them tell you nothing about what it is like to be a customer next year. This one is different, because of exactly where it lands. The entire argument of the section above is that the twenty-fifth bill is the moment that decides which of these two was the better buy, and that the way through it is to ring up and leave or renegotiate. Ofcom found that the conditions and procedures Virgin Media had in place acted as a disincentive to customers who wanted to cancel.

The detail matters. Ofcom described millions of calls as likely to have been mishandled across that period, through a two-tier call-handling system, customers being made to ask to cancel more than once, repeated retention attempts, unnecessary transfers, long holds and dropped calls. 30% was taken off the penalty because Virgin Media admitted the failings and agreed to settle, so the figure before the discount was materially larger than the one in the headline.

Read it as a reason to plan rather than a reason to avoid. If you buy Virgin Media, the thing that protects you is a date in your calendar and a switch started with the provider you are joining, neither of which depends on getting anybody at Virgin Media on the telephone. Put the end of your minimum term in your calendar on the day you sign. On both providers that single note is worth more than anything else on this page.

Our guide to switching broadband covers One Touch Switch from both ends, and complaints and your rights covers what to do when a provider does not cooperate.

Four scoreboards, four answers

Direct answer: Four public scoreboards cover these two and they do not agree. Ofcom's complaints rate puts Virgin Media slightly ahead, the Which? panel puts BT well ahead, Trustpilot puts BT far ahead, and the Uswitch reliability award goes to Virgin Media two years running. They disagree because they measure different things: a rate of escalation to the regulator, a representative panel's satisfaction, a self-selected review site, and a measurement of the network itself. On the numbers: Ofcom logged 6 complaints per 100,000 for Virgin Media against 7 for BT, while the Which? panel scored BT 65% against Virgin Media's 59%.

Rank these two by complaints and by satisfaction and you get different answers, which is a fact about the measures rather than a contradiction. Ofcom's complaints rate counts only the people who escalated as far as the regulator, divided by how many customers a provider has, so it measures how often a relationship breaks down badly enough for somebody to go over the provider's head. The Which? score asks a representative panel how satisfied they are and how likely they are to recommend, so it measures the average experience of people who never complained at all. A provider can be poor at the first and fine at the second, or the reverse, and these two are the reverse of each other.

Two rows in that table deserve a caveat rather than a tick. Trustpilot is the weakest of the four, because people who write a review unprompted are rarely the ones who had a quiet year. Virgin Media has more than three times as many reviews as BT, which is what you would expect of a provider with a larger and noisier customer base, and it does not make the score more reliable. And the two Ofcom satisfaction rows are the oldest data on the page, for the reason the caption above gives.

The row most worth acting on is the last but one. Virgin Media answers the telephone in 1 minute 8 seconds against BT's 2 minutes 53 seconds, comfortably faster, and yet 26% of its customers had a reason to complain against 20% of BT's. A provider that answers quickly but gives more people a reason to call is a different proposition from one that answers slowly and gives fewer, and which you prefer is a genuine matter of taste.

Our complaints and your rights guide covers the process end to end, and The Complaints Floor looks at what happens to customers of providers too small for Ofcom to table at all.

What else comes with each

Direct answer: Virgin Media wins the extras: nothing to set up, Netflix on the faster tiers, and a Wi-Fi promise with a cash remedy attached. BT answers with a named minimum speed on every plan rather than a fraction, and with security software included at no charge. Both are in Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme, so a missed appointment, a delayed repair or a delayed start pays out without you asking.

The Wi-Fi rows are closer than they look and both are better than the market standard, but read what each one actually promises. BT pays you a hundred pounds if it cannot get a signal everywhere after sending the kit. Virgin Media names a speed, at least 30 Mbps in every room or a £100 one-off credit, and sends up to three WiFi Pods one at a time before it pays. Virgin Media's is the more precise promise and the one you can hold it to; BT's is the easier to claim. Both are about a named speed in a room rather than about the speed you bought.

On the safety nets that sit behind both, this pair is at the strong end of the market and that is worth saying plainly. Both have signed Ofcom's voluntary code of practice on broadband speeds, so both owe you a guaranteed minimum figure at the point of sale and a right to leave if it is not met. Both are in Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme, so a missed appointment, a delayed repair or a delayed start pays out without you asking. The rates are the scheme pays £10.34 a day for a delayed repair, £32.31 for a missed appointment and £6.46 a day for a delayed start. Several of the cheaper networks a postcode check will show you have signed neither, and for a lot of households that difference is worth more than a few pounds a month.

Our guide to switching broadband covers One Touch Switch on both sides, and our speed test records what you are actually getting with a timestamp, which is what a speed complaint needs.

The social tariffs

Direct answer: Virgin Media is cheaper to enter at £12.50 a month against BT's £16.50, and it asks for no minimum term at all. BT gives you four times the speed for its four extra pounds. Both run a social tariff and both open it to new customers, so on this one measure the pair are better than much of the market.

This is one of the few parts of the page where both companies come out well, and it is worth saying so. Essential Broadband is £12.50 a month for 15 Mbps and Essential Broadband Plus £20 for 54 Mbps, both on a rolling 30-day contract, and both are open to new and existing customers on the qualifying benefits. BT Home Essentials is open to anyone on the qualifying benefits, whether or not they are already a BT customer. Several providers in this market either run no social tariff or restrict theirs to customers who are already with them, so a household on qualifying benefits genuinely has a choice between these two.

The condition to read twice is Virgin Media's. Virgin Media will not move a customer onto Essential Broadband while they are in arrears or on a repayment plan. That is the household most likely to need the tariff, so if you are behind on a Virgin Media bill, the order of operations matters: sort the arrears first, then ask, because asking first will not work. BT applies no equivalent condition on Home Essentials.

On raw value, BT's Fibre Essentials tier at £16.50 for 36 Mbps is the better buy for almost any household that uses the internet for more than email, because 15 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload will not carry a video call and a television at the same time. Virgin Media's answer is Essential Broadband Plus at £20 for 54 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload, which beats BT's second tier on price. Compare the tier you actually need rather than the entry price.

Our guide to social tariffs lists every provider that runs one, what it costs and who can apply.

Who should choose which

Direct answer: Virgin Media for speed, price and extras across the term. BT for a named minimum speed, better upload in the middle of the range, and a published ceiling on what happens afterwards. The honest tie-break is not about the companies at all: it is whether you will act at the end of the term.

If none of those rows describes you, here is the tie-break we would use, and it is an honest question about yourself rather than about either company. Over 24 months these two are £58 apart on a bill of roughly eight hundred pounds, which is close enough that it should not decide anything. Over the following twelve months they are £444.12 apart. So the question is not which company is better. It is whether, two years from now, you will open the letter and do something about it. If yes, buy the cheaper, faster one. If you are not sure, buy the one that has told you in advance what the worst case is.

The third option this page would otherwise hide

Direct answer: At most addresses only one of them arrives, and where both do, a dozen other retailers are usually on the Openreach line beside BT, several of them cheaper than either. On our own table of 373 deals from 28 providers, read on 1 September 2026, entry prices ran between £23 and £34 a month with a median of £28, and the cheapest was £13.50 a month (4th Utility, 150 Mbps on CityFibre).

A head-to-head page has a built-in bias and it is worth naming rather than pretending otherwise. By setting two brands against each other it quietly asserts that those two are the choice, and for most households they are not. Where Openreach full fibre reaches, so do Sky, EE, Plusnet, TalkTalk, Vodafone, NOW, Zen and a dozen more, over 23.4 million premises as at 30 June 2026, and several of them undercut both providers on this page. Where it does not, a smaller network often does, and several of those sell symmetrical upload as standard, which neither company here offers below its top tier.

That does not make BT and Virgin Media bad choices. Both have signed Ofcom's voluntary code of practice on broadband speeds, so both owe you a guaranteed minimum figure at the point of sale and a right to leave if it is not met. Both are in Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme, so a missed appointment, a delayed repair or a delayed start pays out without you asking. Several cheaper providers have signed neither, and for a lot of households that safety net is worth the difference. But it should be a decision you make rather than one the page makes for you, which is why the comparison below is not filtered to these two alone.

Run the full comparison to see every provider at your address, or start from the cheapest deals, full fibre from every network or social tariffs.

BT and Virgin Media deals at your postcode