NOW Broadband deals: current prices, what Powered by Sky means and what else your line can get

What does NOW Broadband cost right now?

Direct answer: NOW publishes three full fibre prices without a postcode, which most large providers do not: £23 a month for NOW Full Fibre 75, £25 for Full Fibre 100 and £28 for Full Fibre 300, all on a minimum term of 24 months with £0 activation fee and £0 delivery fee (checked 16 September 2026).

That is the whole range. NOW stops at 300 Mb/s, sells the line on its own with no television bundled into the contract, and says its full fibre reaches 79% of UK homes. The one thing it will not tell you is what happens to the price later: it prints only 'Price may change during 24-month minimum term'. Every figure in the last three columns below is therefore our illustration rather than a NOW commitment: an illustration that assumes Sky repeats the rise it last announced, because NOW belongs to Sky and fixes no amount of its own.

On 16 September 2026 nowtv.com advertised £0 activation and £0 delivery on all three full fibre plans, while NOW's own broadband terms say a set-up fee of £9.95 router delivery plus £10 activation fee may be required, so check the order summary rather than the plan card. Our hand-checked deals table of 1 September 2026 carried gift cards of £40 to £80 on the same packages, with £5 upfront.

Because nobody can tell you what NOW will charge in year two, the useful comparison is the one you can make today: NOW's price against Sky's own for the same line, and both against everything else at your address. Our price and contract checker runs the arithmetic for any provider, our insight on what cashback, vouchers and free gifts are really worth puts a value on the gift cards, and our price rise tracker lists what every major provider has confirmed for next year.

Our hand-checked deals table of 1 September 2026 listed NOW Full Fibre 100 at £23 a month, Full Fibre 75 and the part-fibre Superfast package at £24 and Full Fibre 300 at £27, each on 24 months with £5 upfront and gift cards of £40 to £80, and each recorded with a yearly increase of 'could change' rather than an amount.

What does Powered by Sky actually mean?

Direct answer: It means Sky sells the product and runs the service: NOW's site sends you to sky.com to complete the order, the account lives in the My Sky app, which NOW tells you to use for bills, orders and managing the account, the router is a Sky Hub, the speed guarantee is Sky's, and the people who answer are Sky's advisors, which NOW describes as Sky's award-winning customer service. You are buying a Sky line with a NOW price on it.

This matters for how you compare. The old question, whether NOW's cheaper service is worth the drop in quality against Sky's, has largely gone: the line, the hub, the guarantee and the call centre are Sky's either way. What is left is a straight price and range comparison. Sky sells more speeds, its own hub range, WiFi Max and television bundles; NOW sells three plans and stops at 300 Mb/s. So look at Sky's own deals on the same day as NOW's, and take whichever number is lower for the speed you need. One caution: because Sky operates the service, NOW customers sit inside Sky's operation for complaints handling, but NOW's own complaint figures are reported separately, and as the section below explains, they are no longer published at all.

The rise NOW does not fix

Direct answer: NOW commits to no amount and no date. Under every price it prints 'Price may change during 24-month minimum term', and its terms say 'Prices may change during contracts'. That is Sky's model, and it is the opposite of BT, EE, Plusnet, TalkTalk and Virgin Media, which all write a fixed number of pounds into the contract.

Since 17 January 2025 Ofcom has banned in-contract price rises linked to inflation and required any rise written into a contract to be stated in pounds and pence at the point of sale. A provider that writes no rise into the contract at all is outside that requirement, and instead must give you a chance to leave when it changes the price. Sky's practice, which is the precedent that matters here because Sky runs NOW, has been to announce a change in February and apply it on 1 April: it last announced £3 a month on 4 February 2026, applied 1 April 2026, and gave customers 31 days to leave without penalty. Our guide to in-contract price rises sets out the Ofcom rules, and price rises by provider lists who fixes the amount, who varies it and who promises none at all.

The practical rule for a NOW deal is the one we would give for Sky: compare on today's price, because it is the only number anyone has promised you, then diarise February, when Sky has historically announced what happens in April. Our page on <a href='/now-broadband-price-rise-2026.html'>the NOW price rise</a> covers what to do when the letter arrives.

Is NOW the cheapest way to get the line?

Direct answer: Sometimes, and the first comparison to make is with Sky itself. NOW's NOW Full Fibre 75 was £23 a month on 16 September 2026 against Sky's Full Fibre 150 at £23 on 15 September 2026, for the same line, the same hub and the same guarantee at different speeds; against the rest of the market, BT's entry full fibre was £29.99, EE's £25.99, Plusnet's from £22.99, TalkTalk's £25 and Vodafone's £24.

NOW does not own the line into your home. At most addresses it is an Openreach line that BT, EE, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Zen and dozens of smaller providers also sell, and where CityFibre has built, NOW and Sky sell over that too. What makes NOW unusual in this list is that its own parent is its closest competitor, selling the identical service with more speeds and more extras a few pounds away.

The wider market is worth a look too. When we last hand-checked every deal, on 1 September 2026, the 373 broadband-only deals from the 28 providers we can switch you to started at £13.50 a month (4th Utility, 150 Mbps on CityFibre), and good full fibre on a 24-month contract clustered between £23 and £34 a month with a median of £28. NOW sits inside that band rather than below it, so it wins on simplicity and the Sky connection rather than on price alone. The full list, with first-year cost including each provider's rise, is on our verified deals page.

What decides which of these you can order is the network at your address. Ofcom's Spring 2026 data puts full fibre availability at 82% of UK premises and gigabit-capable availability at 89%, and Openreach's own footprint stood at 23.4 million premises on 30 June 2026. NOW says its full fibre reaches 79% of UK homes, and where it does not reach, its own site no longer sells a slower alternative to new customers, so the answer is another provider. Our guide to Openreach against CityFibre explains the networks, and our insight on how UK wholesale broadband works covers why one line carries a dozen brands.

What does NOW give you, and what does it leave out?

Direct answer: A Sky Hub, Sky's speed guarantee, three full fibre speeds ending at 300 Mb/s, £0 activation fee and £0 delivery fee on the checked date and a social tariff at £20 a month; what it leaves out is a hub range, mesh Wi-Fi, television in the contract, speeds above 300 Mb/s and any commitment about next year's price.

Each item below was checked against NOW's own pages and terms on 16 September 2026.

One thing that used to be true of NOW and is not any more: it is no longer a separate operation with its own thin service. The hub, the guarantee, the ordering and the support are Sky's, so the old trade of a cheaper price for a lesser service does not describe what you are buying today. What you trade now is range: fewer speeds, no hub choice, no bundles.

Who should choose NOW, and who should not?

Direct answer: Choose NOW if you want a Sky-run line at a lower price without Sky's extras, if £23 to £28 covers the speed you need, or if your household qualifies for NOW Broadband Basics at £20 a month; look elsewhere if you want a fixed annual rise you can budget for, more than 300 Mb/s, a hub upgrade or mesh Wi-Fi, television on one bill, or a provider whose complaints figures Ofcom still publishes.

The comparison that matters most is Sky's own deals page, because the product underneath is the same. For the whole market at once, use your postcode.

NOW Broadband Basics: the social tariff

Direct answer: Yes, NOW has one, and it is among the better ones: NOW Broadband Basics costs £20 a month, or £18 a month on a Brilliant Broadband membership where the faster option is unavailable, for an average download speed of 36 Mbps, on an ongoing monthly contract with 31 days' notice to cancel and no early termination charges.

You qualify if you receive Universal Credit, Pension Credit, income-based Employment and Support Allowance, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance or Income Support. The catch is the route in rather than the tariff itself: NOW's help page tells existing members to call, and directs new customers to NOW Powered by Sky rather than signing up online. That is worth saying plainly, because a household that searches, finds the price and then cannot find a sign-up button often gives up, and this is a tariff worth persisting with: no minimum term, no exit fee and a price well below every headline deal on this page.

Set against the market, our deals check of 1 September 2026 listed social tariffs from £12.50 a month across the providers we compare. Virgin Media Essential Broadband costs £12.50, BT Home Essentials starts at £16.50, Vodafone Essentials Broadband costs £20 and is open to new customers, and Sky Broadband Basics, the sister tariff, costs £20 and is for existing Sky customers only. EE, Plusnet and TalkTalk run no social tariff of their own at all. Our social tariffs guide lists every provider's tariff, the benefits that qualify and how to apply, and our insight on how social tariff broadband works covers the application steps.

Why NOW is missing from Ofcom's complaints table

Direct answer: Because it is too small to be listed. Ofcom tables only providers with a stable market share of 1.5% or more, and NOW has no published fixed broadband complaints figure for Q4 2025 or Q1 2026; its last published figure was 4 per 100,000 in Q3 2025, among the strongest results in that quarter's table. It does still appear in the landline table, at 4 per 100,000 in Q1 2026, down from 6 in the previous quarter, against an industry average of 3.

Two honest conclusions follow, and they pull in opposite directions. You cannot compare NOW's broadband complaints with BT's or Sky's, because the figure no longer exists, so one of the measures you would normally use to judge a provider is simply unavailable. And the last figure NOW did publish was 4 per 100,000 in Q3 2025, among the strongest results in that quarter's table, which was a good result rather than a bad one, so its disappearance is about size, not about service. NOW is the worked example in our own Report No. 30 of what the reporting threshold hides: The Complaints Floor sets out how many UK connections now sit outside the table entirely as retail share fragments.

There is a second-order point worth holding on to. Because NOW's site sends you to sky.com to complete the order and the service is run by Sky, the operation that would handle a NOW complaint is Sky's, and Sky's own broadband figure for Q1 2026 was 5 per 100,000, against an industry average of 6. That is not NOW's number and we do not present it as one, but it is the closest available read on the people who would answer your call. If you do need to complain, the rules changed on 8 April 2026: a complaint that has not been resolved after six weeks, down from eight, can go free of charge to the independent ombudsman scheme the provider belongs to. Our complaints and your rights guide walks through the steps and the compensation you may be owed.

What should you check before you order NOW?

Direct answer: Six checks, five minutes: NOW against Sky on the same day, the fact that year two is unknown, the fees in the order summary rather than the plan card, the guaranteed minimum speed on your order, whether the household qualifies for Basics, and the same line priced from everyone else.

Related reading: exit fees and set-up fees by provider, how One Touch Switch works, out-of-contract broadband prices, speed guarantees explained, and what cashback, vouchers and free gifts are really worth.

Live NOW broadband deals at your postcode