Sky vs Virgin Media broadband: within a pound a month for two years, then one of them lets you leave and the other does not
Put the two price lists side by side and there is barely a choice in them. At three of the four speeds where both sell something comparable, Sky is £0.99 a month cheaper. At the top it is £17.99 cheaper for a faster, symmetrical line. So the first two years are not what you are choosing between. What you are choosing between arrives in month twenty-five: Virgin Media tells you exactly what happens next and gives you no way out of it, while Sky tells you almost nothing and lets you leave when it happens. Sky's own words, from its Chief Operating Officer: “if you are within a minimum term and we notify you of a price increase, you have the right to cancel your broadband, satellite pay-TV or mobile package without paying early termination fees, as has always been the case at Sky.” Virgin Media's, from its contract: “The monthly subscription charge for your main services will increase by £4, which will apply every April.” Compare both against every other provider at your address at broadbandswitch.uk/compare/.
See every provider at your address, not only these two
One postcode, every provider we can switch you to, sorted by price with the lowest first. On this pairing the postcode often settles it outright, because Virgin Media sells only where its own network reaches and Sky sells over Openreach.
IndependentLowest price firstLive, refreshed dailyPostcode only, nothing stored
Every number here carries the date it was checked, and here is where each one comes from. Sky's four published tier prices, their download and upload speeds, their offer end dates, the set-up small print and the sentence about what happens at the end of the term were read from Sky's own deals page and its printed legals on 20 September 2026. The statement about price rises and the right to cancel is quoted from Sky's own newsroom piece of 6 January 2026, and Sky Broadband Basics from Sky's own social tariff page. Virgin Media's six tier prices, their speeds and the standard price beside each were read from Virgin Media's own pages, the annual increase from its own price change page, and the switching credit terms and network limit from its own legals. The fine and the complaints figures come from Ofcom, the satisfaction scores from Which? and Trustpilot. The live comparison lower down is refreshed daily.
Which one to choose
Direct answer: Sky, narrowly, if you want the cheaper bill and the ability to leave when the price moves. Virgin Media if you want the faster line and you will act on the end of the term yourself. The monthly prices are almost identical, so this decision is not about money for the first two years: For two years these two cost within a pound a month of each other at every speed where both sell something comparable. The difference is not the price. It is that Virgin Media tells you exactly what happens next and gives you no way out of it, while Sky tells you almost nothing and lets you leave when it happens.
That is the answer, and the rest of this page is the working. Before any of it, one thing settles the question at a great many addresses: Virgin Media sells only over its own network, which had reached 16.2 million homes at 30 June 2026. Sky sells over Openreach, which reaches most of the country. So run the postcode first, because at plenty of addresses you do not have a choice to make.
Cheaper everywhere, and you can walk
Choose Sky if you want the option to walk. It is the cheaper of the two at every comparable speed, its step at the end of the term is a published £5 rather than a jump to a standard price, and when it does raise the price mid-contract you are free to go.
Faster, and every figure published
Choose Virgin Media if you want the speed and you will diarise month twenty-four. It is faster at the two middle bands, it has won the reliability award two years running, its social tariff is half the price and open to everyone who qualifies, and every figure for the next two years is published before you sign.
At most addresses only one of them arrives
Virgin Media only reaches its own network, and where it does not, Sky is one of a dozen retailers on the same Openreach line, several of them cheaper than either.
The page this one replaces framed the choice as television bundles against cable, and that framing hides the finding rather than revealing it. The traffic runs one way. Virgin Media sells Sky Sports and Sky Cinema by name, and both companies describe the same nine dedicated Sky Sports channels. Nothing on Sky's site sells a Virgin Media channel, because there is no such thing to sell. Both include Netflix. If the decision turned on entertainment there would be very little in it.
Run your address through our comparison before you decide between two brands, read our full Sky 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.
Cable against Openreach, and which one reaches you
Direct answer: Virgin Media sells over its own cable and full fibre network and nowhere else, so at any address it has not built, this comparison is over before it starts. Sky sells over Openreach, which reaches most of the country, so Sky is almost always an option and Virgin Media often is not.
Virgin Media's own wording is unambiguous: “Virgin Media services are only available in eligible Virgin Media network areas.” It had passed 16.2 million homes at 30 June 2026 and describes 18.8 million as serviceable. nexfibre is a separate company, jointly owned by the two shareholders that own Virgin Media O2 and by InfraVia, which builds fibre to homes the cable network never reached and sells wholesale only. Virgin Media is its anchor retailer, so at a nexfibre address you buy Virgin Media and get fibre rather than cable.
Sky's position is the ordinary one for a large retailer. It resells the Openreach line that BT, EE, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Plusnet, NOW and a dozen smaller names also sell over, which is why Sky's reach figure on its own deals page is 79% of UK homes and why its top tier is much narrower at 12% of UK homes. The consequence matters more than it sounds: where Sky is available, so is most of the market, and several of those retailers undercut it on the same line.
So the practical order is postcode, then page. If only one of the two arrives, read that provider's own review instead of this comparison. If both arrive, you are in the minority of addresses where everything below actually applies, and the interesting part starts with the price list.
Our availability checker shows which networks reach a postcode, our Virgin Media review covers the cable network in detail, and our full fibre guide explains what each network type actually delivers.
What each one costs today
Direct answer: Sky is the cheaper of the two at all four speeds where both sell something comparable. At three of them the gap is £0.99 a month, which is £11.88 a year and not a reason to choose anything. At the top it is £17.99 a month, and there Sky's line is also the faster.
| Speed band | Sky package | A month | Virgin Media package | A month | Cheaper, and faster |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Around 130 to 150 Mbps | Sky Full Fibre 150 150 Mbps down, 27 up | £23 | Virgin Media M125 132 Mbps down, 20 up | £23.99 | Sky by £0.99 Sky faster both ways, by 18 Mbps down and 7 Mbps up |
| Around 500 Mbps | Sky Full Fibre 500 500 Mbps down, 60 up | £27 | Virgin Media M500 516 Mbps down, 52 up | £27.99 | Sky by £0.99 Virgin Media faster down by 16 Mbps, Sky faster up by 8 Mbps |
| Around 900 Mbps to 1 Gbps | Sky Full Fibre Gigafast 900 Mbps down, 90 up | £29 | Virgin Media Gig1 1,130 Mbps down, 104 up | £29.99 | Sky by £0.99 Virgin Media faster both ways, by 230 Mbps down and 14 Mbps up |
| Around 2 to 2.5 Gbps | Sky 2.5 Gigafast+ 2,500 Mbps down, 2,500 up | £32 | Virgin Media Gig2 2,000 Mbps down, 200 up | £49.99 | Sky by £17.99 Sky faster both ways, by 500 Mbps down and 2,300 Mbps up |
Two Virgin Media tiers are missing from that table on purpose, because Sky sells nothing comparable to either and pairing them with a Sky plan of a different speed would flatter one side. M250 is £25.99 a month for 264 Mbps, and M350 is £28.99 for 362 Mbps. Note the oddity while you are there: M500 cost £1 a month less than M350 when we checked, with Netflix included, which makes M350 hard to justify unless it is the fastest tier your address can take.
Read the top row twice
At the top of each ladder the two stop resembling each other. Sky's 2.5 Gigafast+ is £32 a month for 2,500 Mbps down and 2,500 Mbps up, which is the same figure both ways. Virgin Media's Gig2 is £49.99 for 2,000 Mbps down and 200 Mbps up, and 2,000 Mbps of upload is a paid extra at £6 a month more. So Sky is £17.99 a month cheaper for the faster and already symmetrical line. The catch is reach: Sky sells that tier to 12% of UK homes.
On set-up the two are level and both advertise nothing to pay. Sky's legals put the usual charge at £19.95 and waive it, with a caveat worth reading: £20 may apply if the line needs work. Virgin Media charges £0 too, and £30 only if you could self-install and choose an engineer anyway. Both were advertising switching help when we read them, and neither is a discount. Virgin Media says so itself: “For a successful claim, you will receive account credit to the value of your early termination fees, up to £300 (whichever is lower).”
All four of Sky's prices carry an end date, and the first of them is days away. £23 on Full Fibre 150 and £29 on Gigafast are both marked as available until 23 September 2026, the 2.5 Gbps tier until 30 September 2026 and Full Fibre 500 until 14 October 2026. Sky publishes exactly four broadband deals without a postcode, so if you are reading this after those dates, check the live block lower down rather than the table above.
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 cheapest deals ranks the whole market on the average across a term rather than the headline.
Month 25, where the two part company
Direct answer: Sky publishes a rule and no number: “At the end of your 24-month minimum term, your monthly price will be the price you are paying immediately before your minimum term ends, plus £5.” Virgin Media publishes a number and no cap: £86 on Gig1, £80 on M500, £62 on M125. Measured the same way, Sky's step is £5 and Virgin Media's on Gig1 is £48.01, about 10 times as much.
This is the single most expensive line in a broadband contract and it gets the least attention, because it arrives two years after anyone was paying attention. Both providers do step up, so neither lets you drift at the price you signed at. And the step in the table below is what you pay if you let it happen: That comparison assumes you do nothing, which is the point of it. Both providers have to write to you before the term ends with their best available deals, and taking one changes the whole picture.
| Sky | Virgin Media | |
|---|---|---|
| What is published before you sign | A rule, and no number: “At the end of your 24-month minimum term, your monthly price will be the price you are paying immediately before your minimum term ends, plus £5.” | A number for every tier, and no cap on it |
| The standard price on a gigabit plan | Not published | £86 |
| The step up from month 24 | £5 | £48.01 on Gig1 |
| The smallest step of the range | £5, on every tier | £30.01, on M125 |
| Can you total the two years? | No, not from anything Sky publishes. Sky's cannot, because only the first year of it has been published. | Yes: £815.76 on Gig1 |
| What triggers it | The term ending | The term ending |
| Does either write to you first? | Yes | Yes |
Sky's two-year total cannot be worked out from anything Sky publishes, because Sky has not published next April's rise or the one after. Virgin Media's can, because Virgin Media writes both into the contract. It is worth being plain about what that means for this page: we can tell you Virgin Media's Gig1 comes to £815.76 across the term and we cannot tell you Sky's equivalent, and that is a fact about disclosure rather than about price.
Our estimate for Sky, clearly labelled as one
Sky's last rise was £3 a month. If Sky repeated that twice, Gigafast at £29 would be about £35 a month by the end of the term and about £40 in month 25 once the published £5 lands. That is roughly £46 a month below Virgin Media's published £86. Those three figures are our arithmetic on last year's increase, not Sky's promise, because Sky has published nothing for next April. Treat them as an indication of the shape and not as numbers to budget against.
The honest summary of this section is that Virgin Media's disclosure is the better practice and the more expensive outcome, and Sky's silence is the worse practice and the cheaper one. Neither of those is an accident, and the next section explains why they go together.
Our guide to mid-contract price rises covers every provider's rule, and what happens when your contract ends explains the step-up and how to avoid paying it.
Can you leave when the price goes up?
Direct answer: On Sky, yes, and Sky says so in its own words. On Virgin Media, no, and for the opposite reason. That is the trade, and it is the opposite way round from the way it sounds. Virgin Media's rise is written into the contract before you sign, which is precisely why it is not a change of terms and gives you no right to leave. Sky's is not written down anywhere, which is why Sky's own Chief Operating Officer says an in-term customer can cancel penalty free when it lands.
Sky, in Sky's own words
Devesh Raj, Chief Operating Officer, Sky, writing on 6 January 2026: “if you are within a minimum term and we notify you of a price increase, you have the right to cancel your broadband, satellite pay-TV or mobile package without paying early termination fees, as has always been the case at Sky.” The mechanism is the sentence just before it: “Instead, our prices are variable.” And Sky's own help page states the same rule from the other end: “Early termination charges only apply if your subscription ends before the end of your minimum term, for reasons other than those permitted under your contract.” A notified price increase is one of those permitted reasons, which is how the two statements join up.
Virgin Media, in Virgin Media's own words
“The monthly subscription charge for your main services will increase by £4, which will apply every April.” Virgin Media writes the increase into the contract as a cash amount, in pounds and pence, before you sign, though not every customer is on the same figure. 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%. Because that figure was on the contract when you signed it, the April increase is the contract working as written rather than a change to it, and no right to cancel arises.
| Sky | Virgin Media | |
|---|---|---|
| How the annual rise is set | Afresh each year, announced six to eight weeks ahead | Written into the contract as a cash amount before you sign |
| What next April will cost | Sky has not published one | £4 a month more |
| The year after that | Sky has not published one for the year after either | £4 a month more again |
| Where you can read it before signing | Nowhere | On the contract and the price change page |
| The last one applied | £3 a month, announced 18 February 2026, applied from April 2026 | £4 a month, every April |
| Can you leave when it lands? | Yes. Because the amount was not set out in advance, raising it changes your terms | No. Because the amount was set out in advance, it is not a change of terms |
| Does a social tariff customer see it? | No. Sky said in the same announcement: “our broadband social tariff will once again be frozen” | No, while the qualifying benefit continues |
Read the second and third rows against the sixth, because that is the whole trade. Virgin Media can tell you what April 2027 costs and April 2028 after it, and it can do that precisely because it has tied its own hands to a number, which in turn is what removes your right to walk. Sky cannot tell you anything about next April, and that uncertainty is exactly what hands you the exit. You cannot have both.
One caution on Sky's side, and it is a practical one. Sky publishes the right but not a deadline. Its own pages say it will set out your rights when it writes to you, and the number of days you get is in that letter rather than on the website, so read it the day it arrives. Sky's own commitment is to tell you: “This is why we always send detailed notifications explaining any price changes and clearly setting out your rights.” The right is real and Sky states it plainly, but it is a right you have to use rather than one that protects you by sitting still. If you are the sort of household that files provider letters unopened, this column is worth less to you than it looks.
Sky's most recent increase, for scale: For Broadband, most customers will see a £3 increase, which is lower than rises announced by major competitors, announced on 18 February 2026 and applied from April 2026. Virgin Media's is £4 a month every April for anyone who joined after 2 October 2025, £3.50 for the cohort before that, and RPI plus 3.9% for the oldest contracts, which works out at about 7.5% a year.
Our guide to mid-contract price rises sets out every large provider's rule side by side, and leaving a broadband contract early covers when you can go without a fee.
The £28 million fine, and why it belongs on this page
Direct answer: Ofcom's £28 million fine lands squarely on this page, because the whole question here is whether you can get out. Virgin Media was fined in July 2026 for conditions and procedures that Ofcom found acted as a disincentive to customers who wanted to cancel.
Ofcom's finding was that Ofcom found that the conditions and procedures Virgin Media had in place acted as a disincentive to customers who wanted to cancel. The practices it named were 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, across millions of calls of calls between 1 January 2022 to 11 September 2024. The penalty was £28 million, announced on 8 July 2026, after a 30% reduction for admitting the breach and settling.
On a page about which of two providers you can leave, that is not a footnote. Everything in the section above turns on your ability to act: the exit right on Sky is only worth what you can exercise, and the protection from Virgin Media's standard price is only worth what you can exercise. A regulator finding that one of the two made that harder for several years is directly relevant to the decision, and leaving it out would be the dishonest version of this page.
Two things are owed to Virgin Media in the same breath. In fairness the breach period ended the day before One Touch Switch launched, and under that system you tell the provider you are joining and it does the rest, so leaving no longer depends on getting anyone at Virgin Media on the telephone. Switching no longer depends on getting through to anybody. Under One Touch Switch you tell the provider you are joining and it does the rest. And the fine is about the leaving process rather than about the network or the product, both of which the next two sections treat on their own merits, where Virgin Media does well.
Our guide to One Touch Switch explains how leaving works now, and how to complain about your broadband provider covers what to do if a cancellation is obstructed.
The speed promises, and what each is worth
Direct answer: Both have signed Ofcom's speed code and both give you a way out if the line underperforms, so this is the one part of the comparison where the two are genuinely alike. The promises are shaped differently: Sky names a figure in megabits and Virgin Media names 50% of the advertised speed, so they are not directly comparable.
Sky's wording: “We guarantee the broadband speed to your hub will not fall below your Guaranteed Minimum Download Speed for at least 3 days in a row in a 30-day period” Virgin Media's: 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.
| Sky | Virgin Media | |
|---|---|---|
| What is guaranteed | A guaranteed minimum download speed to your hub | 50% of the advertised speed |
| The shape of the promise | A figure in megabits, given for your line | A fraction of the speed advertised |
| How long it must be missed | At least 3 days in a row in a 30-day period | 3 days in a row |
| Time to fix it | Thirty days | Thirty days |
| Right to leave if unfixed | Yes, without an early termination fee | Yes, without an early termination fee |
| Whole-home Wi-Fi promise | from £6 a month, Wi-Fi in every room or money back | £8 a month, at least 30 Mbps in every room or a £100 one-off credit |
| Included at the top tiers | Included on the Gigafast+ tiers | Included on Gig1, Gig2 and Volt |
A percentage and a number are not the same promise, and which is better depends on the tier. Half of a gigabit is a high floor in absolute terms; half of Virgin Media's entry 132 Mbps is a lower one. Sky's figure is given for your specific line rather than for the product, which is the more useful shape but also the one you cannot check before ordering.
The Wi-Fi row is the closest thing on this page to a straight comparison, and it goes Sky's way on price and Virgin Media's way on precision. Sky's WiFi Max is from £6 a month and promises Wi-Fi in every room or your money back. Virgin Media's is £8 a month and puts a number on it: at least 30 Mbps in every room or a £100 one-off credit, with up to three WiFi Pods if needed. Both include it free at the top of the range. A promise you can measure is worth more than one you cannot, which is what the extra two pounds buys.
Our guide to minimum guaranteed download speeds explains what each provider's promise is worth, whether poor speeds let you leave early covers the remedy, and our speed test records what you are actually getting with a timestamp.
The television, which is the one thing they share
Direct answer: The traffic runs one way. Virgin Media sells Sky Sports and Sky Cinema by name, and both companies describe the same nine dedicated Sky Sports channels. Nothing on Sky's site sells a Virgin Media channel, because there is no such thing to sell. Both include Netflix Standard with adverts: Sky on both TV packages, Virgin Media on every 24-month deal. So the television is not the thing that separates these two, whatever the comparison you read elsewhere says.
Virgin Media puts it in its own words: “You can also get Sky Sports and Sky Cinema on Virgin Media by taking one of our dedicated broadband and TV deals or subscribing via your Flex TV package.” The reason it only runs one way is structural rather than commercial: Virgin Media is a distributor of other people's television, and Sky is one of the people whose television it distributes.
Sky's two TV packages are £15 a month for Essential TV and £24 for Ultimate TV, both on a 24-month minimum term, and both prices are printed without asking for an address. Virgin Media sells Entertainment, Cinema, Sport, Sport and Cinema, and Max Volt, plus a Broadband and Flex TV option where the television sits on a rolling 30-day contract, and the entry bundles carry a floor worth knowing: “M350 broadband and above.” So the cheapest Virgin Media broadband tier cannot carry a television bundle at all, which quietly moves the real entry price for a Virgin Media TV household up the ladder.
The difference that actually shows up while you are shopping
Sky prints both TV prices on its comparison page without asking for a postcode. Virgin Media lists its five bundles by name and shows no price for any of them until you check an address. We did not enter a postcode into either checker for this page, so we can quote Sky's television prices and not Virgin Media's. So the television question is not which of them has Sky. Both do. It is whether you want the price before you hand over an address.
One practical note for a household that wants both the broadband and the television from one place. Sky's TV runs over any broadband connection through Sky Stream or Sky Glass, and Sky's own pages state a minimum speed rather than naming Sky Broadband. Virgin Media's television requires a Virgin Media line, because its Flex product states Virgin Media broadband as a requirement. So Sky's television travels and Virgin Media's does not, which matters if you expect to change broadband provider before you change television provider.
Our guide to broadband and TV deals compares every bundle in the market, and our Sky review covers the television packages in more detail.
Where each one wins
Direct answer: They win different measures. Sky is the better of the two on complaints. Ofcom recorded 5 broadband complaints per 100,000 customers for Sky against 6 for Virgin Media, which puts Sky one below the industry average and Virgin Media level with it. Virgin Media is the better of the two on reliability. It won the Uswitch most reliable provider award in 2025 and again in 2026, and publishes 99.88% average network uptime measured from customer routers over the first half of 2026. Neither of those cancels the other out, because complaints and uptime are not the same thing.
| Sky | Virgin Media | |
|---|---|---|
| Ofcom broadband complaints per 100,000 | 5 | 6 |
| Where that sits | one below the industry average of 6, behind only Plusnet (4) and ahead of EE and Virgin Media (6), BT (7), Vodafone (8) and TalkTalk (10) | level with the industry average of 6 and with EE, behind Plusnet (4) and Sky (5) and ahead of BT (7), Vodafone (8) and TalkTalk (10) |
| Landline complaints per 100,000 | 2 | 2 |
| Trustpilot | 2.7 out of 5 | 1.5 out of 5 |
| Reliability awards | None in the Uswitch reliability category | Virgin Media was named the most reliable broadband provider in the Uswitch awards in 2025 and again in 2026, on Opensignal's fixed broadband experience data. |
| Published network uptime | Not published | 99.88% network reliability, measured January 2026 to June 2026 |
| Support hours | 24/7 UK customer support | Not published as a single figure |
Trustpilot separates them more sharply than either measure above, at 2.7 out of 5 for Sky and 1.5 for Virgin Media, and it is the weakest of the three, because people who write a review unprompted are rarely the ones who had a quiet year. The Which? panel scored Virgin Media 59%, which is the middle of the market rather than the bottom of it, and sits oddly against that Trustpilot number. 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.
If you want one line from all of it: Sky is complained about less, Virgin Media goes down less, and neither is loved by the people who volunteer a review. For most households the uptime figure is the more useful of the two, because a connection that works is worth more than a complaints process you never use. For a household that has had a bad experience with a provider before, the complaints rate is the one that will feel relevant.
Our provider ratings put every company's scores side by side, and how to complain covers the process if it goes wrong.
What else comes with each
Direct answer: Both advertise nothing to pay up front and both run 24-month terms. Sky includes a landline on every package where Virgin Media sells it separately. Virgin Media includes Netflix from the mid tiers upward where Sky includes it only with a TV package.
| Sky | Virgin Media | |
|---|---|---|
| Set-up | £0 advertised, usually £19.95 | £0, or £30 if you pick an engineer over self-install |
| Minimum term | 24 months | 24 months |
| Router | Sky Broadband Hub, or Sky Max Hub and Gigafast+ Hub at the top | Virgin Media Hub with Intelligent WiFi |
| Landline | All our broadband services are inclusive of landline rental and Sky Pay As You Talk (£0pm) as standard | Sold separately, and not available in new network expansion areas |
| Wi-Fi promise | Sky WiFi Max is £6 a month, or included on the Gigafast+ tiers, and promises WiFi in every room or money back | WiFi Max costs £8 a month on the slower tiers and is included on Gig1 and the Volt bundles. Virgin Media promises at least 30 Mbps in every room, sends up to three pods one at a time if it is not met, and pays a one-off £100 credit if the pods do not fix it. |
| Netflix | Included on both TV packages | Netflix Standard with adverts and WiFi Max included from £27.99 upward |
| Price after the term ends | A rule: “At the end of your 24-month minimum term, your monthly price will be the price you are paying immediately before your minimum term ends, plus £5.” | A number: “£23.99 a month for 24 months, then £62 a month thereafter” |
| Early termination | Early termination charges only apply if your subscription ends before the end of your minimum term, for reasons other than those permitted under your contract. | 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. |
| Switching help | Up to £200 credit, or £300 with TV | Up to £300 credit, capped at what you were charged |
The landline row is a quiet win for Sky and it is easy to miss. “All our broadband services are inclusive of landline rental and Sky Pay As You Talk (£0pm) as standard” On Virgin Media a home phone is a separate purchase, and its own legals add a limit worth knowing if you are in a newly built area: home phone is not available in new network expansion areas at all. If you still use a landline, that is a real difference rather than a line item.
The switching credit row looks like a win for Virgin Media on the headline number and is not, on either side. Both are refunds of what your old provider charged you to leave, paid as account credit after you join and against proof you settled the bill. Virgin Media says so plainly: “For a successful claim, you will receive account credit to the value of your early termination fees, up to £300 (whichever is lower).” And it excludes some customers outright: “Student broadband contracts, 30-day rolling contracts and Essential broadband customers are not eligible for this Offer.” If you are already out of contract and owe nothing, neither credit is worth a penny to you.
Our guide to exit fees and setup fees compares the cost at both ends of a contract, and switching broadband covers One Touch Switch from both ends.
Who should choose which
Direct answer: Sky on price and on the exit. Virgin Media on speed, on uptime and on the social tariff. The postcode decides more than either, and at a great many addresses it decides everything.
| If this is you | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Virgin Media does not reach you | Sky | Virgin Media services are only available in eligible Virgin Media network areas. At those addresses this is not a comparison. |
| You want the cheapest monthly bill | Sky | Cheaper at all four comparable speeds, by £0.99 at three of them and £17.99 at the top. |
| You want the fastest line at around a gigabit | Virgin Media | 1,130 Mbps against Sky's 900 Mbps, for £0.99 a month more. |
| You want the fastest line full stop | Sky, if it reaches you | 2,500 Mbps both ways for £32, against Virgin Media's 2,000 Mbps for £49.99. Reach is 12% of UK homes. |
| You will not act on a price-rise letter | Virgin Media | Every figure for the next two years is published before you sign, so nothing can surprise you. |
| You will act on one | Sky | A notified rise gives an in-term customer the right to leave without an early termination fee. |
| You expect to let the contract roll | Sky | Its step is a published £5. Virgin Media's on Gig1 is £48.01. |
| You are on a qualifying benefit | Virgin Media | £12.50 on a rolling 30-day contract and open to new customers. Sky’s own page says: “Our Sky Broadband Basics offer is only available if you already have Sky Broadband with us” |
| Uptime matters more than anything | Virgin Media | Virgin Media was named the most reliable broadband provider in the Uswitch awards in 2025 and again in 2026, on Opensignal's fixed broadband experience data. It publishes 99.88% network reliability. |
| You want Sky Sports or Sky Cinema | Either | You can also get Sky Sports and Sky Cinema on Virgin Media by taking one of our dedicated broadband and TV deals or subscribing via your Flex TV package. |
Look at the fifth and sixth rows, because they are the same question asked twice and they are the tie-break for almost everyone else. Virgin Media suits the household that wants to sign once and not think about it, and it charges for that in month 25. Sky suits the household that will open the letter, and it is cheaper in the meantime. Neither is the better company. They have made opposite bets about how their customers behave, and you know which of the two you are. Put the end of your minimum term in the calendar the day you sign, and on Sky read the price-rise letter the day it arrives rather than filing it. Those two notes are worth more than anything else on this page.
The third option this page would otherwise hide
Direct answer: On an Openreach line the choice is never only these two: the same cable carries a dozen other retailers, and the cheapest of them is usually cheaper than both. 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 on this pairing that is misleading in an unusual way. Where Virgin Media reaches, it is competing against everyone on the Openreach line as well as against its own network. Where it does not, Sky is one of a dozen retailers on that line, over 23.4 million premises as at 30 June 2026, and several of those retailers are cheaper than Sky for the same connection.
That does not make either a bad choice. Both are in Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme and both have signed the speed code, which several cheaper providers have not, and for a lot of households those safety nets are worth the difference. Both are also among the more complained-about providers' better performers, at 5 and 6 per 100,000. 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.
Sky and Virgin Media deals at your postcode
See every provider at your address, not only these two
The two lists above are two brands, one of them on its own network and one of them on a line a dozen others sell over. The full comparison shows every provider we can switch you to at your postcode, lowest price first, including full fibre from every other network, the cheapest deals and social tariffs.
Show every provider at my postcode →Sky vs Virgin Media: frequently asked questions
Is Sky or Virgin Media cheaper?
Sky, at every speed where the two sell something comparable, though the margin is thin. At around 150 Mbps Sky is £23 against Virgin Media's £23.99, at 500 Mbps £27 against £27.99, and at gigabit £29 against £29.99. That is £0.99 a month each time, or £11.88 a year. The one real gap is at the top, where Sky's 2.5 Gigafast+ is £32 against Virgin Media's Gig2 at £49.99, a difference of £17.99 a month. £431.76 across the term at the opening prices, and Sky's line is the faster of the two.
Which is faster, Sky or Virgin Media?
It depends which speed you are buying, and the answer changes three times. At the entry tier Sky's 150 Mbps beats Virgin Media's 132 Mbps. At 500 Mbps Virgin Media's 516 Mbps edges Sky's 500 Mbps, though Sky's upload is the higher. At gigabit Virgin Media wins clearly, 1,130 Mbps against 900 Mbps. At the top Sky wins again and not narrowly: 2,500 Mbps both ways against Virgin Media's 2,000 Mbps down and 200 Mbps up.
Can I leave Sky if it puts the price up mid-contract?
Sky says yes, and it is the clearest statement any large provider makes on the point. Devesh Raj, Chief Operating Officer, Sky, on 6 January 2026: “if you are within a minimum term and we notify you of a price increase, you have the right to cancel your broadband, satellite pay-TV or mobile package without paying early termination fees, as has always been the case at Sky.” The mechanism is in the sentence before it: “Instead, our prices are variable.” Because the amount is not fixed in advance, raising it is a change to your terms, and that is what gives you the right to go. Sky's own help page puts the same rule the other way round: “Early termination charges only apply if your subscription ends before the end of your minimum term, for reasons other than those permitted under your contract.” Sky publishes the right but not a deadline. Its own pages say it will set out your rights when it writes to you, and the number of days you get is in that letter rather than on the website, so read it the day it arrives.
Can I leave Virgin Media if it puts the price up mid-contract?
No, and for the opposite reason. Virgin Media writes the increase into the contract before you sign: “The monthly subscription charge for your main services will increase by £4, which will apply every April.” Because it was disclosed in advance it is not a change of terms, so no right to cancel arises when it lands. 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%. That is the trade this whole page turns on: Virgin Media tells you the number and holds you to it, Sky tells you nothing and lets you go.
What happens at the end of the contract with each?
This is where they stop resembling each other. Sky publishes a rule and no number: “At the end of your 24-month minimum term, your monthly price will be the price you are paying immediately before your minimum term ends, plus £5.” Virgin Media publishes a number and no cap, tier by tier: £62 on M125, £80 on M500, £86 on Gig1 and £92 on Gig2. Measured the same way, from the price you are paying in month 24, Sky's step is £5 and Virgin Media's on Gig1 is £48.01, about 10 times as much. Even Virgin Media's smallest step, on M125, is £30.01. That comparison assumes you do nothing, which is the point of it. Both providers have to write to you before the term ends with their best available deals, and taking one changes the whole picture.
Why can you not give Sky's total cost over 24 months?
Sky's two-year total cannot be worked out from anything Sky publishes, because Sky has not published next April's rise or the one after. Virgin Media's can, because Virgin Media writes both into the contract. Virgin Media's Gig1 works out at £815.76 across the term. If Sky repeated last April's £3 twice, Gigafast would reach about £35 a month by the end of the term and about £40 in month 25, which is roughly £46 a month below Virgin Media's published £86. Treat those three figures as our estimate rather than Sky's promise, because Sky has published nothing for next April.
Was Virgin Media fined for making it hard to cancel?
Yes. Ofcom's £28 million fine lands squarely on this page, because the whole question here is whether you can get out. Virgin Media was fined in July 2026 for conditions and procedures that Ofcom found acted as a disincentive to customers who wanted to cancel. Ofcom's finding was that Ofcom found that the conditions and procedures Virgin Media had in place acted as a disincentive to customers who wanted to cancel. The practices it listed were 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, across millions of calls between 1 January 2022 to 11 September 2024. In fairness the breach period ended the day before One Touch Switch launched, and under that system you tell the provider you are joining and it does the rest, so leaving no longer depends on getting anyone at Virgin Media on the telephone.
Does Virgin Media have Sky channels?
Yes, and Virgin Media says so itself: “You can also get Sky Sports and Sky Cinema on Virgin Media by taking one of our dedicated broadband and TV deals or subscribing via your Flex TV package.” Both companies describe the same nine dedicated Sky Sports channels. The traffic runs one way. Virgin Media sells Sky Sports and Sky Cinema by name, and both companies describe the same nine dedicated Sky Sports channels. Nothing on Sky's site sells a Virgin Media channel, because there is no such thing to sell. Both include Netflix Standard with adverts: Sky on both TV packages, Virgin Media on every 24-month deal. The practical difference when you are shopping is elsewhere: Sky prints both TV prices on its comparison page without asking for a postcode. Virgin Media lists its five bundles by name and shows no price for any of them until you check an address. So the television question is not which of them has Sky. Both do. It is whether you want the price before you hand over an address.
Which has the better social tariff, Sky or Virgin Media?
Virgin Media, clearly. On a qualifying benefit the gap is wide and it runs Virgin Media's way. Essential Broadband is £12.50 a month on a rolling 30-day contract and open to new customers. Sky Broadband Basics is £20, runs for 24 months, and Sky's own page says it is only available if you already have Sky Broadband. Two things soften that. Sky charges no early termination fee on Basics even inside the 24 months, and Sky has frozen the social tariff price again this year. Virgin Media, for its part, will not move a customer onto Essential Broadband while they are in arrears. Sky's own page adds a route in for someone who is not a customer yet, but it is a telephone call rather than an online order: “If you don't already have Sky Broadband, get in touch with us.” And Sky publishes no figure for what the price becomes afterwards: “After 24-months the price will go back to the standard rate. We'll tell you what this will be when you get in touch to take Sky Broadband Basics.”
Which has better customer service, Sky or Virgin Media?
They win different measures, which is a fact about the measures rather than a contradiction. Sky is the better of the two on complaints. Ofcom recorded 5 broadband complaints per 100,000 customers for Sky against 6 for Virgin Media, which puts Sky one below the industry average and Virgin Media level with it. Virgin Media is the better of the two on reliability. It won the Uswitch most reliable provider award in 2025 and again in 2026, and publishes 99.88% average network uptime measured from customer routers over the first half of 2026. Trustpilot separates them more sharply than either measure above, at 2.7 out of 5 for Sky and 1.5 for Virgin Media, and it is the weakest of the three, because people who write a review unprompted are rarely the ones who had a quiet year. If you want one line from all three: Sky is complained about less, Virgin Media goes down less, and neither is loved on Trustpilot.
Can I get both Sky and Virgin Media at my address?
Often not, and that is the first thing to settle. Virgin Media runs its own cable and full fibre network and sells nowhere else: “Virgin Media services are only available in eligible Virgin Media network areas.” It reached 16.2 million homes at 30 June 2026. Sky sells over Openreach, which reaches most of the country. So at a great many addresses this comparison has already been decided for you, and the postcode box at the top of this page is the fastest way to find out which way.
Is the switching credit worth anything on either?
It is worth what your old provider charges you to leave, and no more. Virgin Media's wording is explicit: “For a successful claim, you will receive account credit to the value of your early termination fees, up to £300 (whichever is lower).” Sky's up to £200 works the same way, paid as account credit after you join and against proof you settled the bill. Neither is a discount on the price, and Virgin Media excludes some customers outright: “Student broadband contracts, 30-day rolling contracts and Essential broadband customers are not eligible for this Offer.” If you are out of contract already and owe nothing, both are worth nothing.
In short
- Sky is cheaper at all four comparable speeds: £0.99 a month at three of them and £17.99 at the top.
- Virgin Media is faster at 500 Mbps and clearly faster at gigabit. Sky is faster at the entry tier and at the top.
- For two years these two cost within a pound a month of each other at every speed where both sell something comparable. The difference is not the price. It is that Virgin Media tells you exactly what happens next and gives you no way out of it, while Sky tells you almost nothing and lets you leave when it happens.
- That is the trade, and it is the opposite way round from the way it sounds. Virgin Media's rise is written into the contract before you sign, which is precisely why it is not a change of terms and gives you no right to leave. Sky's is not written down anywhere, which is why Sky's own Chief Operating Officer says an in-term customer can cancel penalty free when it lands.
- Sky's step in month 25 is £5. Virgin Media's on Gig1 is £48.01, about 10 times as much, and its smallest is £30.01.
- Sky's two-year total cannot be worked out from anything Sky publishes, because Sky has not published next April's rise or the one after. Virgin Media's can, because Virgin Media writes both into the contract.
- Ofcom's £28 million fine lands squarely on this page, because the whole question here is whether you can get out. Virgin Media was fined in July 2026 for conditions and procedures that Ofcom found acted as a disincentive to customers who wanted to cancel. In fairness the breach period ended the day before One Touch Switch launched, and under that system you tell the provider you are joining and it does the rest, so leaving no longer depends on getting anyone at Virgin Media on the telephone.
- Sky is the better of the two on complaints. Ofcom recorded 5 broadband complaints per 100,000 customers for Sky against 6 for Virgin Media, which puts Sky one below the industry average and Virgin Media level with it. Virgin Media is the better of the two on reliability. It won the Uswitch most reliable provider award in 2025 and again in 2026, and publishes 99.88% average network uptime measured from customer routers over the first half of 2026.
- On a qualifying benefit the gap is wide and it runs Virgin Media's way. Essential Broadband is £12.50 a month on a rolling 30-day contract and open to new customers. Sky Broadband Basics is £20, runs for 24 months, and Sky's own page says it is only available if you already have Sky Broadband.
- The traffic runs one way. Virgin Media sells Sky Sports and Sky Cinema by name, and both companies describe the same nine dedicated Sky Sports channels. Nothing on Sky's site sells a Virgin Media channel, because there is no such thing to sell. Sky prints both TV prices on its comparison page without asking for a postcode. Virgin Media lists its five bundles by name and shows no price for any of them until you check an address.
- Virgin Media services are only available in eligible Virgin Media network areas. That settles this comparison at a great many addresses before anything else on this page does.
- Put the end of your minimum term in the calendar the day you sign, and on Sky read the price-rise letter the day it arrives rather than filing it. Those two notes are worth more than anything else on this page.
Each line stands on its own and carries its date. Reviewed by a person at least quarterly, last on 20 September 2026.
References
- Sky
Sky. (2026). Broadband deals, the four published tier prices, their speeds, offer end dates and the full legal small print. sky.com
- Sky
Sky. (2026). Broadband, the set-up fee small print and the 24-month minimum terms. sky.com
- Sky
Sky. (2026, January 6). An update on our prices, Devesh Raj, Chief Operating Officer, on variable pricing and the right to cancel penalty free. skygroup.sky
- Sky
Sky. (2025, February 4). An update on our TV and broadband prices, the earlier statement and Sky’s position on the Ofcom pounds and pence rule. skygroup.sky
- Sky
Sky. (2026). Charges for ending your Sky contract early, when early termination charges apply and when they do not. sky.com
- Sky
Sky. (2026). Sky social tariffs, Sky Broadband Basics, its price, term, eligibility and the fee-free exit. sky.com
- Sky
Sky. (2026). Compare Sky TV packages, the two TV prices and their minimum terms. sky.com
- Virgin Media
Virgin Media. (2026). Broadband packages, the switching credit terms, the network-area limit and the 99.88% uptime claim. virginmedia.com
- Virgin Media
Virgin Media. (2026). Broadband deals, the six tier prices, their speeds and the standard price beside each. virginmedia.com
- Virgin Media
Virgin Media. (2026). Annual price change, the £4 April increase and the three contract cohorts running at once. virginmedia.com
- Virgin Media
Virgin Media. (2026). TV and broadband deals, the five bundles, the M350 floor and the Sky channels Virgin Media carries. virginmedia.com
- Virgin Media
Virgin Media. (2026). Broadband for low income families, Essential Broadband, its price, speed and who may take it. virginmedia.com
- Virgin Media
Virgin Media. (2026). Essential broadband terms, the arrears exclusion and the price freeze while benefits continue. virginmedia.com
- Ofcom
Ofcom. (2026, July 8). Virgin Media fined £28m, the finding on cancellation, the practices listed and the breach period. ofcom.org.uk
- Ofcom
Ofcom. (2026, July 23). Telecoms and pay TV complaints, Q1 2026, complaints per 100,000 customers for both providers. ofcom.org.uk
- Ofcom
Ofcom. (2026, August 17). Social tariffs, the list of every provider that runs one. ofcom.org.uk
- Which?
Which?. (2026). Best and worst broadband providers, customer scores from a 5,235 person survey. which.co.uk
- BroadbandSwitch.uk
BroadbandSwitch.uk. (2026). Sky broadband deals, our own hand-checked tier prices and the date each was verified. broadbandswitch.uk
- BroadbandSwitch.uk
BroadbandSwitch.uk. (2026). Virgin Media broadband deals, our own hand-checked tier prices and the date each was verified. broadbandswitch.uk
- BroadbandSwitch.uk
BroadbandSwitch.uk. (2026). Broadband deals, checked by hand, the market median and range quoted here. broadbandswitch.uk
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The social tariffs, where the gap is widest
Direct answer: On a qualifying benefit the gap is wide and it runs Virgin Media's way. Essential Broadband is £12.50 a month on a rolling 30-day contract and open to new customers. Sky Broadband Basics is £20, runs for 24 months, and Sky's own page says it is only available if you already have Sky Broadband.
The eligibility row is the one that decides it. Sky's own page says it plainly: “Our Sky Broadband Basics offer is only available if you already have Sky Broadband with us” For a household not already with Sky, that is not a cheaper option, it is no option, and the sentence that follows is the only route in: “If you don't already have Sky Broadband, get in touch with us.” A telephone call is a real route and we should say so, but it is a higher barrier than an online order and it is not how most people shop.
Two things soften that. Sky charges no early termination fee on Basics even inside the 24 months, and Sky has frozen the social tariff price again this year. Virgin Media, for its part, will not move a customer onto Essential Broadband while they are in arrears. The fee-free exit is genuinely unusual and worth weighing: a 24-month contract you can leave at any time without charge is close to a rolling one in practice. What Sky will not tell you is where the price lands afterwards: “After 24-months the price will go back to the standard rate. We'll tell you what this will be when you get in touch to take Sky Broadband Basics.” That is the same pattern as the paid tiers, and on a tariff aimed at households on a tight budget it matters more.
Virgin Media's exclusion is worth reading too, because it catches exactly the households most likely to need the tariff: Virgin Media will not move a customer onto Essential Broadband while they are in arrears or on a repayment plan. If that is where you are, speak to them about the arrears first and the tariff second. And whichever way this goes, check Ofcom's own list before deciding, because 33 providers run one and a smaller name on your street may beat both of these.
Our social tariff guide lists every provider's tariff with its price and who qualifies, and cheap broadband deals covers the open market for anyone who does not qualify.