Vodafone vs BT broadband: cheaper at every tier, and the symmetrical upload is not on the line BT sells

Which one to choose

Direct answer: Vodafone, on the money, and it is not close: Vodafone is the cheaper of the two at every comparable tier, and the gap widens as the term runs because its annual rise is smaller. Where CityFibre or Community Fibre reach, take it without thinking twice, because Vodafone sells symmetrical gigabit there for less than BT charges for a tenth of that upload. Choose BT if you want a guaranteed speed printed before you buy, because Vodafone has not signed Ofcom's voluntary code of practice on broadband speeds. BT has.

That is the answer, and the rest of this page is the working. One thing decides more of it than either brand does, which is why the postcode box sits above this section. Vodafone sells over three fibre networks, Openreach, CityFibre and Community Fibre, and BT sells over one. It matters more than a technical detail, because the upload speed, the top tier and the price all change with the network while the tariff name does not.

The claim that sent us looking is on the page this one replaces, and on Vodafone's own advertising: symmetrical upload speeds. They exist, they are excellent, and Vodafone says where they are. In our CityFibre and Community Fibre areas, the upload and download speeds are the same. BT sells over Openreach and nothing else, so at an Openreach address the symmetry is not part of the comparison at all, and On the line these two share, BT's published upload is the higher of the pair: 73 Mbps at 500 Mbps against Vodafone's 68, and 49 Mbps at 300 against Vodafone's 27 at 150. The symmetrical speeds Vodafone advertises are real. They are on CityFibre and Community Fibre, which BT does not sell over at all, so at those addresses the comparison is not close.

Run your address through our comparison before you decide between two brands, read our full Vodafone review and our full BT 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.

Three networks against one, and which you are on

Direct answer: Vodafone sells over three fibre networks, Openreach, CityFibre and Community Fibre, and BT sells over one. It matters more than a technical detail, because the upload speed, the top tier and the price all change with the network while the tariff name does not. Vodafone does not name the network on any product page, so the only published way to tell before you order is the tier list you are offered.

Most head-to-heads on this site compare two retailers on one Openreach line, where the connection is identical and the only variables are price, contract and service. This one is different on one side only. BT is an Openreach retailer and nothing else. Vodafone is an Openreach retailer at most addresses, a CityFibre retailer at some and a Community Fibre retailer in parts of London, and the tariff names do not change between them.

The practical problem is that Vodafone does not tell you which one you are being sold. There is no network lookup and no product page names a builder. The tells in the table above are the only published way to work it out short of running the address, and they are inferred from the tier list rather than stated by Vodafone. We would rather it said so plainly, because on this brand the network decides the upload speed.

Our guide to full fibre from every network covers who builds what, and the availability checker tells you which networks reach your address.

The symmetrical speeds, and where they actually are

Direct answer: In our CityFibre and Community Fibre areas, the upload and download speeds are the same. BT sells over neither of those networks. On the Openreach line the two do share, For our Openreach plans: Full Fibre 150 is 27 Mbps and Full Fibre 500 is 68 Mbps. BT publishes 49 Mbps at 300 and 73 Mbps at 500. On the line these two share, BT's published upload is the higher of the pair: 73 Mbps at 500 Mbps against Vodafone's 68, and 49 Mbps at 300 against Vodafone's 27 at 150.

This is the section that changed our mind about the page, so it is worth setting out carefully. Vodafone advertises upload speeds that match its downloads, up to up to 910 Mbps, and that is a genuine and unusual thing to be able to sell in the UK consumer market. It is also conditional, and Vodafone states the condition itself rather than burying it: In our CityFibre and Community Fibre areas, the upload and download speeds are the same.

CityFibre and Community Fibre are not networks BT sells over. BT is an Openreach retailer. So the comparison splits cleanly in two. At an address CityFibre or Community Fibre reaches, Vodafone offers something BT cannot match at any price, and this page is a short one: buy the Vodafone plan. At an Openreach address the symmetry is not available from either of them, and the question becomes what each publishes on the same line.

One gap is worth naming, because it is the reason the third row of that table says not published: Vodafone stops publishing upload speeds above 500 Mbps on Openreach, and never publishes one per tier on the other two networks. BT prints an upload figure on all six of its plan cards. If upload is what you are buying, that difference in disclosure matters as much as the numbers themselves, and it is the same pattern as the speed guarantee two sections below.

Our guide to upload against download speed explains which of the two actually limits what you are doing, and broadband for large file uploads covers the heavier end.

What each one costs today

Direct answer: Vodafone runs from £24 for Full Fibre 150 to £28 for Full Fibre 910. BT runs from £26.99 for Fibre Essential to £31.99 for Full Fibre 900. Vodafone is the cheaper at every tier we can match, and its annual rise is 50p a month smaller.

On set-up the two are close. BT's activation is £10, cut from £30 and shown on the price list as a saving. Vodafone's price plan puts the standard installation charge for a new line at £0, and its sales pages say an installation fee may apply, which is the less helpful of the two ways to say it. Both were advertising switching help when we read them: Vodafone advertises up to £300 of credit towards the fees your old provider charges, claimed after activation with proof of the final bill. BT's current offer is a bill credit on one tier rather than a reimbursement, so the two are not the same kind of thing.

One oddity on each ladder. Full Fibre 300 and Full Fibre 500 cost the same £29.99 a month, and Full Fibre 300 charges £20 more in the first month, so Full Fibre 300 is never the better buy at an address that can take both. And on Vodafone's, Full Fibre 150 was cheaper than both part-fibre plans in the table, and Full Fibre 910 on CityFibre cost £3 less than the same speed on Openreach, so the network at your address decides the price as much as the speed does. Neither is a trick, and both are the same phenomenon: a price list built around what an address can take rather than around a tidy ladder. Where two tiers are both available, check whether the faster one is also the cheaper one before you click.

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 our Vodafone review carries the tier prices with their own dates.

What 24 months actually costs

Direct answer: At 500 Mbps on the same Openreach line, £732 for Vodafone against £825.76 for BT: a difference of £93.76 across the term. At the top it is £756 against £873.76, a difference of £117.76. On CityFibre it is £684, which is £189.76 less than BT.

Both sums are built the same way and neither is an estimate: each provider's own opening price, its own contractual rise applied twice, six months at the opening price, twelve at the first increase and six at the second, plus any set-up charge. Both companies print the resulting future prices beside the plan before you sign, which is more than several of their competitors do.

The row that compounds is the annual rise. 50p a month sounds like nothing, and over one year it is six pounds. But it applies to the price you are already paying, every April, for as long as you stay, so a household that lets a contract roll for four or five years is paying Vodafone's smaller increase against BT's larger one the whole time. Vodafone is the cheaper of the two at every comparable tier, and the gap widens as the term runs because its annual rise is smaller.

Then the row that runs the other way, and it is the last line of the table. BT prints a guaranteed minimum download speed on the card you buy from. Vodafone does not publish one at all before you buy. What that is worth is the next section but one, and it is the only column on this page where BT is clearly ahead.

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.

The speed promise, and the one that is not there

Direct answer: Vodafone has not signed Ofcom's voluntary code of practice on broadband speeds. BT has. Vodafone publishes no guaranteed minimum speed before you buy: the figure arrives afterwards, in the Service Confirmation Letter. And the clause that does give a right to leave carves out the range Vodafone advertises. So on Vodafone's full fibre, which is the range it advertises, that speed-based right to leave does not apply at all. The one thing BT sells that Vodafone does not is a figure on the card, a deadline to meet it, and a way out if it is missed.

Take BT's side first, because it is short. 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, and the figures are on the cards: 150 Mbps on Full Fibre 300, 425 on Full Fibre 500, 700 on Full Fibre 900, 25 on Fibre 1, 34 on Fibre 2 and 32 on Fibre Essential. You can read the number before you buy, you know what it is measured against, and the remedy is written down.

Vodafone's is a different shape and it takes some reading. It has not signed the Ofcom code that obliges signatories to give you a minimum figure at the point of sale and a right to leave if it is not met after thirty days. Ofcom's residential list names BT, EE, NOW Broadband, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk, Utility Warehouse, Virgin Media and Zen Internet, and Vodafone is not among them. Vodafone publishes no guaranteed minimum speed before you buy: the figure arrives afterwards, in the Service Confirmation Letter.

Two things stop that being a hanging offence, and they should be said in the same breath. Vodafone is in Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme, so late repairs, missed appointments and delayed starts still pay out without asking. It is the speed promise specifically that is missing. And a speed guarantee is a clause most households never use: full fibre is reliable, and the number of people who will ever measure a shortfall, report it, wait out a cure period and then exercise an exit right is small. If you are one of them, this section is the whole page. If you are not, it is one row in a table where Vodafone leads most of the others.

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 annual rise, where Vodafone is the cheaper

Direct answer: Both raise the price once a year and both publish the amount before you sign. Vodafone's contract says: “Your monthly plan charge will increase by £3.50 each year on 1st April.” BT's is £4 a month on 31 March 2027 and again on 31 March 2028. That is 50p a month in Vodafone's favour, compounding every April.

This is one of the few rows in a broadband comparison where the smaller number is unambiguously better and nothing is hidden behind it. Neither company indexes to inflation on a current contract, neither can surprise you with a different figure inside the term, and both print the resulting prices on the plan before you buy. The difference is simply the size: £3.50 against £4.

Older Vodafone contracts are on different terms: £3 a year for those taken between July 2024 and November 2025, and the Consumer Price Index plus 3.9% for anything before that. A Vodafone customer who has not re-signed since before July 2024 is still on an inflation-linked formula, which in April 2026 produced a rise of more than seven per hundred on the bill rather than a few pounds. BT moved off inflation linking for everyone, so it has no equivalent cohort. If you have been with Vodafone a long time without re-contracting, check which cohort you are in before you compare anything on this page.

One point of agreement worth recording. Vodafone charges no annual increase at all on its social tariff, or to customers registered as financially vulnerable. BT's Home Essentials is likewise outside the broadband increase. Both companies have decided that the households least able to absorb a rise should not get one, and neither makes much noise about it.

Our guide to in-contract price rises covers which providers raise prices before a contract ends and how, and out-of-contract prices covers what happens when a term ends.

Where Vodafone wins, and by how much

Direct answer: Vodafone holds the highest Trustpilot score of the seven largest providers we track, 4.7 out of 5, where BT has 3.9. The Which? panel scored Vodafone 67% against BT's 65%. Ofcom logged 8 complaints per 100,000 for Vodafone against 7 for BT, so BT leads on the regulator's measure. Vodafone's complaints rate has fallen from 11 per 100,000 to 8 in a year, the sharpest improvement in Ofcom's table, while BT's has gone from 11 to 7.

Vodafone is ahead of BT on both reputation measures and behind it on the regulator's complaints rate, which is the usual pattern and this time it is worth reading the trend as well as the level. The three measures split the way they usually do, because they count different things: Ofcom's rate counts people who escalated as far as the regulator, the Which? score asks a representative panel how satisfied they are, and Trustpilot counts whoever felt moved to write. What makes this pairing unusual is the size of the Trustpilot gap, 4.7 out of 5 against 3.9 out of 5, which is the widest on any head-to-head in this series.

Two caveats, applied evenly. Trustpilot is the weakest of the four, because people who write a review unprompted are rarely the ones who had a quiet year. Vodafone has more than four times as many reviews as BT, which is what a mobile-led brand with a very large base produces and does not by itself make the score more reliable. On the other side, the row most worth weighting is the trend: Vodafone's complaints rate has fallen from 11 per 100,000 to 8 in a year, the sharpest improvement in Ofcom's table, while BT's has gone from 11 to 7. A provider improving that fast is doing something differently, and it is fair to say so rather than freezing it at last quarter's number.

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.

The social tariffs, where cheaper is not the answer

Direct answer: BT is cheaper at £16.50 and Vodafone is open to more people. For a household on Personal Independence Payment or Disability Allowance, Vodafone is the only one of the two that qualifies them at all. Vodafone Essentials is £20 a month for up to 80 Mbps on a 12-month contract, with no upfront fee and no mid-contract price rise. BT Home Essentials starts at £16.50 and BT Home Essentials is open to anyone on the qualifying benefits, whether or not they are already a BT customer.

Both of these providers run a proper social tariff, which is more than several of their competitors manage, so the comparison is between two good options rather than one and a gap. On price BT wins: £16.50 against £20, and for the extra four pounds Vodafone gives roughly twice the speed, so which is better value depends on what the household actually needs rather than on the headline.

On eligibility Vodafone wins, and it is the row most likely to decide it. Vodafone accepts eight qualifying benefits against BT's five, adding Reduced Earnings Allowance, Personal Independence Payment and Disability Allowance. Those three additions matter because they are disability and injury benefits rather than income ones, so they reach households that BT's list does not, and for whom this is not a comparison but the only option.

One line on Vodafone's to diarise rather than worry about: If no action is taken, the price will increase to £25. You keep the tariff as long as you still qualify and Vodafone still offers it, but the move is not automatic, so the twelve-month mark is a date worth putting in a calendar the day you sign.

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

What else comes with each

Direct answer: Vodafone charges nothing to set up a standard line and reimburses your old provider's exit fee up to £300. BT includes its security software free on every plan where Vodafone charges £2 a month on the standard range, and BT publishes a ceiling on the price after the term where Vodafone publishes nothing.

The Wi-Fi row is the one where the two promises look similar and are not. BT's pays you: a hundred pounds back if it cannot get a signal everywhere after sending the kit. Vodafone's lets you out: no money, but a route to leaving the contract for nothing. The bar Vodafone sets is ten megabits in a room, against a headline that reaches 2.2 Gbps, and the window to act on it is thirty days from the third booster arriving. Miss that and the right lapses.

The row after it is the one BT wins outright. BT's price guide caps the increase when a term ends at five pounds. Vodafone publishes no equivalent figure for its standard plans, so a Vodafone customer who lets the contract roll is relying on the retention offer rather than on anything written down. On both providers the answer is the same: diarise the end date and act on it.

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: Vodafone on price, on reputation and on the network where it is symmetrical, which is most of the columns. BT on the speed promise and on the ceiling after the term, which is the column that matters if you are the household that would ever use it. The postcode decides more than either.

If none of those rows describes you, the tie-break is a question about yourself rather than about either company. Vodafone is cheaper by £93.76 over two years at the tier most households buy, and it asks you to take the speed on trust: no published figure, no deadline, and its own contract excludes full fibre from the speed-based exit right. BT charges the difference and writes the number down. Run the postcode before you read any further comparison of these two, because the network it returns changes the answer more than either brand does.

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 at most addresses they are not. Where Openreach full fibre reaches, so do Sky, EE, Plusnet, TalkTalk, NOW, Zen and a dozen more, over 23.4 million premises as at 30 June 2026. And on the networks where Vodafone is symmetrical, so are the networks' own retail brands, which are often cheaper than Vodafone for the same symmetrical connection.

That does not make Vodafone and BT bad choices. Both are in Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme, which several cheaper providers are not, and BT has signed the speed code as well. For a lot of households those safety nets are 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.

Vodafone and BT deals at your postcode