Vodafone Essentials Broadband, social tariff

One plan, one price. Fibre 2 Essentials runs at speeds up to 73 Mbps for £20 a month, with no setup fee, the Power Hub router included and unlimited usage. Line rental is in the price. There is no second tier to upsell you to and no cheaper tier sitting underneath it. What you see is the whole menu.

For context, £20 is the middle of the social-tariff market, not the bottom. Ofcom's own list puts current prices between £10 and £24 a month, and the cheapest broadband-class options are Virgin Media Essential and Community Fibre Essential at £12.50, or EE Basics at £12. What Vodafone buys you for the extra fiver is speed. At up to 73 Mbps it is comfortably quicker than the 36 Mbps tariffs from BT and Sky, which is the difference between one person on a video call and a household of four all online on a wet Tuesday.

That speed gap is the whole reason to consider Vodafone over a cheaper tariff. At 36 Mbps a single 4K stream and a couple of phones can be all the line has to give. At 73 Mbps the same household can stream, video-call and download a game update at once without anyone in the other room noticing. If your house has more than two people in it, the extra fiver is doing real work, not buying you a bigger number to feel good about.

One footnote worth knowing. Vodafone is the only UK network that runs both a home-broadband social tariff and a mobile one, the VOXI For Now plan at £10 a month. We are not covering the mobile side here, but if you need both, it is the one place you can sort them under the same roof.

Here is the thing about the old price. Vodafone used to run a Fibre 1 Essentials plan at £12 a month for 38 Mbps, and for a while it was a fair claim to the cheapest social tariff going. That plan has been withdrawn. The entry point is now the £20 Fibre 2 plan, and there is nothing below it.

We are spelling this out because half the internet still has not caught up. If a comparison page tells you Vodafone is £12, that page is wrong, and it is the sort of error that sends someone to apply expecting one number and budget for another. Get the right figure in your head now and you will not be surprised at checkout.

This is where Vodafone earns its keep. The benefits that qualify you are Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Jobseeker's Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance and Income Support, the standard set every provider takes. Vodafone then adds Reduced Earnings Allowance, Disability Allowance and, the one that counts, Personal Independence Payment.

PIP is not means-tested. It goes to people because of how a health condition or disability affects their daily life, regardless of what they earn or have in the bank, and most social tariffs simply do not accept it. If you are on PIP, your shortlist of broadband social tariffs is short, and Vodafone is on it. Our guide to PIP broadband social tariffs covers the handful that take it; on the mainstream networks, this is the obvious one.

The catch is the same as everywhere. The person receiving the benefit has to be the main name on the contract. If your partner claims and you sign up, the eligibility check will not find you. It is a small piece of admin that trips up more applications than it should, so get the right name on the form first time.

Vodafone Essentials is a 12-month contract with no in-contract price rises and no early termination fee. That second part matters more than it sounds. Plenty of providers will hold you to the full term or charge you to leave early. Vodafone lets you walk at any point without a penalty, which is exactly what you want from a tariff aimed at people whose circumstances can change without warning.

The price is also locked. While you are on Essentials, Vodafone cannot send you the letter titled "an update to your service" that quietly adds a few percent every April. Social tariffs are exempt from those mid-contract rises by Ofcom's rules, and Vodafone's own terms confirm it. The one number to watch is what happens after the 12 months. If you stop qualifying and take no action, the plan moves to £25 a month, so put the review date somewhere you will see it.

You apply by registering on Vodafone's broadband social-tariff page and running a postcode check. Vodafone then runs an eligibility check and a credit check, and calls you back to process the order, which tends to take about a week. It is delivered over Openreach's network where that reaches, so most addresses with FTTC or full fibre can get it. Register for Vodafone Essentials →

The switching rule is the bit every site gets wrong, so read this twice. If you are already a Vodafone customer, you can move onto Essentials at any time, free of charge, even mid-contract, and the regulator guarantees that. If you are with a different provider, it is not so simple. Ofcom's rule says your current provider "might" let you leave without a penalty fee to switch to a social tariff elsewhere, not that they have to. So check what you would owe your existing provider before you assume the move is free. The guarantee is real, but it only covers moving to your own provider's tariff.

Vodafone Essentials is not the cheapest social tariff, and we are not going to dress it up as one. It is the fastest of the mainstream tariffs at 73 Mbps, it has no price rises and no exit fee, and it accepts PIP and Disability Allowance when most of its rivals will not. If you are on a qualifying benefit and you want speed rather than the rock-bottom price, or if you are on PIP and Vodafone is one of the few doors open to you, this is a straightforward yes. If you only care about the lowest possible bill, Virgin Media Essential at £12.50 or one of the others on the social tariffs hub will serve you better. The fuller picture on Vodafone as a network is in our Vodafone review.