Spending more time roaming than at home?

At Vodafone, roaming at no extra cost is only intended for occasional temporary travel such as holidays and short breaks. This is part of our Acceptable Use Policy

However, if you move abroad or spend more time abroad than at home over a four month period, and continue to use our inclusive roaming service, we now need to apply extra charges for our Roam-Free and Global Roaming Plus destinations

You can incur additional charges if you don’t comply with the Acceptable Use Policy. This can happen if, in a four-month period, you:

• Roam for more than 62 days in our Roam Free Europe Zone destinations; AND

• Your usage in those destinations is more than your usage in the UK 

We’ll send you an alert text 14 days before charging you so you have time to adjust your usage. If you don’t, you may start seeing extra charges in your inclusive roaming destinations. 

• Calls: 3.3p a minute

• Texts: 1p each

• Data: £3.13 for each 1GB

We still follow the rates set out by the European Union Roaming regulations. Find out more here

Calls and texts charges apply when contacting someone back in the UK, and also someone in the same country you’re roaming in. 

But don’t worry – you’ll continue to receive calls and texts at no extra cost.

If you spend more time abroad than home and want to continue using your Vodafone UK phone plan, you can keep costs low in a few different ways:

1. Encourage your UK friends and family to call you – there will be no extra charges this way.

2. Connect to home broadband if you have it and use public WiFi hotspots when you’re out and about – for example in hotels and cafes. 

3. Take charge with the spending control bars in your My Vodafone Account to set personal limits:

   • Spend Manager - set your spending to a level you’re happy with

   • Data Roaming Bar - we set this at £39.33 automatically, but you can change it any time

Keep in mind, the charges and only apply to calls, text and data you use on your phone. It’s still free to receive calls and texts.

If you use a lot of data and know you’ll be staying abroad for longer, it might be worth considering a local SIM – this could work out cheaper. Just remember:

• If using a local SIM, make sure your device is unlocked to that network first

If you have a dual SIM device – for example, iPhone 11 - you may even be able to use your UK SIM and the local SIM at the same time. This means you’d receive calls and text from UK friends on your UK number free of charge, and could use your local SIM for outgoing calls, texts and data

Avoid accidentally using your data by turning off mobile data and/or data roaming on your phone. This can be done in your device’s settings and will even stop apps/services that use data when running in the background.

If you don't use your phone on a given day, we'll assume that’s time spent back in the UK and it won't be added to your roaming charges.

When will the extra charges stop?

The extra charges will stop incurring once you return to the UK or when the majority of your usage over the previous four months has been either in the UK or outside of your inclusive roaming destinations.

The extra charges apply as detailed in the When do these extra charges apply? section.