What are roaming charges?

What your own carrier bills you for using another operator’s network abroad. They pay wholesale and charge you retail, and outside regulated regions the margin is theirs to set.

How do I avoid roaming charges completely?

Turn data roaming off and rely on wifi, or add a travel eSIM and leave your home line for calls and texts. Setting a spend cap protects you either way.

Do I get charged for calls I receive abroad?

Often yes, which surprises people. Receiving a call while roaming is commonly billed, though receiving a text usually is not.

Do UK phones still roam free in Europe?

Not by law. The EU rules stopped applying to UK lines at the end of 2020, so it depends entirely on your provider — some kept free EU roaming, some reintroduced charges.

Roaming Charges, and the Three Ways to Avoid Them

Published 2023-05-06 · Updated 2026-08-21 · 4 min read

Aircraft on the tarmac at Heathrow, seen through a terminal window at twilight. — Roaming charges are decided before this point. The bill is written by which network your phone attaches to on the other side.

A roaming charge is what your carrier bills you for using a network that is not theirs. They pay the local operator wholesale and charge you retail, and outside a few regulated regions the gap between those two numbers is entirely theirs to choose.

That is why the same trip can cost nothing or several hundred, depending only on which contract you happen to hold. Before comparing anything, check whether you are already covered — an EU-issued line travelling in the EU is, and needs none of this.

What you are actually charged for

Roaming is not one price but three, billed separately and easy to confuse:

Data, per megabyte or as a daily pass. This is where nearly all the money goes.
Calls, and unusually, calls you receive as well as ones you make.
Texts sent. Receiving a text is normally free.

Daily passes have largely replaced per-megabyte pricing at the big carriers, which is an improvement — but a pass charged for every day of a three-week trip is still an expensive way to buy data.

The protections you already have

Worth knowing before you buy anything, because they are free and they work. In the UK, for example, Ofcom requires providers to alert you when you enter another country, explaining the charges that now apply. Similar rules exist in many markets.

UK travellers used to have a statutory ceiling on data used abroad — £45 a month, with alerts at 80% and 100% of it, carried over from EU law by the Mobile Roaming (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. That obligation lapsed in 2022 and was not replaced. Most UK providers kept the cap voluntarily, which is not the same thing as having it: it is worth asking yours what your limit actually is, and setting one if the answer is none. If you do nothing else before a trip, do that.

A busy Vietnamese street market with motorbikes and shopfronts. — A local SIM bought here is still the cheapest option in some countries — and still costs you a queue, a passport scan and your own number.

Plans worth comparing

Live prices from the providers we track. Paid placements — we say so because they are.

Compare every plan

The three ways out

In rough order of cost, cheapest first:

Turn data roaming off and use wifi only. Free, and genuinely workable for a short trip if you download maps and media beforehand. The cost is being unreachable for data between wifi points.
Buy a travel eSIM for the destination — country, regional or global — and keep your home line for calls and texts. Usually the best value, and nothing about your existing number changes.
Take your carrier’s roaming pass. Simplest, no setup, and normally the most expensive per gigabyte by a wide margin.

Where the regulated regions end

Regional agreements cover more ground than they used to, but the edges catch people out. The EU regime now reaches the 27 member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Ukraine and Moldova, and it does not extend to Switzerland or the United Kingdom. Surcharge-free roaming stopped being guaranteed for UK lines at the end of 2020, so what a UK carrier charges in Europe is once again its own decision — some reintroduced fees, some did not.

North American plans often bundle Canada and Mexico and nothing beyond. Assume nothing from the map; check the contract.

Comparing honestly

Work out the total for your actual trip length rather than the headline. A daily pass times fourteen days is the number to beat, and a travel plan usually beats it comfortably. Plans by destination, ranked on price per GB.

Common questions

What are roaming charges?: What your own carrier bills you for using another operator’s network abroad. They pay wholesale and charge you retail, and outside regulated regions the margin is theirs to set.
How do I avoid roaming charges completely?: Turn data roaming off and rely on wifi, or add a travel eSIM and leave your home line for calls and texts. Setting a spend cap protects you either way.
Do I get charged for calls I receive abroad?: Often yes, which surprises people. Receiving a call while roaming is commonly billed, though receiving a text usually is not.
Do UK phones still roam free in Europe?: Not by law. The EU rules stopped applying to UK lines at the end of 2020, so it depends entirely on your provider — some kept free EU roaming, some reintroduced charges.