Lyca Mobile Review

Table of Contents Plans Value for money Extras and benefits Network Which network does Lyca Mobile use? Coverage Speeds Frequencies Customer Service Conclusion Alternatives

Plans

Lyca Mobile has a wide range of SIM Only plans and also allows you to Pay As You Go. However, you can’t get a phone on contract from the network. More details of plans can be found below, but note that all plans come with 5G at no extra cost.

SIM Only Plans

	UK Plans	International Bundles
Max Data Allowance	Unlimited	Unlimited
Contract Length	1, 12 or 24 months	30 days
	VIEW PLANS	VIEW PLANS

Lyca Mobile’s SIM Only plans are split between UK ones and international ones. The UK ones let you roam in the EU, and in many cases India and China too, and most also let you call international destinations at no extra cost. They top out at unlimited data, and last a choice of 1, 12 or 24 months.

International plans for the most part offer the same roaming destinations, however, most of the international bundles give you more minutes to call dozens of international destinations from the UK at no extra cost.

But because of this, the international plans tend to cost more for the allowances you get.

It’s slightly disappointing that a network with an international focus doesn’t have a wider roaming option, but being able to roam in India and China at no extra cost on some plans is a nice touch.

Plus, Lyca Mobile offers a Pay As You Go service at a rate of 25p per minute, 15p per megabyte of data, and 23p per text. However, calls and texts to other UK Lyca Mobile users are free. Given that many of its SIM Only bundles only last 30 days or less these are also appropriate for use with Pay As You Go.

Value for money

SIM Only Deals

	30 GB data UNLIMITED mins UNLIMITED texts 0 Month Contract	£5.00 a month View Deal
	75 GB data UNLIMITED mins UNLIMITED texts 0 Month Contract	£7.50 a month View Deal
	50 GB data UNLIMITED mins UNLIMITED texts 1 Month Contract	£7.50 a month View Deal
	Unlimited data UNLIMITED mins UNLIMITED texts 24 Month Contract	£9.00 a month View Deal
	6 GB data UNLIMITED mins UNLIMITED texts 1 Month Contract	£3.00 a month View Deal
View All Lycamobile Sim Only Deals

With plans starting from just £3 per month currently, Lyca Mobile is one of the most affordable SIM Only networks in the UK. That said, the allowances you get for equivalent amounts of money can be beaten on some other networks – though you additionally get international minutes here, which help increase the value if that’s important to you.

Lyca Mobile isn’t overly competitive for Pay As You Go standard rates, so given that it has an assortment of 30-day plans we’d suggest most people choose these over just paying for what you use.

Extras and benefits

As the chart below shows, Lyca Mobile has a number of perks and policies that are worth being aware of, with highlights including free roaming in the EU, China, and India. We’ve detailed these under the chart.

Lyca Mobile Perks and Policies

5G	✔
Free Roaming	✔
Tethering	✔
Wi-Fi Calling	✔
VoLTE	✔
Data Rollover	✖
Spending Caps	✔
Unlimited Data	✔
Family Plans	✖
Credit Check	✔

5G

Lyca Mobile offers 5G as standard on all of its current plans, so you don’t have to pay extra to get it. You will however need to make sure you have a 5G phone in order to use it.

Roaming Destinations

Lyca Mobile plans (including Pay As You Go) allow you to use your minutes, texts, and data at no extra cost in the EU and in many cases India and China too. However, you can’t roam for free further afield. Note also that there’s a variable roaming limit depending on your plan, which at the time of writing allows at most 35GB of data to be used abroad each month at no extra cost.

That limit applies in the EU and India, while China has a separate cap that is also variable but currently tops out at 5GB.

Tethering

Tethering refers to using your phone’s mobile internet connection to get other devices online, and it’s something that Lyca Mobile offers. That’s good as this is now a standard feature on most networks.

Wi-Fi Calling

Wi-Fi Calling refers to making and receiving calls over Wi-Fi. It can also be used for texts and is beneficial as it means you can stay in touch when there’s no mobile signal, without having to use a separate app or account – you just use your number as normal. This is increasingly a standard feature of mobile networks, and it’s available on Lyca Mobile.

VoLTE

VoLTE stands for Voice over LTE (aka 4G Calling) and is a similar idea to Wi-Fi Calling, except rather than using Wi-Fi to call and text you use 4G. The benefits are similar too, as it means you can talk and text where you wouldn’t otherwise be able to, and as with Wi-Fi Calling, Lyca Mobile supports VoLTE.

Data rollover

Lyca Mobile doesn’t offer data rollover, which means you have just one chance to use your monthly data allowance – at the end of the month it will expire, and your allowance will reset. This is standard, but there are some networks that give you a second month (or even longer) to use up your remaining data, so it’s not wasted.

Spending caps

Lyca Mobile offers spending caps, so you can customise how much you want to be able to spend outside your allowances.

Unlimited data

Lyca Mobile offers plans with unlimited data, so you can browse, download, and stream without limits.

Note however that there’s a variable cap when roaming, depending on which unlimited data plan you have – at the time of writing the most you can use appears to be 35GB. Lyca Mobile also has a fair use limit of around 450GB per month in the UK.

Family plans

Lyca Mobile doesn’t offer family plans, so there are no perks or discounts offered for having multiple SIM cards on your account. That’s a slight shame but is true of a lot of other networks as well.

Credit checks

Lyca Mobile will credit check you if you take out a lengthy contract, however it won’t on its 30-day plans.

Unique perks

The main extra perk you’ll get on Lyca Mobile is international calling included in your plan. Typically you’ll get between 100 and unlimited such minutes, and these allow you to call dozens of countries.

Alternatively, there are plans with free calls just to a specific country, like Pakistan, or Turkey. As well as a few plans that allow for international calls to a middling number of countries – so more than one but fewer than the 48 that some plans allow.

Network

Which network does Lyca Mobile use?

Lyca Mobile is an EE MVNO (meaning it uses EE’s infrastructure and spectrum), so it has coverage in all the same places as EE – that’s true whether you’re connecting via 5G or 4G. Of course, that also means that its coverage will improve when EE’s does.

Coverage

EE – and therefore Lyca Mobile – has widespread coverage with 4G, as you can see in the chart below. Its 5G coverage isn’t quite as extensive yet, but it’s growing fast.

Note that the 5G coverage percentage comes from Ofcom and relates to UK premises outdoors.

Lyca Mobile Coverage

Network Type	Coverage by population
5G	At least 89%
4G	>99%
3G	Switched off
2G	99%

Network speeds

Opensignal January 2026 (speeds), and Speedtest 2H 2025 (latency)

Network	Download/upload speeds	Loaded latency (ms)
Lyca Mobile (EE)	53.2/10.4Mbps	583.53ms
Three	51.0/9.3Mbps	405.93ms
Vodafone	37.5/7.4Mbps	449.16ms
O2	32.8/6.4Mbps	1039.19ms

An Opensignal report from January 2026 found that EE has an average download speed of 53.2Mbps and an average upload speed of 10.4Mbps, while a 2025 report from Speedtest found that its average loaded latency (the time the network takes to respond to a request when the connection is under heavy use) was 583.53ms.

That latency is middling but those download and upload speeds are better results than Three, Vodafone or O2, and that’s good news for Lyca Mobile, as it’s likely to sport similar results. Those speed results factor in a combination of 5G and 4G.

For 5G specifically, we’ll have to look at EE again, and that network was found to have a UK-wide average download speed of 92.2Mbps by Opensignal in January 2026, which is behind Three and Vodafone. 

Elsewhere, a RootMetrics report found in the second half of 2025 that EE’s median 5G download speed was more impressive at 236.7Mbps. That report also put its 95th percentile 5G download speed (meaning close to the highest recorded by the network) at 684.0Mbps.

And there’s a Speedtest report from 2025, which put EE’s median 5G download speed at 97.96Mbps and its median 5G upload speed at 10.96Mbps.

Many – though not all – of the above 5G results were beaten by Three, and some were also beaten by Vodafone.

Traffic management

Lyca Mobile doesn’t currently publish a full traffic management policy, but it does say that there is a fair use policy, which could see your service limited or terminated if your usage is continually ‘excessive’ or ‘unreasonable.’

Network Frequencies

Lyca Mobile Network Frequencies

Frequency	Frequency Band	Network
700Mhz	n29	5G
800MHz	Band 20	4G
1800MHz	Band 3	2G & 4G
2100MHz	Band 1	4G
2600MHz	Band 7	4G
3400MHz	n78	5G
3600MHz	n77	5G
26,000MHz	n258	5G
40,000MHz	n259	5G

Lyca Mobile presumably uses all the same bands as EE, meaning the 800MHz, 1800MHz, 2100MHz and 2600MHz bands would be used for 4G. The 800MHz band is long range, making it great for rural locations where mobile masts are often spread far apart.

It’s also proficient at penetrating walls and other solid objects, making it useful in towns and cities too, and helping to make sure you can get 4G coverage whether you’re inside or outside. 

The 2600MHz band on the other hand can deal with lots of connections, making it suited to busy cities and the like, but it isn’t as long range or as good at passing through objects.

The 1800MHz and 2100MHz bands sit somewhere in between those two in terms of their strengths and weaknesses.

For 5G, Lyca Mobile should have access to the 700MHz, 3400MHz, 3600MHz, 26,000MHz, and 40,000MHz bands.

For more in-depth information, check out our 4G and 5G frequencies guide.

Customer Service

Lyca Mobile’s customer service is hard to judge, especially as no significant recent reports exist on it. However, the network has a Trustpilot rating of 2.7/5, which is classed as ‘poor’. That’s based on 26,908 reviews at the time of writing.

Conclusion

Lyca Mobile is the network to choose if you plan to make a lot of international calls. It’s also a strong choice if you just don’t want to be tied into a contract for long or need unlimited data.

It’s not quite as strong for roaming as you might expect an internationally focused network to be, though it’s a great choice if you want to roam in India or China, and beyond inclusive international calls it’s not really doing anything that you can’t get on many other networks.

As such, Lyca Mobile wouldn’t be our first choice for most people, but if you do a lot of international calling to the included locations then it could be the best choice.

Alternatives

If you’re looking for an alternative network with the same coverage then of course you either want EE itself (which offers a wider range of plans and extras but isn’t as good for international calling), or another network that shares EE’s infrastructure, such as Spusu or 1pMobile.

If on the other hand it’s the international calling that particularly appeals, then it’s worth looking in to Lebara. This network has different coverage, but also puts a focus on international calls.