Sky to hike mobile prices: You've 30 days to LEAVE penalty-free – can you switch and save?
Most Sky Mobile customers – including many who are mid-contract – will see prices rise by £1.50 a month from 14 February 2026, the provider has announced. But you've got 30 days from being notified (not from prices rising) to leave penalty-free, so check NOW if you can save by haggling or switching and ditching.
Martin Lewis: 'You have a right to leave within 30 days of notification'
The most important thing to understand here is if you get a price hike notification and you're in contract, you have a right to leave your contract within 30 days. Yet it's 30 days of you receiving notification, not of the price going up (which means many people leave it too late) – so be on watch for that.
Everyone who gets a notification should then be checking 'can I get a cheaper deal?' and is it worth leaving? If it is, get on with it, and even if you've a year left on your contract, you've a month to ditch and switch with no penalty, no consequences.
Affected? Check NOW if you can ditch and switch (or haggle) to save
Most Sky Mobile customers who are both mid-contract and out of contract will see increases of £1.50 a month (you can see a full breakdown of who's affected below).
Yet as required by industry regulator Ofcom's rules, Sky lets you cancel your mobile contract penalty-free within 30 days of being notified of a price increase. These notifications are being sent to affected customers from today (Tuesday 6 January 2026) – so you have to act quickly. You've three options:
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Leave Sky Mobile and find the cheapest Sim deal on any signal. Use our Cheap Sim Finder tool to compare current deals, and see if you can beat your new price. The cheapest Sim deals currently start from £3 a month. Before you leave, get your 'Porting Authorisation Code' by texting PAC to 65075. You can then give this code to your new provider so it can transfer your number.
Top current deals: 50GB of data for '£3.96 a month' with iD Mobile (uses Three's network) for 12 months. Or, if you know Three isn't good in your area, then you can get 35GB of data for '£3.97 a month' on a monthly rolling contract with Lebara (uses Vodafone). -
Leave Sky but find the cheapest Sim on the same signal Sky uses – O2's. Along with Giffgaff and Tesco Mobile, Sky pays mobile provider O2 to piggyback on its signal. Our Cheap Sim Finder comparison tool lets you filter to see the cheapest deals on the same signal – the cheapest deals start from £5 a month. Do double-check the features though (for example, Wi-Fi calling); don't assume they stay the same. As for how good piggybackers are, see our there's no noticeable difference for most report.
Top current deals: 12GB of data for '£9.08 a month' with O2 or 72GB of data for '£11.09 a month' with O2. -
Stay with Sky Mobile but try to haggle down the cost. If you'd rather stay with Sky but still want to save, haggling is worth a try – a MoneySavingExpert.com poll conducted last year found that 72% of mobile customers who haggled with Sky were successful in negotiating a better deal.
If you're looking to haggle, it's best to call up your network directly and tell it (politely!) that you're after a better deal. See our Mobile phone haggling guide for success stories and more specific tips on getting your mobile costs down. If you're still not happy with your tariff after haggling, simply ask to leave.
Why this Sky hike won't get the same venom as O2's
Since 17 January 2025, Ofcom has mandated telecoms firms to tell people of price hikes within their contract, in pounds and pence, before they sign up. If not, then they have to let people leave penalty-free if they put prices up unannounced.
Sky has always been the outlier here, saying it will always take the latter route (with the exception of its TV services), as it is doing again now (whether this should be allowed is another question).
This is different to the O2 case. It came under fire late last year when it announced it would hike prices for more than 15 million existing customers by 40% more than they were originally told – something MoneySavingExpert (MSE) reported to the Government and to Ofcom.
In other words; people were told of a price hike in advance, but then it was bigger, which MSE founder Martin Lewis says blows a hole in Ofcom's scheme. On the back of this, Martin called for a series of changes, including for the 30-day notice period to be extended to two 30-day windows: one when you're first made aware of the price increase and the second when the price hike actually comes into effect.
Following this, the Chancellor announced in the Autumn Budget that she had written to Ofcom asking for it to review the "suitability" of the current 30-day cancellation rule.
Millions of Sky Mobile customers will see prices rise
From 14 February 2026, millions of existing Sky Mobile customers – both mid-contract and out of contract – will see the following rises:
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The "majority" will see prices rise by £1.50 a month (£18 a year).
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Around 8% of plans will see a rise of £1 a month (£12 a year).
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Around 1.9% of plans will see prices rise by £3 a month (£36 a year).
But you WON'T be affected if:
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You joined, upgraded or changed ('mixed') your plan on or after 6 November 2025, because you're already paying the increased prices; or
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You're on a social tariff, where Sky says prices will remain frozen for the fourth consecutive year; or
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You're on certain data tariffs, though Sky wouldn't disclose a list of these.
The upcoming hike is the first increase the network has imposed on existing mid-contract customers in over seven years. Prices also rose by £1.50 a month for out-of-contract users last February.
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