~£240
Typical fee with 10 months left on a £30/mo fibre deal
14 days
Cooling-off window with no charge for any provider
30 days
Standard notice period once you are out of contract
12 Sep 2024
One Touch Switch went live across the UK
What is a broadband exit fee?
An exit fee, more formally called an early termination charge (ETC), is the lump sum a UK broadband provider charges when you cancel before the minimum term you agreed to in the contract has run out. Unlike energy tariffs, where exit fees are capped at around £25 per fuel, broadband fees scale with the time you have left on your deal: every month outstanding is billed, so cancelling shortly after activation can cost several hundred pounds.
The fee exists because providers absorb significant upfront costs on every new line: router hardware, an Openreach line-activation charge of around £55, postage, and the engineer visit on FTTP installations. The minimum term lets them recoup those costs over 12, 18 or 24 months. Walking away early without an ETC would leave the provider out of pocket, so the contract recovers the unpaid balance in one go.
How the early termination charge is calculated
Every major provider follows a near-identical formula set out in Ofcom\'s 2019 fairness guidance. Take the monthly price you actually pay, strip out the 20% VAT, deduct any recurring discount and a 4% reduction for early receipt of the money, then multiply the result by the number of full months remaining. The figure on your final bill is the answer.
What counts as time left on your contract
"Months remaining" is calculated from the date the cancellation takes effect, not the date you call to start it. UK providers add their standard 30 days\' notice on top, so a call placed today usually pushes the cancellation date forward by one month. That extra month does not normally count towards the ETC because you continue to pay your usual monthly bill during it.
A handful of providers (Virgin Media and Vodafone in particular) charge for any part-month at the start of the cancellation as a full month, so it almost always pays to call on the first or second of the month rather than mid-cycle.
Current per-month exit charges by provider
The figures below are the per-month early termination charges published by each provider as of June 2026. They are quoted as monthly amounts, so multiply by the number of months still to run on your deal to estimate the bill. All charges include VAT.
| Provider | Representative package | Per-month ETC |
|---|---|---|
 BT | Fibre 2 (Fast) | £17.42 |
| BT | Full Fibre 500 | £28.95 |
| BT | Full Fibre 900 | £37.83 |
 EE | Fibre Plus | £21.92 |
| EE | Full Fibre 500 | £28.95 |
 Sky | Sky Broadband Essential | £13.50 |
| Sky | Sky Broadband Superfast | £18.41 |
| Sky | Sky Broadband Ultrafast Plus (500 Mb) | £26.30 |
| Sky | Sky Broadband Gigafast (900 Mb) | £32.10 |
 TalkTalk | Fibre 65 | £15.50 |
| TalkTalk | Fibre 150 / Future Fibre | £20.50 |
 Virgin Media | M125 Fibre Broadband | £32.83 |
| Virgin Media | M350 Fibre Broadband | £37.83 |
| Virgin Media | Gig1 Fibre Broadband | £46.92 |
 Vodafone | Fibre 2 | £15.83 |
| Vodafone | Full Fibre 900 Pro II | £37.50 |
 Plusnet | Full Fibre 74 (closed to new sign-ups) | £18.79 |
 NOW Broadband | Super Fibre | £14.04 |
 Hyperoptic | Fast 150 Mb | £18.83 |
 Community Fibre | 300 Mb Full Fibre | £17.50 |
Figures sampled from each provider\'s published price guide in June 2026 and rounded to the nearest penny. Always check the live price guide for your specific tariff before cancelling.
When you can cancel for free
Ofcom\'s General Conditions and Fair Treatment of Customers guidance set out five situations where the provider must waive every penny of the ETC. Mention the relevant rule explicitly during the cancellation call and ask for the exemption to be applied before any charge is raised, otherwise the system will issue the fee automatically and you will have to claim it back.
- Inside the 14-day cooling-off period. If you signed up online or over the phone, you have 14 calendar days from the day the service goes live to walk away with no cancellation charge. Equipment must be returned in its original packaging.
- Mid-contract price rise above the agreed bracket. Since 17 January 2025, Ofcom requires providers to state any price increase as a fixed cash amount in pounds and pence on the day you sign up. If they later raise the price by more than that figure, you can cancel free of charge within 30 days.
- Failure to hit the minimum guaranteed speed. Every provider signed up to the Ofcom Broadband Speeds Code of Practice (BT, EE, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Virgin Media, Plusnet, Zen and others) must let you walk away with no ETC if it cannot fix a line that drops below the minimum guaranteed download speed quoted at sign-up.
- End of minimum term. Once the minimum term has ended you are on a 30-day rolling contract with no exit fee, regardless of how long you stay on the same tariff afterwards. Only the 30 days\' notice applies.
- Provider-initiated material change. If the provider changes the terms in a way that disadvantages you (a downgraded fair-use allowance, a removed channel, a higher engineer call-out fee, and so on), you can leave within 30 days of being notified.
One Touch Switch and what it means for exit fees
Ofcom\'s One Touch Switch process went live across the UK on 12 September 2024, replacing the old Notice of Transfer rules that only covered Openreach-to-Openreach moves. Under the new scheme, the gaining provider tells the losing provider to terminate the line; the losing provider must reply within one working day with a single document detailing any early termination charges, the date the service will end and the cost of any unreturned equipment.
You then have a clear written quote in your hand before the switch completes. If the fee looks too high, you can pull out of the new contract within the 14-day cooling-off period and stay where you are with no harm done. The process now covers cable, full fibre and 4G/5G home broadband, so even a switch from Virgin Media to BT Full Fibre runs through the same automated pipeline.
For background on how the wider switching process now works, see our guide to switching broadband provider.
How exit fees are actually collected
The ETC appears on your final bill, normally issued seven to ten days after the line has been ceased. It is debited along with any pro-rata charge for the part-month before the line closed and any unreturned-equipment fee for the router. Most providers offer a payment plan of three to twelve months if the lump sum is over £150, but you have to ring up and ask for it before the direct debit attempts to take the full amount.
Returning the router and other kit
Most UK providers send a freepost returns bag within 14 days of cancellation and charge between £35 (Sky, TalkTalk, Plusnet) and £75 (Virgin Media Hub 5, BT Smart Hub 2) if the equipment is not returned within the required window. Sky Stream boxes, Virgin Media TV 360 boxes and BT TV Pro boxes all have to go back as well. Keep the postage receipt: chargebacks for unreturned kit can be reversed if you can prove the return.
Is paying the exit fee worth it?
A straightforward calculation tells you whether the fee is a price worth paying. The break-even point is the moment the savings on a new deal cover both the exit charge and the setup cost of the new contract.
As a rule of thumb, switching mid-contract pays off if you have less than four months to run, or if your current bill is more than 50% higher than the going rate. Anything in between is worth running the numbers on. Use our roundup of cheapest broadband deals as the comparison benchmark.
Frequently asked questions
For most UK providers the early termination charge is the monthly price of your package, with VAT removed and a 4% prompt-payment discount applied, multiplied by the number of months left on your minimum term. On a £30-a-month deal with 10 months to run, that works out at roughly £240. Virgin Media is the only major provider that still charges close to the full undiscounted monthly price, so its exit fees are noticeably higher.
You can walk away with no exit fee in five clear cases: inside the 14-day cooling-off period, after a mid-contract price rise that you have not accepted, when the provider fails to meet the minimum guaranteed speed under Ofcom's code of practice, at the end of your minimum term once you are on a rolling tariff, and during a provider-initiated material contract change.
No. Once your minimum term has ended you are on a rolling 30-day basis with every UK provider. Notice is usually 30 days but no early termination charge applies, even if you have stayed on the same tariff for years after the minimum term ended.
Yes, if you are still inside your minimum term. The One Touch Switch service that went live on 12 September 2024 forces your losing provider to confirm any exit fees within one working day so you can decide before the switch goes through. If you are out of contract, no fee is payable.
Only if the provider has breached the contract, missed the speed guarantee, raised the price unexpectedly outside the agreed CPI+3.9% bracket, or you cancelled inside the cooling-off window. Otherwise the fee is legally enforceable and unpaid charges are escalated to a debt collection agency, which damages your credit score for up to six years.
Compare two numbers: the total cost of your remaining months on the current deal, and the new contract's monthly price multiplied by the same number of months plus the exit fee. Switching is only worth it if the second number is the lower one. With current sub-£25 fibre deals, switching often makes sense with three months or less to run, but rarely with more than six.
Next steps
Once you know what your exit fee will be, the rest of the move is straightforward. Note your account number, get a final-bill quote in writing, and compare the cost against the savings on offer from a new deal before you commit. Useful follow-up reading: