Trying to decide whether to join Three or EE?
In this review, we’ve compared Three and EE, based on their speeds and coverage, value for money, roaming allowances, and more, to help you decide between them.
By the end of this article, you’ll have a better idea whether Three or EE is the right mobile network for you.
Before we begin, if you’re searching for a new mobile plan, on any network, use our comparison site to find the cheapest pay monthly phone plans or SIM-only deals on the market right now.
Contents
- Overview
- Coverage and speeds
- Roaming allowances
- Value for money
- Customer service
- Verdict: should you join Three or EE?
Overview
Three and EE are two of the big four mobile networks in the UK, alongside Vodafone and O2.
They each have their own mobile masts, rather than leasing network access from another provider.
Both providers offer pay monthly phone and SIM-only plans, as well as pay as you go SIM deals.
However, Three has a much greater focus on selling cheaper, more basic tariffs that offer good value for money.
Their plans tend to be more basic, with fewer extras included, but still come with unlimited calls and texts to UK numbers.
By comparison, EE’s pay as you go SIM plans only come with 500 included minutes per month, and tend to cost a lot more as well – but we’ve compared these two networks’ value for money a bit later in the article.
Both networks support WiFi calling, and they each make it easy to get set up with an eSIM when buying a plan.
EE and Three both have different tiers of pay monthly SIM plans. You can either buy a cheap, no-frills deal, or a more expensive tariff with more extras included, such as entertainment subscriptions, like Apple Music, or Paramount+.
The difference is, Three’s deals tend to come with fewer extras, as well as lower monthly costs. Though, they do have quite a good rewards programme, known as Three+, giving you access to discounts on certain chain restaurants and events, even for pay as you go customers.
But compared to Three, EE has a greater emphasis on helping families. You can share data between SIMs on some plans, and if you join EE Broadband as well, you can unlock discounts on monthly rolling unlimited data SIMs.
Three also offers family discounts – normally, it’s 20% for each additional SIM you buy, under the same account. However, they don’t offer the ability to bundle your mobile phone plans with other services, such as broadband or cable TV, to save money on all your bills as a family.
Coverage and speeds
Three and EE have the two best 5G networks in the UK.
Looking at their average performance throughout the country, Three offers faster average 5G speeds, while EE offers better 5G coverage.
This matched our experience, in terms of download speeds at least, when testing both of these networks in our local area.
However, if fast download speeds are important to you, it’s important to note, EE has speed caps on most of their tariffs. Normally, you’re limited to just 100 Mbps.
We tested EE using an unrestricted SIM card, but these can be a lot more expensive compared to one of their regular speed-capped tariffs.
So, you might get even lower 5G speeds than what we’ve shown, as an EE customer. Though, 100 Mbps is still plenty of bandwidth for most things you’d want to do on your phone, like watching TV or movies, or downloading apps.
On 4G, EE is the winner, especially in terms of coverage.
They have the best overall signal of any of the big four networks, meaning you can often make calls or get online in places you can’t with other networks, as an EE customer.
We found that EE performs particularly well in remote areas. However, in most places, Three 4G also does well.
The one area where EE consistently outperforms Three is upload speeds, as you can see from the above tests.
We think the EE network has the best upload speeds of any mobile network at the moment.
Roaming allowances
With both EE and Three, roaming can get very expensive, very quickly, depending on the type of SIM plan you have.
Which network is best depends on whether you’re looking for a pay as you go or pay monthly tariff.
On a pay as you go SIM, Three roaming is actually quite good. There is no charge to use up to 12GB of your allowance in most of their roaming destinations.
On the other hand, with EE, you’ll need to pay a roaming charge if you’re on a rolling monthly SIM. Currently, it’s £3 for just 500MB of data.
If you’re on a pay monthly SIM though, things begin to get more complicated.
With a top-of-the-line SIM, such as EE Full Works or Three Complete, roaming is normally included free of charge, even in destinations like the United States.
As a Three customer for example, you normally get a certain number of yearly free roaming days, when you buy one of their most expensive SIMs.
On their cheaper plans though, EE and Three both have a daily roaming charge.
Three’s roaming costs are normally cheaper, but you’ll be limited to 12GB of roaming data per month.
EE is more expensive, but their roaming fair usage limit is higher, at 50GB at the moment.
Value for money
Three generally blows EE out of the water when it comes to value for money.
If you compare similar SIM-only tariffs, with similar data limits, you’ll find that Three is normally cheaper, though their plans may come with fewer perks by default.
Both providers have mid-contract price rises on their long-term tariffs. But Three is also a much better choice if you want a pay as you go SIM, given what EE normally charges on their rolling monthly contracts, and the fact that you don’t get unlimited calls and texts.
You’ll also normally find that Three is more competitive on pay monthly phone contracts as well, depending on the handset you’re after.
Three is the cheapest big four mobile network, but if you want a cheap SIM-only deal, you might also like to consider a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).
These providers resell service from one of the big four, but normally offer much better value for money.
Smarty is an MVNO that piggybacks off the Three network, while 1pMobile uses EE infrastructure to service their customers.
Customer service
EE is normally a better choice when it comes to customer service.
Their support team is UK-based, unlike Three’s, and we’ve found them to be slightly more helpful, and more responsive – they’re quicker to get in touch with.
This isn’t to say that Three’s customer support is bad. We’ve also had good experiences with them – the only negative thing we have to say is, getting connected over live chat can sometimes take 15-20 minutes during peak periods, such as the evenings.
According to Ofcom data, EE receives two official complaints per hundred thousand customers, while Three receives three, on average.
So, these two providers are quite close when it comes to customer support.
However, we think that EE has a slight edge, especially if you like to speak to someone over the phone, in large part because their team is UK-based.
Verdict: should you join Three or EE?
Overall, we think Three has the edge over EE.
Their plans come with no speed limits, and normally cost a lot less, when comparing deals with similar data limits.
Even though Three generally offers fewer perks, we still think they’re better value, given they offer faster 5G speeds, and solid pay as you go contracts, which come with free roaming, as well as access to Three’s rewards programme.
However, EE might be worth paying more for if you want the best possible customer service, or the best possible 4G and 5G coverage.
We just wish EE included better roaming allowances, and didn’t have any speed caps, given the prices they’re charging at the moment.
If EE was just a bit cheaper, we think they would be about tied with Three at the moment. Though, even at their current prices, EE is definitely still worth considering for certain people, especially those in rural areas.
If you’re still not sure whether to choose Three or EE, leave us a comment below, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
About the author
Tom is the founder of Green Smartphones. You’ll find him writing about phones on the Green Smartphones blog, or talking about SIM deals and mobile networks on our YouTube channel. He’s the Android expert on the team – currently using a Google Pixel 9, recently upgrading from a very long-suffering Note 20 Ultra. When he’s not working on Green Smartphones, you’ll find him playing football or hiking.