Almost nobody knows the date their broadband contract ends. It was set at sign-up, buried in a welcome email you deleted, and nothing has reminded you since. That is exactly how a £30-a-month deal quietly becomes a £37-a-month deal.
Working out how to check when your broadband contract ends takes about four minutes per provider. Here's where the date is hiding, what the 30 days before it are worth in money, and what to do with them.
What the date is actually worth
Ofcom's Pricing and Consumer Engagement report, published in February 2026, put a number on it. In mid-2025, customers who were out of contract on standalone broadband paid £7.20 a month more than customers in contract for the same kind of service, a 25% premium. Add a landline and the gap was £7.84; add pay TV as well and it was £9.28. Over a year that is £86 to £111 for identical service through the same wire.
And it is common: 28% of broadband customers were out of contract on at least one service in their bundle. Ofcom's September 2026 update said one in three "triple play" households (TV, broadband and landline together) were out of contract last year, paying an average of £78 a month against £69 for those in contract.
The price doesn't jump the day you sign. It jumps the day you stop paying attention.
How to check when your broadband contract ends
Ofcom publishes a click-by-click route for each of the big providers. Its guide was last updated in March 2023 and account menus do move, so treat these as a starting point rather than gospel. The phone numbers are the surer bet.
BT. Log in to your BT account and select "Your bills and usage". If your initial contract period has ended or is close to it, the page says so. Or phone 0800 800 150.
EE. Log in, then "My Plan", then "My Plan details". Or phone 0800 956 6000.
Sky. This is the awkward one. Sky doesn't put the date on a page of its own; you log in to the Sky Message Centre and hunt for the message confirming your Sky offer, which gives your start date and contract length. Add the two together yourself. Or phone 0333 7591 018 and ask.
Virgin Media. Log in, "My Account", then "Check your contract details". Your end date is there. Or phone 0345 454 1111.
Vodafone. Log in and select "Upgrade or Change plan". It shows the plan, the price, and when the contract ends or ended. Or phone 0333 304 0191.
TalkTalk. Log in, "My Account", "My Package". The end date sits in the Package overview section. Or phone 0345 172 0088.
Plusnet. No self-serve route published. Phone 0800 432 0200.
If yours isn't on that list, the same three places usually work for any provider: the account area on the website, the app if there is one, or the original order confirmation email. Search your inbox for the provider's name plus "order" or "confirmation" and check the date it landed. A 24-month contract signed on 3 November 2024 ends on 3 November 2026.
Whatever you find, write it down somewhere you'll see it again. A date you can only recover by logging in and clicking through four menus is a date you will forget twice more.
Your provider has to tell you, but only once
There's a rule in your favour here. Under Ofcom's end-of-contract notification rules, your provider must contact you by text, email or letter between 10 and 40 days before your contract ends, and that message has to include:
- the date your contract ends
- any notice period for leaving
- what you pay now, and what you'll pay once the contract is up
- the provider's best available deals, including ones normally reserved for new customers
- the end dates for anything else in your bundle
If you're already out of contract, they have to send you the same prompt once a year.
The catch is the format. It arrives as one text or one email, usually looking like every other message your provider sends, often 40 days ahead rather than 10, which is long enough to think "I'll deal with that later" and never think about it again. That notification is doing the job of a reminder, but it only rings once.
What happens if you do nothing
Nothing dramatic, which is the problem. Your service carries on, your direct debit carries on, and at some point the discount stops and the standard price starts. You don't get cut off and nothing asks you to confirm.
The upside of doing nothing is that you're free. Once the minimum term is over there's no early exit fee, whatever your provider's retentions team implies. You're on a rolling arrangement and you can leave whenever you like, subject to a notice period. Usually 30 days, but check what yours says, because it's one of the five things the end-of-contract notification has to spell out.
That notice period is why the 30 days before your end date matter. Give notice too late and you pay the out-of-contract price for a month regardless.
The 30-day window: four things worth doing
Check what you're paying now, and what you'd pay from the end date. Both figures are in the notification. If you've binned it, the provider will tell you on the phone.
Get one comparison quote before you speak to anyone. Use an Ofcom-accredited comparison site so you're working from real market prices rather than the offer your provider decides to show you. Prices for your address specifically: full fibre coverage varies street by street, and a postcode-level estimate isn't the same thing.
Then phone and ask them to match it. Say plainly that you're out of contract from [date], you've been quoted X elsewhere, and you'd rather stay if they can get close. The rules already require them to show you deals normally reserved for new customers, so there's no need to be coy about it. Ask what the price is in month 13 and month 19 as well as month one. A cheap headline rate with two built-in rises isn't cheap.
If they won't move, switch. Switching broadband is now a One Touch Switch: you contact the new provider only, and they handle the cancellation with your old one. More than 300 providers are signed up, and Ofcom says about 3.43 million people had started a switch this way by 3 September 2026.
The rise that's already in your contract
One more number to find while you're in there. Most contracts now come with an annual price rise written in, and since 17 January 2025 Ofcom has required that rise to be stated in pounds and pence at the point of sale rather than as a percentage tied to inflation.
In April 2026 that meant £4 a month on BT, EE and Plusnet, £4 on Virgin Media, £3.50 on Vodafone and £3 on Sky. These are annual and cumulative: on a 24-month contract you'll take the hit twice before you're free. Our round-up of the April 2026 bill rises has the rest of them alongside council tax, water and the TV licence.
Two things follow from this.
If you signed before your provider's cut-off in early 2025, you're probably still on the old CPI-plus-3.9% formula for the rest of your term. The ban wasn't retrospective. Check your terms: a percentage rise in a year of higher inflation can be worse than a flat £4.
And if your provider raises the price by more than was clearly set out when you signed, you have the right to leave penalty-free within 30 days of being told. That right doesn't apply to a rise that was properly written into your contract in pounds and pence. That one you agreed to. It's the unexpected increase that hands you the exit.
If annual rises irritate you on principle, a small number of providers, Zen Internet among them, fix the price for the whole minimum term with no in-contract increase at all. Worth a look if you'd rather buy the certainty than fight for it every April.
The only bit that really matters
Find the date, write it down, and set yourself a reminder for 40 days before it. That's the whole job. The comparison, the phone call and the switch take an hour at most between them, and that hour is worth somewhere between £86 and £111 a year.
Broadband is one line on a longer list, of course, and the rest of it is in our calendar of UK renewal dates. Keeping track of which one is next is exactly the sort of thing we built The Home Concierge to handle, so the reminder arrives before the price does.
Four minutes to find the date, one reminder 40 days ahead, one phone call. Skip it and Ofcom's numbers say you pay £7 to £9 a month more for the same service.