The best and worst ISPs according to Which?
Which? has rated the UK’s best and worst ISPs, but its findings should be approached with caution
It’s increasingly hard to determine whether a company is reputable or not.
We live in an age when supposedly trustworthy review websites will delete negative customer reviews if businesses keep flagging them as false – even if the reviews are genuine.
We also live in an age when search engines answer questions with AI-generated slop that often bears little relevance to the original query.
Companies have always used PR and marketing to detract from their failings, but it can be tricky to reconcile the hyperbolic claims of some businesses against their real-world performance.
And customers are far more likely to complain about bad service than praise good service – let alone comment on a mixed picture. When did you last read a three-star review of anything?
As such, distinguishing a good internet service provider from a bad one has never been so difficult, despite the unprecedented volumes of information available to consumers.
Fortunately, a few bastions of integrity remain – not least BroadbandDeals itself.
Another trustworthy source is the artist formerly known as the Consumers Association, now rebranded as Which?.
Which? has no industry bias and isn’t open to selective censorship by the brands it reviews, so its ISP satisfaction survey serves as a bellwether for the home broadband industry.
It quizzes consumers about their broadband experiences in a number of areas – line speeds, reliability, technical support, customer service, communications, value and simplicity of setup.
From this, a score is calculated which gives an indication of how the best and worst ISPs compare to one another.
The best of the best
Top of the tree was Zen Internet, though as it holds just one third of one per cent of the UK broadband market, it’s clearly a niche operator.
Second and third place were occupied by Hyperoptic and Community Fibre. These are altnets, rolling out their own proprietary networks of high-speed full fibre connectivity.
Mid-table positions in the Which? survey were occupied by industry giants like EE and BT.
Plusnet outperformed both despite seeing a slight drop in its score from previous surveys. It was one of only two ISPs to earn a coveted Which? Recommended Provider status.
The worst of the rest
Although its parent company Sky managed to stay out of the bottom three in this survey, NOW Broadband propped up the table with a dismal score of just 54 per cent.
Virgin Media performed little better on 59 per cent, tying with TalkTalk whose profound financial difficulties seem unsustainable.
The average rating of both companies fell compared to the 2025 survey, though neither experienced a drop as precipitous as Utility Warehouse, whose score fell by ten per cent.
Should this influence my choice of ISP?
Knowing the best and worst ISPs nationally is useful background information, but it doesn’t necessarily paint an accurate picture in your local area.
Some ISPs may not be active in your postcode (find out by using the postcode search box at the top of this page), while others might be constrained by existing infrastructure.
As your author has previously discovered, even having an ISP call centre within sight of your home is no guarantee of good customer service support.
The quality and modernity of local telecommunications infrastructure makes a far bigger difference.
Equally, the experiences of neighbours matter more than the experiences of people from across the UK, especially since neighbours are likely to rely on the same infrastructure to your home.
The opinions of friends, colleagues and relatives might be biased, but they’ll give you more detail on their experiences than any national survey of the best and worst ISPs ever could
