Lebara for international students in the UK

Landing in the UK for your studies means sorting a phone before almost anything else, and as a new arrival you want a SIM that is cheap, flexible, and good for keeping in touch with family back home. Lebara fits that brief, and joining through a referral link gets you 50% off your chosen SIM-only plan for your first three months.

Landing in the UK for your studies means sorting a phone before almost anything else, and as a new arrival you want a SIM that is cheap, flexible, and good for keeping in touch with family back home. Lebara fits that brief, and joining through a referral link gets you 50% off your chosen SIM-only plan for your first three months.

Why Lebara works for international students in the UK

Lebara was built for exactly this situation. It started in 2001 serving people living away from where they grew up, so cheap international calling is its whole reason for being rather than an afterthought, and that matters when half your contacts are in another country. As an international student you usually do not have a UK credit history, and Lebara's SIM-only plans are no-contract and generally need no credit check, so you are not blocked at the first hurdle the way you can be with a traditional 12 or 24-month phone contract. The 30-day rolling plans suit student life: you can scale up before exams when you are stuck indoors on data, scale down over summer, pause when you travel home, or cancel entirely if you finish your course and leave the country, all without a penalty. It runs on the Vodafone network with around 98 percent UK population coverage and 5G at no extra cost, so you get a serious network on campus and in halls without paying a premium brand price. Entry plans start from around five pounds a month, which is realistic on a student budget, and the included calls to 50-plus countries mean you can ring home without watching a meter. Add free EU roaming and the trip back at Christmas, or a weekend in another European city, does not cost you extra on your usual allowance.

• No credit check needed and no long contract, so a thin UK credit history is not a barrier and you can cancel any time once your course or visa ends.
• Calls to 50-plus countries included at no extra cost, with low rates and International Call Passes for many more, so staying in touch with family does not blow your budget (check your home country's current allowance on lebara.co.uk).
• Free EU roaming on every plan, ideal for the flight home at the holidays or a cheap weekend trip across Europe, with a fair-use data cap on unlimited plans.
• Flexible 30-day rolling plans from around five pounds a month on the Vodafone network with 5G included, so you can scale up for deadline season and down over the holidays, plus 50% off for your first three months through the referral link.

Top tip

Sort your number before term gets busy: if you already have a UK SIM you want to keep, text PAC to 65075 from that old SIM and give Lebara the code so the number moves across, usually within a working day. And whatever plan you pick, confirm the 50% discount is showing on the order summary before you pay, because the referral link has to be opened fresh for the tracking to stick.

FAQs