Vodafone 5G coverage and roll-out

Last updated 2nd February, 2026

Vodafone 5G is available in parts of hundreds of UK towns and cities, and you’ll also get 5G as a Vodafone customer in hundreds of roaming locations across parts of the EU.

Its 5G network has grown quickly following a launch on July 3rd 2019, when its 5G service was initially limited to just parts of seven UK cities. You can expect Vodafone 5G coverage to continue growing quickly too, especially now the network has merged with Three – so if you don’t have it where you are currently, you might well do soon.

Below you’ll find full details of where Vodafone 5G is currently available both in the UK and abroad, along with information on Vodafone’s network speeds, 5G spectrum, and comparisons to the UK’s other 5G networks.

The chart below will show you which key locations across the UK that Vodafone has 5G coverage in, but for a clearer picture, just enter your postcode – or any other postcode that you want to check – in our coverage checker at the top of this page.

This will then deliver an accurate and up to date picture of 5G coverage in that area, using real-time coverage data from Vodafone itself and from independent sources, and you’ll also see similar data for the UK’s other networks, so you can see at a glance if any network offers better coverage in that area.

4G and voice performance will also be shown, making this a powerful tool for checking your coverage.

How does Vodafone's 5G coverage compare to others?

Of the 120 major towns and cities in the UK the current pecking order for 5G launched in those locations is:

You can see the exact towns and cities from this list in the chart below, but although 5G has been launched in the towns and cities listed below it does not mean that town or city has blanket 5G coverage across it. Of course, coverage will expand rapidly as time goes on.

Another equally important point is that of indoor and outdoor 5G coverage. Just because you have 5G outdoors it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have it inside your home. Equally, this applies to your place of work.

The most recent places that Vodafone has brought 5G to (as of February 2026) include Canterbury, Chelmsford, Colchester, Crewe, Exeter, Ipswich, Peterborough, and Taunton.

4G coverage

If you’re not in a 5G coverage area, then you’ll be using 4G. Vodafone has around 99% UK population coverage with 4G, and that puts it roughly in line with rivals.

Below you’ll find a 4G coverage comparison between Vodafone and the other main UK networks, based on the latest available data.

How fast is Vodafone's 5G network?

Opensignal data from September 2024 found that Vodafone’s average 5G download speed was 138.7Mbps, which is far lower than Three but higher than EE or O2. Though it’s worth noting that in most tests EE records higher average speeds.

Vodafone’s median 5G download speed seems slightly better, coming in at 163.8Mbps according to RootMetrics data from the first half of 2025. That puts Vodafone behind both Three and EE.

The same report put Vodafone’s 95th percentile 5G speed (which should be close to the maximum recorded) at 500.8Mbps, and its 5th percentile (which should be close to its slowest recorded 5G speed) at 13.7Mbps.

However, a much older RootMetrics report (from 2020) recorded a maximum download speed on Vodafone of 545.6Mbps, which is among the highest recorded speeds we’ve seen for the network.

And there’s an Ookla report from the second half of 2025, which found that Vodafone’s median 5G download speed was 129.78Mbps and its 90th percentile 5G download speed was 364.30Mbps.

Vodafone itself claims that its 5G speeds average 150-200Mbps, with peak speeds of over 1Gbps. According to Vodafone that means you’ll be able to download a full HD film in around 3 minutes, compared to over 15 minutes on 4G.

Indeed, Vodafone’s 4G speeds tend to average around 22.4Mbps based on October 2020 data from Opensignal (which we’re using because recent reports don’t break out 4G speeds). Even peak 4G speeds in the UK tend to be under 100Mbps, so 5G on Vodafone should be a significant upgrade.

Latency

Latency is how long the mobile network takes to respond to a request. It’s measured in milliseconds (ms), so it’s usually an almost imperceptible amount of time, but while on 4G networks it’s often around 30-50ms, with 5G it’s expected to ultimately get as low as 1ms.

This will help everything feel smoother and more instantaneous, which will benefit day to day things like online gaming and loading streamed videos, but also help enable new use cases.

Don’t expect it to be quite as low as 1ms yet – data from Speedtest recorded in 2023 puts Vodafone’s median 5G latency at 31ms, but that’s still an improvement on 4G latency.

As for loaded latency (that being the latency when the connection is under heavy use), Ookla found in 2025 found Vodafone’s was 449.16ms, which was the second best on test.

Vodafone itself hasn’t yet said what latency to expect on its 5G network, but you can expect it to be low.

What frequencies/bands does Vodafone use?

5G signals (and all other mobile signals) are broadcast on various different frequencies, with different networks and different network technologies relying on different frequencies.

At the time of writing, for 5G Vodafone relies on the 40GHz, 26GHz, 3.4Ghz and 3.6GHz frequencies – the first two of which were relatively recently acquired, at the third 5G spectrum auction.

So what’s the difference between all these frequencies? In brief, the lower the frequency the further it can travel, and the better it is at passing through obstacles such as walls. However, the amount of low frequency spectrum is rather limited, whereas higher frequency spectrum is typically available in larger capacity.

Having more available means it’s better able to keep up with demand, be that lots of simultaneous users, or demanding tasks such as streaming 4K video. That makes high frequency spectrum a generally better fit for 5G.

In terms of the amount of 5G capacity each network actually has, VodafoneThree as a combined entity have 2,030MHz, while EE and O2 each have 1,920MHz. Note that the chart above only lists Vodafone’s spectrum, not Three’s, but with the latter included there’s also some 700MHz spectrum being used for 5G.

Note however that more 5G spectrum may yet be auctioned by Ofcom in future, so Vodafone and all the other networks may have opportunities to improve their holdings.

Vodafone is also making the most of its 5G spectrum, as it has arranged to trade some with O2 in order to put it all close together – which could help Vodafone improve the performance of its network.