Why I Have Switched to Monzo Mobile: 25GB of Roaming for £20 a Month

I have moved my number over to the Monzo Mobile Unlimited plan, and the reason is one line on the pricing page: £20 a month, unlimited UK data, and 25GB of roaming data every month that you can use across Europe and a decent chunk of the long-haul world.

For anyone who spends a lot of the year outside the UK, that is a genuinely useful number. Here is the detail, including the countries it does not cover - which for a points and miles audience is arguably the more important half of the story.

Monzo Mobile is eSIM-only and sold through the Monzo app. There are three tiers, and the published pricing is refreshingly simple:

All three include unlimited UK calls and texts, 5G with no speed caps, hotspot use, wi-fi calling, and the ability to switch plan or cancel at any time. Monzo's launch announcement said the network runs on Virgin Media O2, with roaming provided through 1GLOBAL.

The bit that made the decision for me: your roaming data is a separate bucket. Using it does not eat into your UK allowance, and vice versa.

Monzo markets the Unlimited plan as roaming in 55 countries. The published destination list adds up to 54 named destinations across the two zones, so treat the headline number as approximate - the list is what matters.

Zone 1 covers the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, Turkey and Vatican City - 34 destinations in total.

Zone 2, which only the £20 plan unlocks, adds 20 more: Australia, Canada, Egypt, French Guiana, Gibraltar, Guadeloupe, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Morocco, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Vietnam.

Read that Zone 2 list as a points collector and it is a good one. Tokyo, Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Dubai, New York, Cape Town, Sydney - those are exactly the redemptions most of us are chasing. If you are hunting award seats to any of them, Award Travel Finder will show you live availability across multiple programmes in one search.

This is where I want to be honest, because the missing names are conspicuous. Based on Monzo's own published zone lists, the Unlimited plan's included roaming does not cover:

That last group is a real irritation if you fly a lot of oneworld itineraries. A Doha connection is one of the most common ways UK collectors get to Asia, and Qatar is not on the list. Neither is India, which is a huge Avios redemption market.

Monzo does sell roaming add-ons in 100+ countries, in 1GB, 3GB, 5GB, 10GB and 20GB sizes, with pricing shown in the app before you buy. So you are not stranded. You are just back to paying per trip in those places, which is exactly what the £20 plan was supposed to save you from.

Monzo's pitch is a network that rewards staying rather than switching. The loyalty discount works like this: nothing in year one, then 5% off your original price after 12 months, rising by another 5% each year to a maximum of 30% after 72 months.

In cash terms, £20 a month becomes £18 after two years and £14 after six. Monzo also says the discount survives a plan change, but resets if you cancel and rejoin later.

I am mildly sceptical of loyalty pricing that only starts paying out in year two, and Monzo is clear that plan prices themselves could change if network costs move (with at least 30 days' notice). But compared to the usual UK model - a cheap headline price, then a mid-contract rise you did not ask for - a bill that only goes down is a refreshing direction of travel.

This is the underrated feature. There are no per-minute, per-text or per-megabyte charges beyond your plan price and any add-ons. If you run out of UK data or roaming data, the data service simply stops, and you get an SMS and an app notification. You can then upgrade, buy an add-on, or start your next plan early.

Anyone who has come home from a trip to a four-figure bill will understand why that matters. Calls and texts in the UK are unlimited and never run out.

That third point is the one that stings slightly in this house. £240 a year of spend that earns nothing is roughly 360 Avios I am giving up if I were paying on my Barclaycard Avios Plus. It is not a dealbreaker at that size, but it is worth naming - the plan needs to be genuinely cheaper than your current setup to be worth the lost earning. If your phone bill currently sits on a points-earning card, do the sum before you move. Our guide to the best Avios-earning UK credit cards has the current earn rates if you need them.

Not for me, and probably not for you either.

For a fortnight in Spain, Japan or Thailand, the included 25GB means I will not be buying anything extra at all, and that is a real saving against picking up a data pack for every trip. But for Bali, the Maldives, India or a longer stop in Doha, a travel eSIM is still the answer. I use Airalo for those, and we have written before about why every traveller should carry an eSIM. You can also browse everything we have published on the subject on our eSIM tag page.

To be clear, I am keeping the Smart SIM. It is not an either/or with Monzo Mobile - it earns its place alongside it. The Honest Mobile Smart SIM is a backup eSIM that sits next to your main plan and includes roaming in over 180 countries, India, Indonesia and the Gulf states among them. That is the Monzo gap list, covered. The trade-off is that it only serves around 500 essential apps: WhatsApp, Google Maps, Uber, banking apps and airline apps work, but streaming and social media do not. At £45 a year, or under £4 a month, it is not really competing with your main plan's budget.

It also does a second job that Monzo cannot. In the UK the Smart SIM hops between EE, O2, Three and Vodafone, so when your main network drops out on a train or in a signal blackspot, you still have maps and messages. That is worth something on a Sunday-night dash to Heathrow. Our full Honest Mobile Smart SIM review has the detail, and you can get a free trial month through our link.

So my stack is three layers, and each one does a job the others cannot: Monzo Mobile as the main plan and the 25GB of proper roaming data, the Honest Mobile Smart SIM as the always-on safety net for the other 130-odd countries and for UK signal blackspots, and an Airalo pack only when I need full, unrestricted data somewhere Monzo does not reach.

None of this helps at 38,000 feet, of course. The bigger shift there is Starlink, which is now rolling out fast across the airlines we cover - British Airways and Iberia have both committed to it, and Qatar Airways has already completed its 777 fleet. If you want the same service at home, our Starlink referral link is here (we may earn a commission).

On the ground, two of our own tools do the boring bits: Flight Queue for live security and passport queue estimates before you leave for the airport, and Airport Lounge List if you would rather find a lounge with reliable wi-fi than burn your roaming allowance in the terminal.

If you already bank with Monzo, travel several times a year, and mostly go to Europe, the US, the Gulf via Dubai, or East and Southeast Asia, the £20 Unlimited plan is a straightforwardly good deal. Unlimited UK data plus 25GB of roaming for the price of a decent lunch is hard to argue with, and the no-bill-shock design is worth something on its own.

If you do not bank with Monzo, or if your travel is weighted towards India, Indonesia, Latin America or the non-UAE Gulf, the maths is far less obvious. In that case a cheaper UK plan plus a travel eSIM per trip will probably still win.

I will report back after a few trips on it. The thing I most want to test is whether the roaming actually behaves - included allowances are only worth what they deliver when you land.

Jack