Community Fibre vs Virgin Media: fibre or cable?

Community Fibre and Virgin Media run two separate networks to the same London doors. Community Fibre builds its own full fibre and sells almost entirely in London, with a few thousand homes in Surrey and West Sussex. Virgin Media sells on its own cable network across much of the UK, and its nexfibre joint venture is converting parts of it to full fibre. Because the wires differ, so do the trade-offs: upload speed, contract length, price rises and what else you can bundle.

How do Community Fibre and Virgin Media compare at a glance?

The table takes prices, speeds, contract lengths, set-up fees and scheduled price rises from our live deal feed, so it matches the deals on our comparison pages today. The network, guarantee and exit-fee rows come from each provider's own terms, checked on 10 October 2026.

Is Community Fibre cheaper than Virgin Media?

Tier for tier, usually yes on today's offer prices. When we checked on 10 October 2026, Community Fibre's cheapest deal in our feed was 100Mbps for £14 a month on a 24-month term. Virgin Media's cheapest was M125, at 132Mbps for £18.99 a month, also on 24 months. Neither charges a set-up fee.

The gap holds at gigabit speed. Community Fibre's 1Gbps deal was £20 a month when we checked, and Virgin's Gig1, at 1,130Mbps, was £23.99. Add the scheduled rises and a contract starting in October 2026 comes to £552 in total with Community Fibre against £671.76 with Virgin Media, because Virgin's price steps up by £4 each April and Community Fibre's by £3.

Both sets of prices are online offers and they move, so treat the figures above as a snapshot. Community Fibre's 2Gbps and 5Gbps tiers go beyond anything Virgin sells through our feed, at £25 and £63 a month when we checked. If download speed per pound is your measure, the live table is the thing to read.

Does upload speed matter to you?

This is the clearest technical difference. Every Community Fibre deal in our feed is symmetric, so a 1Gbps plan uploads at 1Gbps too. Virgin Media's cable uploads far more slowly than it downloads: Gig1 shows 41Mbps upload in our feed, and M125 just 10Mbps.

For streaming films and browsing, upload speed barely registers. It matters if you work from home on video calls, back up photos to the cloud, send large files or stream your own gaming. A 10GB folder of photos takes about a minute and a half to upload at 1Gbps and over half an hour at 41Mbps.

Community Fibre's advertised speeds are for a single wired connection into its router, as its installation page says. Wi-Fi will be slower than the headline on both networks.

Can the price go up during the contract?

Yes with both, and both tell you the amount up front. Every Community Fibre deal in our feed rises by £3 each April from 2027. Its offer terms, checked on 10 October 2026, set it out plan by plan: "£15 per month, £18 per month from April 2027, £21 per month from April 2028" on the 150Mbps 24-month deal, for example. Once the minimum term ends the price goes up by £4, then by £3 each April after that.

Virgin Media's rise is £4 a month each April. Its price-change page says "The monthly subscription charge for your main services will increase by £4". It adds that "you won't be given a right to cancel your agreement during your minimum period without incurring an early disconnection fee". On Gig1 that means £23.99 now, £27.99 from April 2027 and £31.99 from April 2028, as the table shows.

Neither rise comes with a way out. Community Fibre's terms give a right to cancel only for increases "outside of the contractual annual price increase". Because both providers state the rises in pounds and pence in the contract, Ofcom's rules don't give you a penalty-free exit when they happen. Our price rise guide explains what you can do instead.

What about contract length and getting set up?

Community Fibre sells 12, 18 and 24-month deals in our feed, and the shorter the term, the higher the monthly price. Its 300Mbps plan was £21 a month on 24 months, £24 on 18 months and £25 on 12 months when we checked. Virgin Media's deals in our feed all run for 24 months.

Set-up is free with both, but it works differently. Community Fibre sends an engineer: its installation page says the visit "usually takes up to two hours", runs Monday to Saturday, and involves drilling a small hole to bring the fibre in. Virgin Media's QuickStart kit is free to self-install, with a £30 charge if you want an engineer instead, according to its broadband page.

Community Fibre adds a satisfaction guarantee: "If within 30 days, you're not happy with your super-fast full fibre broadband, you can leave with no cancellation fees". Both may run a credit check. Virgin's checker says "All products are subject to survey, network capacity and a credit check", and Community Fibre's terms say "we may perform a credit check on you".

Do you want TV, a landline or a mobile deal with it?

Here Virgin Media has far more on the shelf. Our feed carries Virgin TV bundles, from Flex TV with over 150 channels to Mega TV with Netflix and over 200 channels, plus broadband and phone packages and bundles with an O2 SIM. O2 customers also get extras on Virgin broadband: double mobile data, Priority offers and a speed boost on the M125 to M500 tiers. Our Virgin Media TV channels guide covers what's in each tier.

Community Fibre is broadband first. Our feed has no TV or phone bundles from it. It does sell a Calls service, an internet phone line with no copper, and its switching page says you can keep your number, though the transfer takes at least 12 working days after installation.

If you want TV, broadband and mobile on one bill, Virgin is the only one of the two that does it. If you've already moved to streaming apps and a separate mobile contract, that advantage counts for little.

How do their service records compare?

Ofcom's complaints figures for January to March 2026 put Virgin Media at 6 complaints per 100,000 broadband customers, level with the industry average of 6. Ofcom does not report complaints for providers of Community Fibre's size, so there is no like-for-like figure. Both appear in the Trustpilot row of the table above, with the caveat that sits under it.

On guarantees, Virgin Media is a signatory to Ofcom's Broadband Speeds Code. That gives you a minimum guaranteed speed at the point of sale, and a right to leave without penalty if speeds fall below it and can't be fixed within 30 days. Virgin's deals in our feed are also part of Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme, which pays set amounts for missed appointments and delayed repairs.

Community Fibre is not a Speeds Code signatory, and we found no reference to the compensation scheme in its terms. Its site says the network is "up and running over 99.9% of the time". If a minimum speed and automatic compensation in writing matter to you, Virgin has both and Community Fibre doesn't.

What does it cost to leave early?

Community Fibre publishes a simple rule. Its terms, checked on 10 October 2026, multiply your monthly price by the months remaining and then by 90%, "to reflect costs we save by no longer providing you service". Its own example: £25 a month with four months left is (£25 x 4) x 90%, or £90. You also give 30 days' notice.

Virgin Media charges a percentage of your monthly price for each month left, from tables it publishes for standard and offer pricing, and says "all fees apply after the standard 30-day notice period". Our exit fee calculator models Virgin at 90% of the monthly price per remaining month, the low end of its published offer-price range, so treat the result as an estimate.

Where can you get both?

Community Fibre describes itself as "London's largest 100% full fibre only broadband provider" and says its network "passes more than 1.3 million premises". Its availability page names Wandsworth, Redbridge, Southwark and Tower Hamlets among the boroughs it serves, with Newham, Lambeth and Brent "alongside many other boroughs". Outside London it reaches "thousands of residents in Surrey and West Sussex".

Virgin Media's cable runs through most of the capital and much of the UK: 137 of our 153 broadband area pages list it. The two overlap on our pages for Croydon, Enfield, Islington and Sutton, among others, and across London. Availability varies street by street, so check both at your postcode before you decide.

Why you might choose Community Fibre

• You upload as much as you download: video calls, cloud backups, streaming or large files.
• You want the lowest monthly price for the speed, with a £3 rather than a £4 rise each April.
• You'd rather sign for 12 or 18 months than 24.
• You don't need TV or a phone bundle, or you already stream and use a mobile.
• You want an engineer to install it, with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee behind it.

Why you might choose Virgin Media

• You want TV, broadband and phone, or an O2 SIM, on one bill.
• You're an O2 customer and would use the double data and speed boost.
• You want a minimum speed guarantee under Ofcom's code and automatic compensation in writing.
• Community Fibre hasn't reached your street yet, which is still the case for most of London.
• You'd rather plug in a self-install kit than book an engineer.

How do you switch between them?

Because the two networks are separate, a switch means a new connection is installed rather than your existing line changing hands. One Touch Switch still applies: tell the new provider you want to switch and it arranges the end of your old service, and under Ofcom's rules you shouldn't be without broadband for more than one working day. Community Fibre's switching page puts it plainly: "There's no need for you to contact your current provider, as we handle everything on your behalf". Our One Touch Switch guide walks through it.

If you're mid-contract, the exit fee above applies to the provider you leave, and neither offers to pay the other's fee in our feed. Check the figure with our exit fee calculator before you commit. Both providers also list a social tariff for people on qualifying benefits, and our social tariff guide has the current terms.

Sources and how we checked

Prices, speeds, contract lengths, set-up fees and scheduled rises come from our live deal feed and refresh whenever the site updates. The figures quoted in the text were checked on 10 October 2026. The same day we read Community Fibre's terms and offer terms, about us, availability, switching and installation pages, and its help centre article on early termination fees. For Virgin Media we read its broadband, annual price change, early disconnection fees and Ofcom codes pages. Complaints figures are Ofcom's telecoms complaints data for January to March 2026. We earn a commission if you take a deal through our links. It never affects how we rank or describe providers, as our how we compare page explains.