Community Fibre vs Sky broadband

Community Fibre offers lower-priced full-fibre broadband in London, with symmetric speeds up to 5Gb and simple package options.

Sky, by contrast, offers full-fibre broadband with asymmetric speeds up to 900Mb, along with TV bundles, Wi-Fi guarantees and home phone services.

Community Fibre suits those looking for the lowest-cost full-fibre with faster uploads, while Sky suits households wanting TV bundles and a more complete home setup.

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At a glance: Sky vs Community Fibre

Top picks: Sky and Community Fibre broadband deals

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Price

Winner: Community Fibre offer cheaper prices overall than Sky, especially on broadband-only deals.

Community Fibre undercut Sky at every speed tier for customers who just want broadband, without a TV or phone bundle. Their entry-level plan starts at £17.99 per month for 150Mbps, while Sky charges more to match that speed.

The table below compares entry-level plans from both providers:

Sky's 74Mbps and 150Mbps plans are currently the same price, so there's no reason to choose the slower option. Community Fibre's 150Mbps plan is the stronger starting point on both speed and price, and the gap is significant at this tier.

For households that need serious speeds, both providers offer near-gigabit plans - but Community Fibre's advantage goes beyond price at this level:

Community Fibre's 920Mbps plan is symmetrical, meaning upload speeds match download speeds. Sky's Full Fibre Gigafast 900Mbps plan doesn't offer the same symmetry, which matters for households that upload large files or work from home regularly. On gigabit plans, both providers offer WiFi Max as an optional whole-home mesh upgrade for £4 per month.

Both providers include annual price rises in their contracts. Sky's confirmed increase is £3 per month from April 2026, and prices are assumed to rise again in 2027 - Sky state that prices may rise each year, and typically do. Community Fibre's rise is £2 per month from April 2027. On the 150Mbps plan, that means Sky customers pay around £612 over 24 months compared to around £456 with Community Fibre - a difference of roughly £156.

Where Sky could work out cheaper is for households that want more than just broadband. A home phone line is included as standard with Sky, though calls are pay-as-you-go unless you upgrade. Community Fibre charge £12 per month to add a line, but that includes unlimited anytime calls - better value for regular callers than Sky's basic inclusion.

Sky broadband is also cheaper for existing Sky TV customers. The 150Mbps plan drops to £20 per month on an Essential TV plan, or £17 per month on Ultimate - compared to £24 for broadband only. You can see current Sky TV bundles here.

For a straightforward full fibre connection with no add-ons, Community Fibre are the cheaper option at every tier.

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Broadband packages

Winner: Community Fibre offers more contract flexibility and a wider choice of speed tiers, but Sky includes more as standard and has significantly stronger add-on options.

Both providers offer full fibre broadband across a range of speeds, from entry-level through to gigabit and beyond. The structure of what you get - and what costs extra - is where they diverge most sharply. The key differences are:

• Community Fibre offers 12, 18, and 24-month contracts; Sky only offers 24 months
• Sky includes a home phone line as standard on every plan; Community Fibre charge £12 per month to add one
• Community Fibre's WiFi guarantee is stronger but restricted to their 1Gbps plan and above; Sky's is available on any plan for £4 per month
• Sky's TV add-on is a full pay-TV service with major streaming platforms included; Community Fibre's is a Freeview aggregator with streaming app support

The table below shows how their current plans compare across all speed tiers.

Community Fibre covers more ground between 150Mbps and 1Gbps, with 350Mb and 500Mb options sitting between the two extremes, plus 920Mb, 2.3Gb, and 5Gb tiers for households that need serious speeds. Sky's four full fibre tiers - 75Mb, 150Mb, 500Mb, and 900Mb - cover the same practical range for most households.

On contracts, Sky's 24-month lock-in is a genuine constraint. Community Fibre's shorter terms cost more per month, but for renters or households that may move, the option to commit to 12 or 18 months is worth something Sky simply doesn't offer.

The phone line difference is meaningful in both directions. Sky's included PAYG line is genuinely useful as a baseline - most households don't make enough calls to justify a talk plan, so having the line there at no cost works well. Upgrading to anytime calls costs £17 per month with Sky.

Community Fibre charge £12 per month for their VoIP add-on, but that price includes unlimited UK anytime calls - making it cheaper than Sky's anytime upgrade and better value for anyone who uses the phone regularly. The significant limitation is that Community Fibre's line doesn't support international or premium-rate numbers. For anyone who calls abroad, Sky is the only workable option between these two.

The WiFi guarantee comparison looks close on paper but plays out very differently in practice. Sky's WiFi Max costs £4 per month and is available to any customer on any plan - it includes Plume mesh pods and promises a minimum of 25Mbps in every room, with a one-month refund and the option to cancel the add-on if that standard isn't reached.

Community Fibre's Premium WiFi promises more - 50Mbps minimum in every room, engineer-installed Linksys mesh hardware, and three months refunded if it fails. But it starts from £32 per month with broadband included, and it's only available on the 1Gbps plan or above. For the majority of customers comparing these two providers at standard speeds, Sky's guarantee is the only one realistically on the table. Those on Community Fibre's fastest plans who need whole-home coverage get a meaningfully better guarantee, but they'll pay for it.

The TV options are in a different league entirely. Sky Essential bundles Sky Atlantic, Netflix Standard with Ads, and Discovery+ for £15 per month. Sky Ultimate goes considerably further - it now includes Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, and hayu together in a single subscription, making it one of the most comprehensive streaming bundles available from any UK provider. From either base, customers can still layer in Sky Sports, Sky Cinema - which includes Paramount+ - and TNT Sports on top.

It's worth noting that bundling Sky TV also reduces the cost of broadband itself. The 150Mbps plan drops from £24 to £20 per month on Sky Essential, or £17 per month on Sky Ultimate - so for households planning to take both, the combined cost is more competitive than the headline broadband price suggests.

Community Fibre's Netgem service costs £12 per month and delivers a free 4K box, 235+ live channels including Freeview, and supports streaming apps like Netflix and Prime Video. For customers who just want catch-up and streaming in one place it's a reasonable option, but it's a categorically different product to Sky TV. Services like Disney+, HBO Max, and hayu that come bundled with Sky Ultimate would all be separate, payable subscriptions on top of the Netgem fee. Customers who want a serious TV service alongside their broadband will find only one answer here.

For a full comparison of what each TV service offers, see the TV section of this guide. For a full breakdown read our reviews of Community Fibre and Sky broadband here.

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TV

Winner: Sky TV remains the service to beat and is streets ahead of the Netgem TV service offered by Community Fibre.

Sky has spent the past year significantly expanding what comes with an Ultimate TV subscription. Netflix was already included, but Disney+, HBO Max, and hayu are now being added to the bundle - meaning customers get four of the UK's biggest streaming platforms alongside Sky's own channels, all on one bill.

That's a meaningful shift from a traditional pay-TV package toward something closer to a streaming super-bundle, and it changes the value calculation considerably for households currently juggling multiple subscriptions.

The table below shows how Sky's current TV and broadband bundles are priced.

As the table shows, bundling TV with broadband brings the broadband price down - the 150Mbps plan drops from £24 to £20 per month on Essential, or £17 on Ultimate. For households taking both services anyway, that saving makes the combined package considerably more competitive than the standalone broadband price implies. There are further bundle options at faster speeds on our Sky TV bundles page.

Sky Essential is the lighter option at £15 per month - Sky Atlantic, Netflix Standard with Ads, and Discovery+, without the full channel lineup. It suits households that want a base TV package without paying for content they won't watch, and it's a cheaper route into Sky Sports or Sky Cinema for customers who want to add those on top.

Sky TV is delivered via Sky Stream, a satellite-dish-free puck that works over your broadband connection - no engineer visit required, and it supports a wide range of on-demand apps within a single interface. Customers who want the hardware integrated into their television can opt for Sky Glass, which has Sky Stream built in.

Community Fibre have partnered with Netgem TV to offer a pay TV service at £12 per month. The package includes a free 4K box with Alexa, 235+ live channels including Freeview, 200,000 hours of on-demand content, and app support for Netflix, Prime Video, Discovery+, NOW, Rakuten TV, and hayu. For light TV viewers who primarily want Freeview channels with streaming app access in one place, it does the job.

The gap between the two services becomes clear when you look at what's bundled versus what's extra. The streaming services included inside Sky Ultimate - Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, hayu - would each require a separate subscription on top of the Netgem fee.

For households already paying for several of those individually, Sky's consolidated approach represents a genuine saving rather than just a convenience. Netgem doesn't compete on that level, and it's not trying to - but customers who want premium content without managing multiple bills will find only one answer here.

Sky TV also doesn't require Sky broadband. Customers who prefer Community Fibre's connection but want Sky's TV service can take them independently - Sky Stream works over any broadband connection running at 25Mbps or above.

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Broadband speed

Winner: Community Fibre offers faster speeds and symmetrical uploads on every plan - and for London customers, Sky's CityFibre tiers aren't available.

Speed is one of the clearest differentiators between these two providers, though the gap is more nuanced than it first appears. Community Fibre runs on its own dedicated full fibre network, and every plan - from 75Mbps entry-level to 5Gbps at the top - delivers the same speed on upload as on download.

That symmetry matters more than it's often given credit for. Video calls, cloud backups, uploading large files, remote working - all of these depend on upload as much as download, and most providers still offer a fraction of download speeds on the way up.

The table below shows Community Fibre's current speed tiers and their upload equivalents.

Sky's Openreach plans tell a different story on uploads. The asymmetry is an Openreach network characteristic rather than a Sky decision, but the practical effect is the same - at 900Mbps download, Sky's Gigafast plan offers just 90Mbps up.

For most browsing and streaming households that's not a problem, but for anyone working from home regularly or handling large uploads, the gap is significant.

Sky does offer symmetrical speeds via CityFibre - 150Mb, 500Mb, 900Mb, 2.5Gb, and 5Gb, all with uploads matching downloads - but CityFibre has no coverage in London. Since Community Fibre is a London-based provider, customers comparing these two will almost always be doing so within the capital, where Sky's CityFibre plans simply aren't an option. For those customers, Sky's upload speeds are limited by Openreach throughout the range.

On download speeds, both providers reach comparable headline figures - 900Mbps from Sky on Openreach, 920Mbps from Community Fibre. Even though Sky offer a full fibre broadband connection with their Full Fibre 150, Full Fibre 500 and Gigafast plans, Community Fibre's advantage is the 2.3Gbps and 5Gbps tiers at the top end, and the fact that upload speeds match downloads at every tier.

For households where upload performance is a priority - remote workers, content creators, or those looking for the best gaming broadband - Community Fibre's symmetrical network is a meaningful practical advantage, not just a spec sheet detail.

Read more about the fastest broadband providers in the UK.

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Router

Winner: Community Fibre, whose router range has moved ahead of Sky's - particularly for customers on faster plans.

Most Sky full fibre customers receive the Sky Max Hub as standard - a dual-band WiFi 6 router with 8 internal antennae, 4 gigabit ethernet ports, and WPA3 security. It's a capable device that handles the needs of most households comfortably, and it's been the standard issue for full fibre customers since 2023.

Community Fibre's picture is more varied. Customers on the entry-level 75Mbps plan receive an older Linksys Velop WiFi 5 device. From 100Mbps up to 920Mbps, the standard router is the Linksys WiFi 6 Intelligent Mesh - broadly comparable to Sky's Max Hub on the specs that matter day-to-day.

The table below shows how the standard routers compare on a full fibre plan.

At this level, the two routers are well-matched. Sky's Max Hub has a small edge in antenna count and LAN ports, but both support WiFi 6, WPA3, and mesh. For the majority of households on standard speed tiers, the day-to-day experience will be similar.

Where Community Fibre pull ahead is on their faster plans. The 2.5Gbps plan includes the Linksys M60, a WiFi 7 dual-band router with 2.5Gb multi-gigabit LAN ports. The 5Gbps plan goes further with the Linksys M62 - WiFi 7 tri-band including the 6GHz band, plus 2x10Gb and 2x2.5Gb ethernet ports, properly specced to carry the full line speed over a wired connection. Sky's equivalent for multi-gigabit speeds is the Gigafast+ Hub, a WiFi 7 tri-band device with a 10Gb LAN port - but that's only available on CityFibre plans, which, as mentioned, have no London coverage.

WiFi 7 was introduced commercially in early 2024, when the Wi-Fi Alliance launched its Wi-Fi Certified 7 programme, with the final technical standard formally published in 2025. Most devices in UK homes today still use WiFi 5 or WiFi 6 - only a relatively small number of newer devices support WiFi 7, including the iPhone 16 range, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and S25 series, and laptops with newer Intel WiFi 7 chipsets. For most households, the headline upgrade matters more for future-proofing than immediate performance. What's more practically useful now is that both the M60 and M62 support Multi-Link Operation - a technology that lets devices connect across multiple bands simultaneously for faster, more stable wireless. In a flat or dense urban environment where neighbouring networks add interference, that makes a real difference to consistency.

Sky customers in part fibre areas receive the older Sky Broadband Hub - a WiFi 5 device - but can upgrade to the Sky Max Hub by taking the WiFi Max add-on for £4 per month, which also includes the whole-home WiFi guarantee. Full fibre customers can also add WiFi Max, which bundles up to three Plume mesh pods promising a minimum of 25Mbps in every room. Read more in our guide to Sky broadband routers.

For most households comparing these two providers on standard plans, the routers are on a par. The gap opens up on Community Fibre's faster tiers, where the hardware is in a different class - and for London customers, Sky's WiFi 7 option via CityFibre simply isn't available.

WiFi guarantees

Winner: Sky's WiFi Max is the more accessible guarantee - available on any plan, cheaper, and with useful extras. Community Fibre's Premium WiFi promises more, but most customers won't qualify for it.

Both Sky and Community Fibre offer a WiFi guarantee add-on, but the two services are structured very differently - in terms of cost, accessibility, and what they actually promise.

The table below shows how the two guarantees compare.

Sky's WiFi Max is available on any plan for £4 per month. It includes Plume mesh pods for a customer to self-install, and promises minimum download speeds of 25Mbps in every room - or 10Mbps for customers on plans up to 100Mbps.

It's backed by a one-month broadband refund and the option to cancel the add-on if that standard isn't met. Customers also benefit from daily line checks, free off-peak engineer visits, and 2GB of Sky Mobile data if the fixed line connection goes down.

Community Fibre's Premium WiFi is a more substantial service, but far less accessible. It's only available to customers on the 1Gbps plan or above, starts from £32 per month with broadband included, and is engineer-installed using additional Linksys mesh hardware rather than self-install pods.

The minimum speed promise is stronger - 50Mbps in every room - and the compensation if it fails is three months' broadband subscription rather than one.

The gap between them reflects a fundamental difference in what each service is trying to do. Sky's WiFi Max is a broadly available, low-cost upgrade that suits most households on any plan. Community Fibre's Premium WiFi is a premium, engineered installation aimed at larger homes on faster plans - more powerful, but out of reach for most customers comparing these two providers at standard speeds.

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Call plans

Winner: Sky has more call plan options available than Community Fibre, and includes a home phone line as standard on every broadband deal.

Sky's Pay As You Talk line comes with every plan at no extra cost - a useful baseline for households that make occasional calls without wanting to commit to a monthly plan. From there, three optional talk plans are available to upgrade.

Community Fibre broadband comes without a home phone line unless customers pay £12 per month extra for a VoIP add-on. For that price they receive unlimited calls to UK landlines and mobiles, plus features including 1471, voicemail, and call barring. It's better value than Sky's anytime upgrade for regular callers, but the line doesn't support calls to premium-rate or international numbers - a meaningful limitation for anyone who calls abroad.

The table below shows Sky's available call plans.

Sky's tiered approach suits a wider range of households. Occasional callers can keep costs low with the evenings and weekends plan at £8 per month; those who call regularly in the day can upgrade to anytime calls for £17 per month; and customers who call abroad can add international coverage for £18. Note that Sky call plans come on a 24-month contract.

For straightforward UK calling, Community Fibre's £12 add-on undercuts Sky's anytime plan and includes mobile calls as standard. Sky's advantage is the flexibility to start cheaper, and the option to call internationally - something Community Fibre's line can't do at any price.

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Customer service

Winner: Tie - both Sky and Community Fibre have strong customer service records, measured by different but equally credible sources.

Community Fibre doesn't appear in Ofcom's quarterly complaints reports - the regulator only covers providers above a certain market size threshold, and Community Fibre's London-focused network keeps them below it.

The most reliable independent measure available is Trustpilot, where they hold a score of 4.7 from over 84,000 reviews, with 90% of customers rating them Excellent. That places them among the highest-rated broadband providers on the platform, well above the scores of most major national ISPs.

Sky, as one of the UK's largest providers, is included in Ofcom's reporting. Their most recent complaints figures show 6 broadband complaints per 100,000 customers in Q3 2025 - below the industry average of 8, and among the lowest of any major provider.

Plusnet has recently edged ahead of Sky to take the top position in the least-complained-about rankings, but Sky's record remains consistently strong. They also perform well in several customer service categories including satisfaction with complaint handling and resolving complaints on first contact.

The two providers are difficult to compare directly because the data sources are different - Trustpilot reviews and Ofcom complaint figures measure different things and cover different customer bases. What both point to is that either provider is likely to leave customers significantly better served than the industry average. On that basis, it's a tie.

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Verdict: Community Fibre or Sky broadband?

Overall winner: Community Fibre win on speed, price, and upload performance - but Sky is the stronger choice for households that want TV, international calls, or a more complete home setup.

Community Fibre and Sky are very different providers, and for many Londoners the choice between them won't exist - Community Fibre's network is still expanding across the capital, while Sky is available to virtually every home in the UK. Where the choice does exist, the decision comes down to what you actually need from your broadband.

Community Fibre have a strong proposition for customers who want straightforward, fast broadband at the lowest price. They offer:

• Cheaper broadband deals than Sky at every equivalent speed tier
• Symmetrical upload speeds on every plan, from 75Mbps upwards
• A wider router range, with WiFi 7 on their faster plans in London
• Full fibre to the home as standard, on their own independent network
• More contract flexibility, with 12, 18, and 24-month terms available

Sky have their own strengths that will suit a different kind of household:

• Full fibre broadband available to a significant proportion of London homes via Openreach
• A home phone line included as standard on every plan
• WiFi guarantee available on any plan for £4 per month
• The most comprehensive TV service available from any UK broadband provider, now bundling Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, and hayu in a single subscription
• More call plan options, including international calling

Ultimately, customers who want fast, cheap broadband and are comfortable building their own entertainment setup will find Community Fibre hard to beat. Those who want TV, phone, and broadband consolidated under one provider - with Sky's content library as part of the deal - will likely find Sky works out cheaper overall once the TV bundle discounts on broadband are factored in.

Virgin Media is another strong contender for Londoners. Find out if Virgin Media is available in your area. We look at Community Fibre vs Virgin Media and Sky vs Virgin Media to see which is the best option.