Lebara roaming: where your plan works free, and what it costs elsewhere

Where does Lebara roaming work at no extra cost?

Lebara UK calls its free roaming Roam Like Home. Every SIM only plan includes it. Its roaming page listed these destinations when we read it:

EU and EEA

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden

Also included

Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Gibraltar, and the French overseas regions of Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Réunion and Mayotte

Outside Europe

India and Ukraine

There you use your UK minutes, texts and data as at home. Data is capped at 30GB, so plans under 30GB give you the whole allowance and bigger plans stop at 30GB.

Lebara notes that Switzerland is not included, because it is outside the EU and EEA. Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey are not on the list either.

This is desk research from Lebara's own pages. We have not bought or tested a Lebara plan abroad.

What are Lebara roaming charges in the USA?

The USA is outside the free zone. Lebara's US rate page offered two roaming add-ons and listed pay as you go rates when we checked.

The add-on minutes count both incoming and outgoing calls. Pay as you go needs credit on your account, so with no top-up you cannot run up a bill. At £93 a gigabyte, though, a single map session or app update on pay as you go data can drain a £10 top-up quickly. Buy an add-on before you fly.

The same page also promoted Lebara's own travel eSIM, a separate data-only product: 12GB for 8 days at £10, 23GB for 15 days at £15 and 33GB for 30 days at £20 for the United States.

Is Lebara roaming in India free?

Yes. India is in Roam Like Home, so you can use your plan there as at home, with up to 30GB of data. Lebara's India page also sells add-ons for longer trips or if you run out: 2.5GB with 30 minutes and 30 texts for 8 days at £5, or 6GB with 50 minutes and 50 texts for 15 days at £12.

Pay as you go in India was £93/GB for data and 25p a minute for calls to Indian or UK numbers, with incoming calls free. Calls to other countries were £1.99 a minute.

For a UK resident visiting family in India, this is Lebara's strongest point. Few UK networks include India, and Lebara's plans also carry international minutes from the UK to India. Our India travel guide covers local SIM options if you need an Indian number.

What is Lebara's roaming fair use policy?

Roam Like Home is meant for people who live in the UK and travel for short spells. Lebara checks usage over any continuous 120-day period. If your roaming use in the free destinations is greater than your UK use over that time, Lebara applies a surcharge:

• data at £2 per GB
• outgoing calls at 2.4p a minute
• incoming calls at 0.6p a minute
• texts at 0.8p each

The surcharge comes out of your pay as you go balance, so you need to top up if there is no credit. Unlimited allowances are also subject to Lebara's general fair usage policy.

What should you do before travelling with Lebara?

Lebara lists three steps:

1. Activate your SIM in the UK. Lebara says roaming will not work if the SIM was not activated in the UK, or if you try to activate it while already abroad. The same applies to its eSIM.
2. Check your data settings. Lebara asks travellers to set the APN to uk.lebara.mobi by hand and restart the phone.
3. Watch for border roaming. Lebara's FAQ warns about connecting to a network across a border by accident. Switzerland, next to France, Germany and Italy, is the obvious risk.

Our data roaming guide shows where the roaming settings sit on iPhone and Android.

When is a travel eSIM cheaper than Lebara roaming?

In the free zone, almost never. You already have up to 30GB.

In the USA it depends on how much data you use. Lebara's £5 add-on for 4GB over 8 days is cheaper than any of our verified US travel eSIMs for light use. In August 2026 Airalo listed 5GB over 7 days at $12.50, Saily 5GB over 30 days at $13.99 and Nomad 5GB over 30 days at $16. For heavy use, Airalo's unlimited 7-day plan was $25. See our USA travel guide for more.

Turkey and Switzerland are where a travel eSIM clearly pays. We could not load Lebara's rate pages for either when we checked, so we cannot quote its charges there. For Turkey, our verified prices in August 2026 were $9 for Nomad's 5GB over 30 days, $9 for Airalo's 5GB over 7 days and $9.99 for Saily's 5GB over 30 days. The cheapest eSIM table covers other countries, and our Lebara SIM only deals guide compares the plans themselves.