Buying a SIM card at Gatwick Airport

What is in North and what is in South

Gatwick splits across two terminals, and the SIM retail is not identical between them.

North Terminal arrivals has Change Group and Travelex kiosks, with WHSmith stores through the terminal. South Terminal has similar retail, with WHSmith. That is the whole of what we hold — no phone-carrier counters, no Sim Local kiosk of the kind Heathrow has in three of its terminals.

It is worth noticing what those North Terminal names are. Change Group and Travelex are bureaux de change that also sell SIMs; WHSmith is a newsagent. None of the three is a mobile retailer, and we would not count on being offered a choice of network at a currency desk. If which network you are on matters for where you are going, Gatwick is not the place to sort it out.

The hours we do not have

We hold no opening times for any SIM seller at Gatwick. Not for the kiosks, not for WHSmith, not for either terminal.

That gap is worse here than it would be elsewhere. Gatwick carries a heavy load of low-cost and charter traffic, and that traffic clusters at the ends of the day — 6am departures, flights landing near midnight. An airport whose arrivals bank sits outside normal retail hours is exactly the one where you want the opening times, and we cannot give them to you. Assume nothing is open at either end of the day until you can see it is.

The queue figure we do have is 6 to 8 minutes, shorter than Heathrow's 8 to 10. UK prepaid SIMs require no ID, so there is no registration step to slow the counter down — you pay and you leave.

£12 to £25, against what the same money buys online

Our Gatwick record puts a tourist SIM package at £12 to £25, a little below the £15 to £30 quoted for Heathrow. What that price includes is not something we hold, and it is the part that decides the value.

These eSIM prices were read from the providers' own UK checkouts on 13 August 2026, in US dollars.

The UK ladder does not stop at 20 GB, and the cheapest gigabyte we hold anywhere in the country is the largest plan: 50 GB for 30 days at $39, or $0.78 a gigabyte. Anyone assuming the small plans are the value ones has it backwards here.

Airalo prices the UK in two named tiers — Uki Mobile and Uki Mobile+ — with a second, dearer price at every size. What the plus tier adds is not stated at checkout, so we do not repeat guesses about it.

Nobody at the kiosk can tell you what an eSIM roams onto

And neither can we, for most of them. Airalo, Saily, Nomad, eSIM Go and eSIMCard publish no host network for the UK. Nor does Holafly: the Three UK and Virgin Media O2 pairing this page used to place on its shorter plans came from our own data rather than from Holafly, which names no operator in any country.

So the choice at Gatwick is between a physical SIM whose network is printed on the box and an eSIM that is cheaper per gigabyte but anonymous about what it runs on. For a few days in London that is an easy call in the eSIM's favour — urban coverage is not where UK networks differ. For a trip out into rural Sussex, Kent or further, the printed box has an argument.

Getting to London, and the roaming point

The Gatwick Express reaches London Victoria in 30 minutes for £19.90 single. Southern and Thameslink services take 35 to 45 minutes for around £10 to £15, and Thameslink runs through central London rather than terminating at Victoria. Our record notes signal along the route, so a working phone is useful for the onward leg from Victoria more than for the train itself.

One thing that catches EU arrivals: the UK is not in the EU, so roam-like-at-home does not apply. Whether your home bundle covers Britain now depends entirely on your own operator's post-Brexit policy — some kept the UK in the allowance, some did not. That is worth five minutes of checking before you fly, because if you are covered you should buy nothing at all.

If you are not covered, install an eSIM before departure. Gatwick has free wi-fi, so you can also do it after landing. The full UK price ladder is on our United Kingdom hub.