Over 24 months the arithmetic is not close. Three’s 24-month plan is €720. Imagine’s cheapest 5G is €960, the unlimited tier €1,200, the outdoor kit €1,440. What you buy for the extra money is a bill that cannot move (Three adds a published €3 every April), a contract you can leave in any month for a one-off wrap-up charge instead of the balance of 24 months, and — on the €60 plan — an antenna on the gable fed by Imagine’s own fixed-wireless cells rather than whatever is left of a consumer mast at 8pm.
We score Imagine 8.1 and Three 7.8, and the gap swings on what you need the line for. Rental flat, good indoor 5G bar on a phone, budget first: Three. Rural house you own, NBI two years out, working from home on video all day: Imagine, and spend the extra for the outdoor kit. Either way run both coverage checkers at the Eircode before reading another word; a wireless product at an address the mast does not reach is worth €0. Wider field: best rural broadband and fibre vs 5G vs Starlink.
Quick comparison
Side by side from published August 2026 prices and contract terms — the same data behind our best-broadband ranking. Green highlights the better figure on that row. Speeds are advertised headlines, not lab results we invented. Availability is always by Eircode.
| Imagine | Three | |
|---|---|---|
| Our score | 8.1 | 7.8 |
| Intro from | €40 | €30 |
| Thereafter from | €40 | €39.99 |
| Headline speed | 300 Mb | 500 Mb |
| Annual rise | No | Yes |
| Networks | Fixed wireless, 5G home, SIRO, NBI | 5G home |
| TV bundle | No | No |
€720 vs €960: Three’s 24-month plan against Imagine’s frozen tariff
Start with the number the tile hides. Three’s 24-month plan is €30 × 24 = €720 for a new customer — the €25 tile is for existing Three and 48 customers — no delivery fee, hub included, before the €3 April rises. Its 12-month plan is €44.99 × 12 ≈ €540, then €54.99, so a second year on that path costs about €660 and the two-year total lands near €1,200. Imagine has no intro pricing on 5G at all: 5G Basic is €40 × 24 = €960, 5G Unlimited €1,200, 5G Unlim-Pro with the outdoor antenna €1,440 — and that last one includes a technical install Imagine values at €150 but does not charge on the current promotion. Three is cheaper than Imagine’s cheapest by €240 over the two years, and cheaper than the outdoor kit by €720.
Year three is where Imagine starts clawing it back, but only partly. Three’s thereafter is about €40 and Three publishes a €3 rise each April on the monthly recurring charge, so the standard price steps up roughly €40 → €43 → €46 across 2027–2029. Imagine’s €40 is €40 in 2029. On the like-for-like capped tier that is a wash by the third year and Imagine ahead after; on the unlimited and outdoor tiers Three stays cheaper for the life of the product because its base is so much lower. Buy Imagine for the contract, not for the total. Cheapest lines in the country: cheapest broadband in Ireland.
Consumer cell vs fixed-wireless mast — and which Imagine plan actually uses which
Three sells you a slice of the same cell its phone customers are on. Your hub is a very hungry handset that never leaves the house, and at 8pm it shares the sector with every phone within range. Three has a national 5G mobile footprint and holds around 2.2% of fixed lines on ComReg’s count, so the home product is real and national — but there is no fixed-wireless engineering behind it, just a SIM in a box.
Imagine is two networks wearing one logo, and you need to know which one you are ordering. The €60 Unlim-Pro is Imagine’s own fixed-wireless product: 3.6 GHz spectrum it won at ComReg’s 2017 award and leases more of, sectored masts built to serve fixed outdoor units, an engineer who points the antenna at the mast. The €40 and €50 self-install hubs are different — since March 2026 Imagine has a three-year wholesale deal with Open Eir that includes the eir mobile network, and its self-install 5G pilot (4,000-plus devices at announcement, per RTÉ) rides that network. So “Imagine 5G” in a box is, in practice, a consumer mobile cell too, only eir’s rather than Three’s. The dedicated-spectrum argument belongs to the outdoor kit alone. Background on the wholesale map: networks explained.
Three’s 500 Mb headline vs Imagine’s 300 — and the 8pm and upload questions
On the brochure Three wins: up to 500 Mb against Imagine’s 300 Mb (450 Mb on Unlim-Pro). We score speed Imagine 7.4, Three 7.2, because a wireless headline is a ceiling set by the mast, not a contract figure, and the number that matters is what the line does at 8pm on a wet Tuesday. A hub two rooms from a window on a busy cell can deliver a fraction of the tile; an outdoor unit on a mast built for fixed customers tends to hold a narrower band. Neither publishes an evening speed guarantee and we have not measured one. Our rule: whichever network shows the stronger 5G bar on a phone held where the router will live, at 8pm, is the faster product at your house.
Upload is the weak flank on both. Three’s home plans are advertised on download; upload on a 5G hub is typically tens of Mb, not hundreds, and it moves with the cell. Imagine quotes download only on 5G too. Latency on either is fine for Teams and ordinary gaming but jitters in a way fibre does not; for daily video plus large uploads the outdoor antenna is the steadier radio, and a wire beats both the month it exists. Working from home ranking: best broadband for WFH. Not getting the number on the box: not getting advertised speed.
Leave-anytime with a wrap-up charge vs 24 months with a €3 April rise
This is the widest gap on the scorecard: Imagine 9.3, Three 7.8. Imagine’s 5G plans are monthly with a leave-anytime pledge and a frozen standard price — its product pages say the monthly price “will not increase before December 2030”, and there is no April mechanism. Leaving is not free, though, and the size of the exit depends on the kit. Imagine publishes a one-off Service Wrap-Up Charge if you close the account inside the first 24 months: €60 on the self-install 5G plans, €200 on the tech-install Unlim-Pro, waived after 24 months. Cancel the outdoor kit inside the 14-day cooling-off and Imagine lists a €150 de-installation charge. So the €60 plan is “leave anytime for €200” for two years — honest, not free.
Three is a conventional 24-month (or 12-month) mobile contract. The published clause is a €3 increase to the monthly recurring charge each April; ask in writing whether the promo rate is exempt before you sign, because Three’s own schedule shows the standard price stepping every April from 2027. Early exit is the usual mobile-broadband formula — typically the remaining months’ charges — which on a €30 plan with 16 months left is around €480. The 12-month plan caps that at €540 total and shrinks the tail. Three’s money-back window on the hub (14 days on its rural pages, 30 on some promotions) is the cheap way to test the cell. How the exits compare: early termination fees. April mechanics across the market: April price rises.
Indoor bar vs outdoor antenna: who can actually serve your Eircode
Coverage scores are close — Three 7.8, Imagine 7.6 — and they measure different things. Three’s 5G mobile footprint is national; the question at a given house is whether the signal that reaches the lawn also reaches the router through block walls and foil-backed insulation. Three has an answer for that now: its current “Gold” variant is a tech install where an engineer fixes a receiver to an outside wall and cables it to an indoor router, sold at the same €30 as the self-install “Silver” on Three’s pages in August 2026. Our dataset tracks it as one tariff; if the indoor bar is weak, ask for the outdoor variant up front.
Imagine’s self-install hub inherits eir’s 5G reach via the Open Eir deal. Its own fixed-wireless cells are where it has always been strongest — rural Leinster, Munster and the midlands, wherever it has built a mast with line of sight to a cluster of houses — and the engineer will not install the outdoor kit where there is no line of sight. Installation is 5–7 days for the tech install, 2–5 days for the self-install, against Three’s next-working-day hub delivery. Run both checkers and treat a green tile as an invitation, not a promise: check broadband by Eircode. If both are a no, the honest next stop is Starlink. Fixing a hub that works in the hall but not the office: Wi-Fi dead zones.
Renters and movers vs owners waiting on NBI
Three is the renter’s product. The self-install hub is yours to carry to the next let and it works wherever Three 5G does; there is no drilling, so there is no landlord conversation. A 12-month plan matches a 12-month lease. It is also the cheapest bridge for a new-build waiting on an Open Eir or NBI drop. Moving mid-contract: moving house. No-contract alternatives: no-contract broadband.
Imagine is the owner’s product, and specifically the owner who has checked when NBI is coming and got an answer in years. The outdoor antenna is fixed to the address — an engineer drilled a hole and clipped a cable to the nearest socket — so it does not travel, and a tenant needs written landlord consent for that work. What you get in return is a line that will not do anything surprising until 2030 and can be closed for €60/€200 the month the fibre engineer is booked. Short lets should not buy it; rural households with a five-year horizon should price it above Three. Rural ranking: best rural broadband in Ireland.
Irish fixed-wireless desk vs mobile-network call centre
Service is Imagine’s second-biggest edge: 8.4 against Three’s 7.6, reliability 7.5 against 7.0. Imagine is an Irish-owned company whose entire business is fixed access, and a fault on the outdoor kit is a truck-roll problem it has handled for the best part of two decades of rural customers. Three’s broadband support sits inside a mobile operator’s queue; the recurring complaint in Irish forums is not rudeness, it is being told to reboot a hub when the real issue is the cell.
Extras are thin on both and that is fine. Neither sells TV we score; neither needs a landline. Imagine ships a Wi-Fi 7 router on every plan; Three’s hubs are ZTE units (the MC801A-class indoor 5G hub on self-install, an outdoor receiver plus indoor router on the tech install). Three’s SIM-plus-broadband bundle for existing customers is the only real add-on here. Checklist before either arrives: how to switch broadband. Whether you need a phone line at all: do I need a landline.
Which should you choose?
It comes down to the line at the house, then the bill. Here’s the quick way to decide.
Choose Imagine if
You own the house (or have written landlord consent for a wall-mounted antenna), fibre is not at the pole this year, and you want a wireless line that behaves like a utility: €40/€50/€60 frozen to December 2030, no April letter, walk away for a one-off charge the month NBI or SIRO goes live. Indoor 5G is patchy at your address and you would rather an engineer put the radio outside than hope the hub finds a window.
Check Imagine →
Choose Three if
You rent, you move, or you need broadband by Thursday. €30 a month for 24 months (€25 if you already have a Three or 48 SIM) is the cheapest “plug it in” line in Ireland and your phone already shows a solid Three 5G bar in the room where the router will sit. You can live with a published €3 rise each April, fair-use traffic management on “unlimited”, and an early-exit bill for the remaining months if fibre arrives mid-contract — or you take the 12-month plan to halve that exposure.
Check Three →Advertiser disclosure: we earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. This never affects our scores or the winner of each round.
