Mobile early termination fees in Ireland: what it costs to leave a bill-pay contract

Short answer

If you are inside a 12-month SIM contract with Three, Vodafone, Sky, Virgin or Tesco, the early termination fee (ETF) is the remaining months’ charges as a lump sum. Six months left on a €20 plan is €120. There is no pro-rata discount on SIM-only in Ireland, unlike the UK.

If you are on Eir Connect or Complete, 48, GoMo, Clear, Lycamobile or An Post, there is no minimum term. You pay the month you are in and leave.

If you are on a phone plan, the service part is the same remaining-months sum and the handset is a separate debt. Vodafone calls it the Device Subsidy. Three rolls the phone into the monthly charge and multiplies that.

The legal rules are the same ones that govern broadband. They are explained once, on broadband early termination fees. This page is the mobile-specific numbers.

The fee, network by network, August 2026

“Verified” means we read the formula in the provider’s own terms or price guide. “Typically” means the provider says a fee applies but we could not find the arithmetic in an Irish document.

Three’s month-14 cap is the one rule worth memorising. A 24-month Three SIM-only plan is, for exit purposes, a 14-month plan. After month 14 you can leave for nothing, even with ten months on paper to run.

What leaving costs at month 3, 6 and 9

Prices and terms pulled from our SIM-only data, August 2026. “Month 3” means you have paid three bills and nine remain. All five are 12-month plans, so the fee is months left × monthly price, before any April increase that lands inside the term.

• Three SIM Core: Three bill-pay price guide. The April €2.50 rise, if it lands inside your term, lifts the monthly figure and therefore the fee.
• Vodafone Red Unlimited 15: Vodafone general terms. Same April caveat as Three.
• Sky Mobile Unlimited: Sky’s help page says roughly what you would have paid for the remaining months. We could not read the Irish contract PDF.
• Virgin SIM Only €15: Virgin offer terms: monthly cost × months left.
• Tesco Elevate: Tesco says “recurring monthly charges for the remainder”. We assume the €15 you pay, not the €30 list price. Tesco quotes the figure when you call.

Compare that with what you would save. Moving from Three SIM Core at €20 to a €12.99 rolling SIM saves €7.01 a month. At month 6 the €120 fee takes 17 months to claw back. At month 9, €60 takes about nine months. The arithmetic usually says wait, unless the new plan is also a retention offer you will lose.

SIMs with no term, so no fee

These are the plans where the question does not arise. The only cost of leaving is the month or 28 days you have already paid for.

Eir Connect and Complete belong in this group too, despite the 12-month promo price. Three SIM Flex at €34.99 is 30-day but dear. The full list of rolling plans is on no-contract mobile.

Three exits that cost nothing

1. The 14-day cooling-off

Any SIM or phone bought online, by phone or from a door-to-door agent is a distance or off-premises sale under the Consumer Rights Act 2022. You have 14 days from delivery or activation to cancel for a full refund. Virgin starts the clock at delivery of the SIM or activation, whichever is later, and extends it to 28 days for field-agent sales. Vodafone runs it from receipt of goods, or from the agreement start for services. You pay for usage in the window, and you return the phone at your own cost. Bought in a shop, there is no cooling-off right.

2. A Contract Change Notification

If the network changes the terms of your contract, it must give you 30 days’ notice and tell you that you can leave without penalty before the change lands. That is ComReg’s rule and it is written into Vodafone’s terms at clause 10.3(c) and Tesco’s general terms.

The catch is the word change. A fixed April increase that was in the contract you signed, Three’s €2.50 on SIM-only and €3 on phone plans, Vodafone’s €2.50, Eir’s CPI+3%, is not a change. It was contractually agreed, so it does not open the door. Legislation to create a statutory right to exit on any in-contract price rise was approved by Cabinet in November 2025, but the Irish Times reported in March 2026 that it had not been drafted, and we can find no commencement as of August 2026. Who raises what, and who promises not to, is on mobile price rises 2026. Vodafone’s terms add one more free exit: a significant, continued shortfall against the service levels in your contract, established through ComReg’s monitoring mechanism.

3. Running out the clock, then porting

Once the minimum term ends, every Irish bill-pay plan rolls monthly and the ETF is zero. Networks must send an end-of-contract notice before that date. If you are at month 10 of 12, the fee is two months’ charges and patience is cheaper.

What about death or moving abroad?

No Irish network we checked publishes a written fee waiver for either. Vodafone has a bereavement form that closes or transfers the account within about 10 working days, and in practice Irish networks close a deceased customer’s account on a death certificate without an ETF, but it is discretion, not a published term. Moving abroad is not a recognised reason to leave early anywhere. If you are emigrating inside a term, the cheapest route is often to port the number to a no-term SIM first, pay the ETF once, and keep the Irish number on a €12.99 membership you can stop later.

Phone plans: the service fee and the phone are two debts

On a handset contract the ETF has two pieces. The first is the same remaining-months service charge as a SIM plan. The second is whatever is still owed on the phone. The networks handle the second part differently.

• Vodafone separates them explicitly. The service ETF is the remaining plan charges. The Device Subsidy is the smaller of (a) 1/24 of the phone’s original value, less your upfront payment, times the months left, or (b) the remaining plan charges. You own the phone once both are paid. The subsidy is owed even on a penalty-free CCN exit if you keep the phone; return it within 14 days in working order and you do not pay it.
• Three does not split them. The monthly price on a Three phone plan includes the handset, and the cancellation fee is that whole monthly charge times the months left, part months included. Phone plans also carry the €3 April rise rather than €2.50, which lifts the multiplier.
• Eir, Sky, Virgin, Tesco handset plans: the same remaining-months logic applies and Tesco’s terms say the fee covers the service and the handset combined. Irish law caps it at the lower of the remaining service fees or the pro-rata value of the subsidised phone. We could not find a published device-balance formula for these four, so treat “remaining months of the full plan price” as the working assumption and ask for the written figure.

Whether to take the phone on the plan at all is a separate decision, and the answer in 2026 is usually SIM-only plus a phone bought outright. Getting the handset unlocked after you leave is unlock your phone.

How to actually leave

1. Check the date. Your minimum-term end date is on the contract summary and in the end-of-contract notice. On a Three 24-month SIM-only plan, the date that matters is month 14.
2. Ask for the ETF in writing. Three (1913), Vodafone (1907), Sky, Virgin (1908) and Tesco (1903) will all quote it. Tesco and Sky only give the figure on request, so get it before you order the new SIM.
3. Do not cancel first. Order the new SIM and give the new provider your number. Porting is gaining-provider led in Ireland and the port closes the old account. Cancelling first can lose the number. Steps are on how to switch mobile; the mechanics are on number porting explained.
4. Drop the extras first. Sky says moving to a cheaper data plan before cancelling cuts the charge. Vodafone’s Red 15 terms bar a move to a lower-value tariff in the first 12 months, so that trick does not work there.
5. Expect the final bill. The ETF is a lump sum on the last bill, alongside the month’s usage. Keep the direct debit live until it clears, then cancel it. A bounced final bill becomes a collections letter.
6. Pick a plan you will not need to leave. If the reason you are paying an ETF is a price jump, the next plan should have no term or a fixed price: price-for-life mobile.

About the author

Róisín Kelly

Mobile Networks Analyst

Róisín Kelly leads matched.ie’s mobile coverage and plan comparisons. She has driven over 15,000 km testing 4G and 5G signals across Ireland for Three, Vodafone, eir and Virgin Mobile.

7 years mapping real-world mobile performanceCertified Mobile Network Engineer (Ericsson & Nokia)Focus on rural coverage, data speeds and international roamingRegularly updates matched.ie’s mobile coverage heatmaps