Prepay expiry rules in Ireland: how long before you lose credit, plan or number

The short answer

Prepay does not mean permanent. In August 2026 every Irish prepay network will take the number back if you stop feeding it, and most will take the credit first.

• Fastest to lose the number: Lycamobile. 90 days with no outgoing use, a 30-day warning, then the number is reallocated.
• Fastest to lose credit: Three. Purchased credit applied on or after 13 May 2026 expires after 100 days.
• Most forgiving: Vodafone. Outgoing stops at 6 months and 7 days, but the number can be reactivated until 14 months from the last top-up.
• Cheapest reset: a €5 top-up on Vodafone or eir. Both name €5 as the minimum that restarts the clock.

If you only want to know which prepay plan is good value, that is a different page: best prepay in Ireland. This one is about what happens when you stop paying.

Three things with different clocks

People lose numbers because they assume one rule covers everything. It does not. Separate them.

1. Plan validity. The bundle you get for topping up €20 lasts 28 days (31 on An Post Auto Top-Up). When it ends, unused data and minutes vanish. Nothing else happens. Your credit and number are fine.
2. Credit expiry. The euro balance under the plan. Three now deletes it after 100 days. Tesco deletes it if you make no chargeable use for 180 days. Eir deletes it 240 days after the last purchased top-up. Vodafone and Lycamobile do not publish a standalone credit expiry, which sounds generous until the next clock runs out and the balance goes with the account.
3. Inactivity and number reclaim. The long one. Stop topping up, or stop doing whatever the network counts as use, and the account is suspended, then deactivated, then the number is recycled to someone else. Windows run from 120 days (Lycamobile) to 14 months (Vodafone).

On rolling SIM-only (48, GoMo, Clear) the third clock is replaced by a card payment. No credit exists to expire, but a failed card is a missed payment, and the terms let the provider suspend or disconnect. The difference between prepay and rolling monthly is explained in bill pay vs prepay.

Provider-by-provider rules, August 2026

Verified means we read it in the provider's own Irish terms or support page. Reported means the figure comes from the provider's community knowledge base or a forum and we could not open a T&C that states it. Three's inactivity window and 48's closure window are the two reported cells; the rest is verified.

Three detail worth repeating: a €20 top-up inside an existing 28-day plan restarts the plan and throws away what is left of the old one. Three's own plan terms suggest topping up €5, €10 or €15 if you just want more credit mid-plan. The per-provider prepay-vs-bill-pay pages go further: Three, Vodafone, eir.

Cheapest 28-day plan per prepay retailer

For context on what a top-up buys, from our catalogue. The plan ends at 28 days regardless of how much credit you are carrying.

Keeping an Irish number alive while living abroad

The use case that fills forums: you have moved to Sydney or Toronto, your bank, Revenue and the GP still text the Irish number, and you want it to survive for a year or three at minimum cost. Pick the network by its reset rule, not its data.

• Vodafone: €5 top-up before the 6-month text. Budget €10 a year. Incoming stays on even if you miss it, until 8 months and 7 days. Vodafone PAYG is also exempt from the April price rises, so the parking cost does not creep.
• Eir: €5 purchased top-up every 150 days. That is roughly €12.50 a year. Miss one and you have 30 days to fix it with any top-up method before it becomes a customer-care phone call.
• Tesco: the clock is chargeable use, not money. One paid text every few months works, but there is no stated minimum top-up, and credit you have sitting there dies at 180 days of no outbound use. Cheap but fiddly.
• Three: the 100-day credit expiry makes it the worst parking choice. Whatever you top up is gone in just over three months unless you use it, and the inactivity figure is only reported, not in a document.
• Lycamobile: 90 days plus 30. Fine if you will actually use the SIM abroad, hopeless as a drawer SIM.
• An Post: top up every 6 months; the terms do not treat usage as a reset. Post-office top-ups do not help you from Perth, so set up the online route before you go.

Three practical rules. First, set a phone reminder at half the window so a missed month does not become a lost number. Second, switch mobile data roaming off and let the SIM sit in a dual-SIM slot or an old handset on Wi-Fi. Outside the EU, a single automatic app update on roaming data can eat a €5 top-up in seconds, and the network counts that as use but your wallet counts it as a loss. Third, inside the EU remember roam-like-at-home has a time-and-volume fair-use catch: GoMo's terms say so explicitly, and the big networks apply the same idea. Spend most of four months in Spain on an Irish SIM and the provider can start surcharging or asking questions. The rules are on the EU roaming page.

If the goal is receiving bank codes rather than keeping the number for sentiment, a cheaper long-term fix is to port the number to the most forgiving network before you leave. Porting is provider-led and takes a working day: how to switch.

Spare SIMs and a child's phone

A child's first phone is nearly always prepay, and nearly always goes weeks without a top-up because it lives on home Wi-Fi. Two things follow from the table.

On Three the credit you loaded in September is gone by Christmas if it was not spent. Buy the €20 plan when the child needs data and do not pre-load more. On Lycamobile a phone that only uses Wi-Fi and receives calls from a parent is, in the network's eyes, unused. Ninety days of that triggers the warning text, which a ten-year-old will ignore. On Vodafone or eir the same phone survives six months and five months respectively with nothing done at all.

The spare SIM in the drawer, the one from a phone you replaced, follows the same logic. If it is a Vodafone number you want to hold, a €5 top-up twice a year is enough. If it is a Three number and the credit is already older than 100 days, the balance is gone and only the number is left to protect. Check what a 28-day plan would cost to revive it on cheapest mobile in Ireland before deciding it is worth keeping.

Where unused credit goes

Nowhere you can follow it. When credit expires under a network's terms it is written off. There is no Irish rule that stops a provider putting a date on prepaid credit, and ComReg's consumer advice does not set a minimum life for credit; it points you to the provider's terms. The one protection is narrower than people expect.

Under the Electronic Communications Code regulations that apply in Ireland, a prepay customer who switches provider can claim a refund of remaining purchased credit. The provider may charge an administration fee, which ComReg says must be proportionate to the actual cost of the refund. Tesco's terms state a €10 charge and a 3-month claim window. An Post gives 3 months and says a fee may apply. Eir gives 90 days from the port and names an admin charge without a figure. Lycamobile's terms say no cash refund at any time, which sits awkwardly with the regulation; if you port out of Lycamobile with credit left, ask in writing and cite ComReg.

What is not covered: credit that expires while you stay. Credit lost when the number is recycled. Unused plan allowances at day 28. Promotional credit, which every network expires faster than purchased credit (Three 30 days, Tesco 28 days, Vodafone per the SMS that came with it). None of that comes back.

The realistic rule for a customer who wants to keep money: top up only what the next 28 days need. Do not hold a €50 balance on a prepay SIM on any Irish network in 2026.

If the number is already gone

Work out which stage you are at, because the answer changes.

• Suspended, incoming still works: you are inside the grace window. Vodafone, eir, An Post and Tesco will lift it for a top-up, sometimes only by phone. Do it now.
• Disconnected but inside the reclaim window: Vodafone up to 14 months from the last top-up, eir up to 13 months, Tesco up to 12 months plus 30 days quarantine, An Post up to 7 months. Ring customer care with the number and proof of ownership. The credit may or may not come back; the number should.
• Recycled: the number has gone into the pool and, on Lycamobile, straight to someone else. ComReg's porting process cannot retrieve a number that is no longer yours. Accept it, and this time set the reminder.

Before a number is gone, a port-out is the escape hatch. Vodafone says a warned customer can request the port before the disconnection date; the same is true everywhere because porting only needs the number to be live. If you would rather be on a rolling SIM that simply bills a card and never asks you to remember a date, the comparison is 48 vs GoMo vs Clear, and the no-lock-in list is no-contract 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