EE Business Mobiles: The Price Ladder, the £2.08 Step and the Employee Count

Affiliate disclosure: we may earn a commission if you take out a product through links on this page. It costs you nothing extra and does not influence how providers are listed.

£13 a month ex VAT is where EE’s business SIM ladder starts: Business Essential SIM Only with 1GB of data on a 24-month term, rising through £15 for 10GB, £17 for 50GB, £19 for 100GB and £25 for unlimited. Every one of those tiers carries unlimited calls and texts, and EE prints on the plan card itself what each price becomes on 31 March 2027 and again on 31 March 2028. Figures read from EE’s own business pages and its Price Guide for Small Business on 2 November 2026.

That habit of printing the future price is worth crediting before anything else on this page. A buyer looking at the 10GB plan is told £15 now, £17.08 from 31 March 2027 and £19.16 from 31 March 2028, in pounds and pence, on the same tile as the opening price — so the whole two-year cost can be worked out before signing rather than guessed at. The seller is EE Limited, company number 02382161, registered at 1 Braham Street, London E1 8EE and incorporated on 10 May 1989 under the name Yeldash Limited; it has traded as Unitel, Mercury Personal Communications, One 2 One, T-Mobile (UK) and Everything Everywhere before settling on EE on 2 September 2013.

One thing to establish before clicking, because it decides which EE a reader is buying from. The page that sells these plans says they are for “1 to 10 team members” and routes anyone larger to separate ranges for 11 to 249 and 250-plus staff. The Price Guide that governs those same plans opens by saying “Our plans are designed for businesses with up to 250 employees”. A firm with a dozen people is inside one of those sentences and outside the other, and the answer changes which price list, which contract and which complaints route apply.

Thirteen pounds, three terms, and what two years actually costs

EE sells the same Business Essential SIM on a 30-day rolling term, a 12-month term and a 24-month term, and the gaps between them are identical on every tier. Ten gigabytes is £21 rolling, £17 on 12 months and £15 on 24 months; fifty gigabytes is £23, £19 and £17; a hundred is £25, £21 and £19; unlimited is £31, £27 and £25. Four data tiers, three terms, and the same £6 and £2 steps all the way down the table.

The two-year price is not two years of £15, because the £2.08 step lands on 31 March. Take the 10GB plan bought on 2 November 2026 and run it to the end of its term: five months to the end of March 2027 at £15.00 is £75.00; twelve months to the end of March 2028 at £17.08 is £204.96; the last seven months at £19.16 are £134.12. That is £414.08 ex VAT over 24 months, against the £360.00 a reader gets by multiplying the advertised price by twenty-four — £54.08 more, or 15% above the sticker. Inclusive of VAT at 20% the same two years come to £496.90. The month of purchase moves the answer, because it decides how many of the 24 months sit before the first increase, and that assumption is ours rather than EE’s.

Now price the alternative EE publishes beside it. The rolling 10GB SIM at £21 a month, held for the same two years, is £504.00 ex VAT on the figures EE prints — £89.92 more than the committed term, which is £3.75 a month for the right to leave on 30 days’ notice rather than the £6 the headline gap suggests. That is a narrower premium than it looks, and for a business that hires and loses staff it may be the better buy. The caveat is EE’s own: the plan cards show future prices for the 12- and 24-month plans and show none at all for the 30-day ones, so the rolling comparison can only be made on the figures published, which carry no increase.

One increase, printed honestly, and six different percentages

Ofcom banned inflation-linked mid-contract rises for contracts taken from 17 January 2025 and required any increase to be set out in pounds and pence at the point of sale. EE goes further than the rule asks: the figure is £2.08 a month ex VAT, the date is 31 March, and the resulting price for each of the next two years is printed on the plan tile. Nothing on the page needs decoding, which is more than can be said for the CPI-plus-3.9% formula it replaced — still the mechanism for anyone who joined or upgraded before 2 September 2024.

A single pounds figure across a price ladder does something a percentage does not, though. £2.08 is 16.0% of the £13 plan, 13.9% of £15, 12.2% of £17, 10.9% of £19, 8.3% of £25 and 6.7% of the £31 rolling unlimited plan. The cheapest customer on the ladder absorbs an annual increase almost two and a half times the size, in percentage terms, of the dearest. Across two steps the 1GB plan goes £13 to £15.08 to £17.16, a rise of 32% on the entry price, and by the second step it costs more than the 50GB plan did when it was bought.

Set that against what the same guide does to everything outside the bundle. From 2 September 2024 onwards, out-of-bundle charges rise by 5% each 31 March, rounded up to the nearest whole penny — so 69p a minute becomes 72.45p and then 76.65p, which the rounding rule takes to 73p and 77p. That is our arithmetic on EE’s stated method. The striking part is the comparison: on every single tier, the fixed step on the plan is a larger annual increase than the 5% EE applies to calls, texts and roaming. The transparent number is also the steeper one.

Two clauses finish the picture. The increase applies “both during and after the plan minimum term”, so it keeps arriving every March for as long as the line is open. And clause 7.6 of the Pay Monthly Terms for Small Business, version 11 of 16 January 2026, gives no right to terminate without a cancellation charge because of it. The same clause carries a small asymmetry worth knowing: after the minimum term ends, the step lands on 1 March for a Consumer and 31 March for everybody else, so a business keeps the old price thirty days longer than a household does.

A SIM that cannot ring anyone costs what the one that can costs

EE sells data-only business SIMs on the same three terms, and the prices are not merely similar. Ten gigabytes on 24 months is £15 either way. A hundred gigabytes is £19 either way. Unlimited is £25 either way. The 12-month ladder matches at £17, £19, £21 and £27, and the rolling ladder matches at £21, £23, £25 and £31. EE’s own data SIM page is clear about what the money does not buy: the SIM provides mobile data but “you won’t be able to make or receive calls or texts”.

Read that either way round and it is useful. Unlimited calls and texts on the voice SIM cost nothing, which makes the voice plan the better buy for any device that could conceivably need a number — a van, a lone worker, a backup handset. Or the data SIM is carrying the price of a bundle it is forbidden to use, which is a reason to put a voice SIM in the tablet and ignore the product built for it.

The ladders are not the same length, either. At 24 months the voice range has five rungs — 1GB, 10GB, 50GB, 100GB and unlimited — and the data range has three, with no 1GB entry point and no 50GB rung at all. A business wanting 50GB of data on a two-year data SIM is pushed to the £19 hundred-gigabyte plan, £4 a month and £96 over the term above the voice tier that would have given it exactly what it asked for.

Pricing the Inclusive Extra against the things it stands in for

Business All Rounder is Business Essential plus one Inclusive Extra, and the price difference is exactly £5 a month ex VAT at 10GB (£20 against £15), at 50GB (£22 against £17) and at 100GB (£24 against £19). So EE has set a single price for the extra, and the four things a buyer can choose from are not worth anything like the same amount.

The Roam Abroad Pass covers 47 European destinations, and EE’s own Price Guide sells a Roam Abroad Passport at £11.90 a month ex VAT — the names differ by a word and only one of them is priced, but on the face of the guide the extra is bought in at well under half the standalone rate. Apple prices Apple Music Individual at £11.99 a month on apple.com, read on 2 November 2026, which is £9.99 before VAT, so the £5 is again about half. Microsoft prices 365 Personal at £8.49 monthly or £84.99 a year, which annualises to £7.08 a month including VAT and £5.90 without — against which £5 saves 90p a month, or 15%, and almost nothing at all for a business that cannot reclaim the VAT. The fourth option, 500 minutes to call Europe from the UK, cannot be valued: EE publishes no standalone price for it, and multiplying 500 minutes by the 69p out-of-bundle rate produces £345, which nobody would ever pay and which tells a reader nothing.

The extra earns its keep fastest on travel. An Essential plan with no extra is charged £2.26 a day to use the phone in the EU or EEA; All Rounder costs £5 more and can take the roaming pass instead. Three days abroad in a month and the dearer plan is the cheaper one, because £5 buys back 2.2 days of daily charges. Anyone who flies even occasionally should start at All Rounder rather than Essential, and anyone who travels for weeks at a time should compare the monthly Business Passport at £46.61 against £2.26 a day — the passport wins from the 21st day in a month onwards, and costs more than twice the £22 plan it sits on.

One inconsistency to be aware of before choosing. The SIM-only page lists the extras as the Roam Abroad Pass, Apple Music, Microsoft 365 Personal and 500 minutes to Europe. The plan features page lists Microsoft 365, the Roam Abroad Pass, an Entertainment Pass, 500 Minutes Europe and “entertainment and sports passes” — with Apple Music absent and the Entertainment Pass appearing from nowhere. Full Works picks three extras, All Rounder and Full Works with Apple One pick one.

Five answers to the question of what a small business is

This is the single most consequential thing on EE’s business site and it is never stated once. Five of EE’s own live pages and documents answer the same question with four different numbers, all read on 2 November 2026:

• The business price plans page: the range is for “1 to 10 team members”, with separate ranges signposted for 11 to 249 and 250-plus.
• The site switcher on the business terms page: a small business is “a Sole Trader, Limited or Public Sector Business with up to 100 employees”.
• The EE Price Guide for Small Business, footer V20.01 of 3 September 2026, cover page: “Our plans are designed for businesses with up to 250 employees”.
• The Multi Plan Saving terms inside that same guide: the saving is not available to “a large business customer (with over 50 employees)”.
• The EE Price Guide for Large Business, v12.4 of 24 September 2026: it applies to businesses with “more than 50 employees” at the time of contract.

The number is not decoration. It decides which of two price lists governs the charges, and the two are written four years apart in style and content. It decides which contract applies — the Pay Monthly Terms for Small Business at version 11, dated 16 January 2026, or the General Terms and Conditions for Business Customers (Direct) at version 9.3, dated 1 September 2023 and now more than three years old. And it decides whether a dispute can be taken to an Ofcom-approved adjudicator at all, because that door is open to businesses of up to ten employees and shut above it. Of EE’s five answers, the one its own buying page gives — one to ten — is the only one that lines up with the regulator.

The contract itself declines to help. The Pay Monthly Terms for Small Business define “Consumer” carefully, as “a real person entering into the Agreement and/or using the Services for purposes mainly outside his/her business”, and never define a small business at all. They set no ceiling on the number of connections an account can hold, and clause 2.8 confirms that each SIM can carry its own separate minimum term — so a growing firm can find itself holding twenty lines on a price list written for ten people, with twenty different end dates.

Three hundred numbers a month, 600 gigabytes, and half a megabit

Three limits sit in EE’s business documents rather than on its plan pages, and the first is the one a business is most likely to trip over. Clause 4.7.1 of the Pay Monthly Terms for Small Business treats use as improper where the customer calls or texts more than 300 different numbers in a month. Spread across 21 working days that is about fourteen fresh contacts a day, which is a slow week for a two-person sales desk, a lettings office or a dispatcher ringing round subcontractors. The clause sits in a contract whose plans are sold on unlimited calls and texts, and nothing on the plan pages mentions it.

The second limit belongs to the unlimited tiers. EE’s own deal terms state the plan is for the account holder’s sole use and that usage above 600GB a month may be considered excessive. That is a generous ceiling for a phone and a tight one for a SIM doing duty as a site office’s broadband, which is exactly what an unlimited business data SIM invites.

The third is what happens on a capped plan when the allowance runs out, and it is better news. Stay Connected Data keeps the line alive at 0.5Mb per second to the end of the month rather than cutting it off or billing per megabyte — enough for mail, messaging and maps and not enough for anything else. The plan features page lists it as standard on Essential, All Rounder, Full Works and Full Works with Apple One alike; the SIM-only plan cards list it on the capped tiers and leave it off the unlimited ones. Those two statements do not agree, and the generous reading is that an unlimited plan has no allowance to exhaust.

Two price guides, four years apart, both live

EE’s current regulated price list is the one quoted throughout this page: footer V20.01, dated 3 September 2026, 69p a minute, 45p a text, £2.26 a day in the EU. It is served from a file whose own name reads v21-2 and 03-09-2026, so the document and its address disagree about which version it is.

The more serious problem is that a second EE price guide for small business is still live on ee.co.uk at a plain, undated, obvious address, and it is V14.4, dated 31 March 2022, with pricing “correct as at 10th November 2021”. It prices the same kind of airtime at 52p a minute against the current 69p, 34p a text against 45p, and £2 a day in the EU against £2.26. It carries the CPI-plus-3.9% increase formula with no mention of the 2 September 2024 cut-off that ended it for new customers. It still lists 5G Ready Business Essential, Business Smart and Business Connect plans at 2021 prices. A buyer who searches for EE’s business price guide has a real chance of landing on a rate card five years out of date, and every figure on it is wrong by between 13% and 32%.

Smaller mismatches sit on the sales pages. The small and medium business deals page prints prices stepping up on 31 March 2027 and 31 March 2028 beneath a footnote reading “correct as at 1 Feb 2023”. The same page advertises “Save up to £576 until 19 November” — no year, and nothing in the small print saying what the saving is measured against, how many connections it assumes or whether it includes VAT. And the promotion prices Business All Rounder with unlimited data at £22 while the 100GB version of the same plan is £24, so on EE’s own table the capped plan costs £2 a month more than the uncapped one.

The free annual service EE attaches to every plan has a naming problem of the same kind. The plan features page calls it the Annual Check-Up; the help article calls it the Annual Device and Account MOT and describes it as a free yearly device diagnostic plus an account review “to make sure you’re getting the best value for your usage”, triggered by text on the twelve-month anniversary. It is a genuinely useful thing to include, and the catch is in the delivery: it happens as a booked appointment in a shop, which is a long way to go for a clean and polish when the fleet is out on the road.

Who gets the VAT back, and who does not

Every price on EE’s business pages excludes VAT, which is the right convention for a VAT-registered company because the tax is reclaimed. It is the wrong number for a large part of the audience those pages are aimed at. HMRC requires registration once taxable turnover passes £90,000 in a rolling twelve months, so a sole trader or a small partnership below that line pays the VAT and keeps none of it — and “1 to 10 team members”, the description on EE’s own buying page, is precisely where those businesses live.

For them the ladder reads differently. The £13 entry plan is £15.60 a month, the £15 10GB plan is £18.00, the £25 unlimited plan is £30.00 and the £31 rolling unlimited plan is £37.20. The 24-month worked example above, £414.08 ex VAT, becomes £496.90. The £5 Inclusive Extra becomes £6.00, which is where the Microsoft 365 comparison stops working altogether: £6.00 against Microsoft’s own £7.08 annualised monthly price leaves about a pound a month in it. The £2.08 annual step becomes £2.50 a year, every year, for as long as the line stays open.

Two further charges are worth knowing before adding anything to a plan. Business Antivirus is £4.99 ex VAT per licence, which is a third of the price of the 10GB SIM it protects. And device insurance is handled differently again — the guide notes those payments are exempt from VAT and include Insurance Premium Tax at the prevailing rate, so it is the one line on the bill where the ex-VAT convention does not apply and nothing can be reclaimed by anybody.

Figures were taken from each provider's own published terms on 2 November 2026. Variable rates can change at any time — confirm the current rate with the provider before applying.