Three Go Roam Passes vs Inclusive Roaming: Which Costs Less?
Three Go Roam Passes vs Inclusive Roaming: Which Costs Less?
Last updated: April 2026
Your sales director flies to Madrid for two days, runs three meetings, comes home. Your office manager goes on holiday to Italy for ten days and tacks on one client call from the hotel. Your engineer drives to a job in Dublin for an afternoon. Your finance lead spends a fortnight in Frankfurt every quarter at the European HQ.
Four people, four very different roaming patterns. If they are all on the same Three Business contract on the same default plan, three of them are probably overpaying and the fourth is probably about to get a nasty bill.
Three's roaming structure is genuinely flexible, which is good news because it lets you size each SIM to actual usage. It is also confusing on first glance, which is bad news because it makes it easy to pick wrong. There are basically two routes you can take, and your job is to put each SIM on the right one.
Here is how to think about it, with the actual numbers, so you stop overpaying.
The Two Routes
Route 1: Inclusive Roaming Plans
Inclusive Roaming is a monthly add-on to your tariff. You pay slightly more per month for the SIM, and in exchange the daily roaming charges go away. There is no per-day fee when you travel. There are still data caps and fair-use limits, but the basic "you pay nothing extra to use your phone abroad" promise holds.
There are three Inclusive Roaming tiers, depending on which destinations you need:
Inclusive Roaming Go Roam Europe covers 49 European destinations.
Inclusive Roaming Go Roam Around the World covers 71 destinations including Europe, the US, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil, and more.
Inclusive Roaming Go Roam Around the World Extra covers 163 destinations including Canada, Japan, China, India, the UAE, most of Africa and most of Latin America.
You pick the tier that covers where you actually go. You can mix and match across SIMs, so different people in your business can be on different tiers.
Route 2: Daily Charges + Optional Passes
If you do not have an Inclusive plan, the default is daily charges:
Go Roam Europe (49 destinations): £2 per day. Includes up to 12 GB data per month and unlimited minutes and texts to other Go Roam Europe destinations and back to the UK.
Go Roam Around the World (22 destinations beyond Europe): £5 per day. Up to 3,000 mins, 5,000 texts back to UK, 12 GB data.
Go Roam Around the World Extra (92 further destinations): £7 per day. Same allowances.
Daily charges work fine for occasional travel, but they add up quickly if you go away regularly. The fix is to buy a Go Roam Pass before your trip, which waives the daily charges for a fixed duration.
Pass Prices in One Place
| Pass duration | Europe | Around the World | Around the World Extra | |---------------|--------|------------------|------------------------| | 3 days | £5.00 | £12.50 | £17.50 | | 7 days | £12.00 | £30.00 | £42.00 | | 14 days | £24.00 | £60.00 | £84.00 | | 28 days | £48.00 | £120.00 | £168.00 | | 56 days | £96.00 | £240.00 | £336.00 |
All prices including VAT. Passes do not expire. Once you buy them, they stay on the account until the days are used up. Activation is in 24-hour periods.
The Break-Even Maths
This is the bit you came for. How do you decide which option is cheaper?
The answer depends on how many days a year the SIM actually travels. Add up the days, then compare against what an Inclusive plan would cost over the same period. The exact monthly Inclusive uplift varies by tariff, but as a rough rule:
If You Travel to Europe Only
Less than 12 days a year roaming: Passes win. Buy a 14-day Europe pass for £24 once a year and you are done. Inclusive Roaming would cost more over 12 months for that level of use.
More than 28 days a year: Inclusive is cheaper. You will spend more on passes than you would on the monthly add-on.
Somewhere in between: Roughly a wash. Pick whichever feels less mental overhead. Most people in this category pick Inclusive because they do not want to think about it before every trip.
If You Travel Worldwide (Around the World Tier)
Less than 7 days a year: Passes, definitely. £30 buys you a single 7-day trip including all the Around the World destinations. Inclusive Around the World is more than that per month.
More than 14 days a year: Inclusive starts winning. Two trips of a week each costs £60 on passes, which is roughly the same as a couple of months of inclusive uplift on most tariffs.
One big two-week trip a year: Buy a 14-day pass for £60 and skip Inclusive entirely. Do not pay for inclusive 12 months a year just because of one trip.
Around the World Extra Tier
The maths gets specific quickly because the daily rate and pass prices are higher. If you are in this tier, you are probably travelling enough that Inclusive makes more sense. The exception is one-off long trips, where a single 28-day pass at £168 might still beat a year of inclusive add-on if you only travel once.
The Mistake People Make: Putting Roaming on Every SIM
This is the biggest source of waste we see in business mobile contracts. Someone in the business decides "we travel sometimes, let us add roaming to all the lines." Suddenly you are paying an inclusive add-on on every SIM in the fleet, including the office staff who never leave the building, the warehouse phones that never leave the warehouse, and the IoT SIMs in your delivery vehicles.
On Three, you do not have to do this. The plans are SIM-by-SIM. You can put your sales director on Inclusive Around the World because they fly twice a month, your office manager on a basic tariff with no roaming because they never travel, and your engineer on Inclusive Europe because they go to Dublin every fortnight.
That is one of the things Three actually does better than O2. O2's Roam at Home is included on every line by default whether you need it or not, which is fine if you need it but you cannot avoid paying for it on lines that never travel. Three's per-SIM flexibility lets you only pay for what you actually use.
Two Real Scenarios With Real Numbers
Scenario 1: Small Business with One Frequent Traveller
Five SIMs total. One person travels to Europe roughly two weeks a quarter, so eight weeks a year. The other four never leave the UK.
Right answer: Put the traveller on Inclusive Roaming Europe. The uplift is around £5-7 per month depending on plan, so roughly £60-84 per year. Leave the other four on standard tariffs with no roaming. Total cost of roaming across the business: under £90 per year.
Wrong answer: Blanket-add roaming to all five SIMs. You would pay 5x the uplift for one person's benefit. Over a 24-month contract, the difference is £400-600 of pure waste.
Scenario 2: Occasional One-Off Trips
Ten SIMs. Nobody travels regularly, but every few months someone has a short trip somewhere in Europe.
Right answer: Nothing on the standard tariff. When someone is about to travel, buy a 7-day Europe pass for £12 for that line. Done. If four people in the business take a short trip in a year, total cost of roaming: about £48.
Wrong answer: Put Inclusive Europe on all ten SIMs. You would spend £600+ a year on inclusive roaming for trips that cost £48 in passes.
Scenario 3: One Frequent Worldwide Traveller
Twenty SIMs. One person spends most of the year travelling internationally including the US, Australia, and various European destinations. Everyone else is UK-based.
Right answer: Put the traveller on Inclusive Around the World (or Around the World Extra if they go to genuinely uncommon places). Leave the others on standard. Total cost of roaming: maybe £120-200 per year for the one traveller.
Wrong answer: Put any kind of roaming on the other 19 SIMs.
The Two Things People Forget About Passes
They Do Not Expire
Three's Go Roam passes stay on the account until you have actually used the days. If you buy a 7-day pass and only use 4 days on a trip, the remaining 3 days stay there for the next time you travel. This makes them genuinely useful for sporadic travellers because there is no "use it or lose it" pressure.
They Are Cumulative
You can buy multiple passes and they all stack. If you bought a 7-day pass last year and only used 3 days, you have 4 days left. Buy a 14-day pass this year and you have 18 days available. Use them whenever.
This is more useful than it sounds. If you have a SIM that travels occasionally and unpredictably, just buy a pass when you have the budget and let it sit on the account. When the next trip comes up, you do not need to do anything.
How to Get This Right Without Thinking About It
The honest reality is that most businesses do not have the time or the patience to map this stuff out themselves. That is what we do at Compare The Networks. When we run a quote, we look at how each user actually uses their phone, including any travel pattern, and we set up the right roaming structure for each SIM individually.
It is the kind of detail that does not feel important until you spot the line on next year's bill that says "Inclusive Roaming Around the World x 12 months" on a SIM whose user has never left Surrey. Then it feels important.
If you are negotiating a renewal or thinking about switching, send us your sites, your line count, and your travel pattern, and we will come back with a structure that matches what you actually do. Free quote here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can I switch from passes to Inclusive mid-contract?
Yes. Mid-cycle plan changes are allowed on Three Business contracts and we handle them for you.
Q: Do unused passes refund if I leave Three?
No. Unused pass days are forfeited at the end of the contract.
Q: Can I use a Europe pass in the US?
No. Europe passes only cover the 49 Go Roam Europe destinations. You need an Around the World or Around the World Extra pass for the US, Australia, and similar.
Q: What happens if my pass days run out mid-trip?
You go back to the standard daily roaming charge until you buy another pass or come home.
Q: Are passes cheaper than the daily charges?
Yes, for trips of three or more days. The daily-only option is mainly for people who just touch down in another country for a few hours.
Q: Can someone else in my business activate a pass on my line?
Yes, if they have access to your account portal. You can manage passes from the My3 app or by contacting Three support.
Q: Is there a free fair-use limit on Inclusive Roaming I should know about?
Yes. If you spend more than 60 days in any 4-month rolling window roaming in Go Roam destinations, additional roaming charges may start to apply. You will be notified before any extra charges hit. This is to stop people using a UK contract as a permanent foreign-resident SIM.
Q: Do passes work on Three Business Dynamic plans?
Three Business Dynamic plans (for 25-250 SIM business accounts) have their own roaming structure where Go Roam in Europe is included by default. The pass model applies more to the smaller business tariffs.