One Group, Fourteen Brands: Spanish Mobile Tariffs

Spanish mobile providers charge 7 € a month for 50 GB at Pepephone and 20 € for the same allowance at Movistar. Both run on networks owned by a handful of groups. The brand on the SIM is what moves the price. The masts underneath are shared.

Spanish mobile providers: four networks, a dozen brands

Spain runs four mobile networks and a far longer list of brand names on top of them. That is the part nobody explains. Sign up with a small brand and you often use the same masts as the neighbour paying twice as much, so knowing who owns what turns into money saved every month.

Orange España and Grupo MASMOVIL merged into MASORANGE on 3 April 2024. Nine national brands now sit under that roof: Orange, Yoigo, Jazztel, MASMOVIL, Simyo, Pepephone, Lebara, Lyca and Llamaya. Five regional ones follow, among them Euskaltel and R. That adds up to fourteen brands.

Vodafone España no longer belongs to the British group. The Spanish competition authority (Spanish: Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia, or CNMC) cleared Zegona Communications to take control on 31 January 2024. The brand stayed. The owner did not.

Lowi is not a separate company either. Its own site carries the line “Lowi es una marca registrada de Vodafone España, S.A.U.”, so anyone signing up there is riding the Vodafone network. That explains the price. No infrastructure bill comes with the brand.

Why Digi is the name worth watching

The European Commission cleared the Orange and MASMOVIL joint venture on 20 February 2024, but only with conditions attached. One of them concerns Digi. Spectrum in the 1,800 MHz, 2,100 MHz and 3.5 GHz bands went to Digi, so that the company could build a network of its own.

The Commission approved Digi in writing as a “suitable purchaser and future mobile network operator”. It called the company the largest and fastest-growing MVNO in Spain. Digi may also keep using the joint venture network. That is what the decision says.

You will still not find a Digi price in our table. The official site blocks automated retrieval, and guessed figures have no place here. Ask in a shop. Ten minutes, done.

What the plans actually cost

Every price below comes from the provider’s own tariff page, retrieved on 21 September 2026, quoted with Spanish VAT included and always in euros. Pricing pages detect the visitor’s country. So we checked on every single visit which currency the page actually returned, and we converted not one amount.

Movistar charges 20 € a month for the Tarifa Móvil 50 GB, unlimited calls included and no minimum term. Simyo asks 7.50 € for 50 GB with a call allowance. Same volume, a third of the price. Simyo also includes 200 minutes to selected countries, among them the EU, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Five columns, seven providers. Provider, Price per month, Data, Minimum term and Calls abroad sit side by side.

Spanish mobile plans compared. Checked on 21 September 2026, source: the providers’ own tariff pages.

Orange lists Go Flex at 15 € a month without promotion and 120 GB for six months. Yoigo opens with the Tarifa Móvil Barata at 8 € for 10 GB. Only the top end gets expensive: on the tariff pages of 21 September 2026 Movistar asks 20 € for 50 GB, while Pepephone and Finetwork charge 7 € for the same. Lowi takes 8 € for 50 GB.

Minimum term across all seven providers: none, in every row. Orange ties you in for 24 months only if you take a handset on instalments. At Movistar, Orange, Yoigo, Pepephone, Lowi and Finetwork, calls abroad are not listed on the tariff pages. Ask first.

What you need for a contract

The first question after landing is not which plan wins on paper. It is whether you can sign. A Spanish mobile contract rests on two things most new arrivals do not have yet: an accepted identity document and a Spanish account for the monthly direct debit, and each of those carries its own waiting time.

Simyo spells out the accepted documents word for word: “DNI, NIE, Pasaporte o CIF”. A passport is enough there. For a British, Irish or American arrival that matters more than for an EU citizen, because the N.I.E. Nummer and the TIE residence card usually land months after the flight.

For contract plans Simyo additionally requires “una cuenta bancaria”, a bank account for the monthly charge. Above 210 €, or when a handset is paid in instalments, the provider asks for proof: a copy of a bill already debited from that account, or the account paperwork. A Spanish current account covers both.

Simyo does not ask for your empadronamiento certificate, and we found no provider that officially demands one for a mobile line. You will need it for the bank anyway. The account takes longest. The order runs: ID, registration, account, contract.

Prepaid: the SIM without a contract

Prepaid solves the account problem, because you pay in advance and need neither a direct debit nor a credit check. Your ID still goes on file. Spain has required for years that every buyer of a prepaid card is registered by name, and the ID document is mandatory at the point of sale.

The legal basis sits in Ley 25/2007. Operators must keep a register book (Spanish: libro-registro) holding the buyer’s name, surname and nationality plus the number and type of the document shown. A passport does the job. No paper, no working card.

At Orange, the Prepago 10 costs ten euros and carries 60 GB plus a 20 GB bonus with unlimited national calls, valid for 28 days. The Prepago 15 sits at 15 € with 240 GB, and you top up online or in a shop. EU roaming covers up to 26 GB.

The expiry rules deserve attention. At Vodafone, each top-up extends validity by six months. After that only incoming calls work, and an inactivity fee of 0.50 € per 30 days applies. Seven months without a top-up and the number is gone.

Keeping your number, and roaming

Start on prepaid, move to a contract later, and you keep the number you already handed out. Porting a number (Spanish: portabilidad) is a legal right in Spain, and your new provider runs the process for you. You sign once. The old contract ends by itself, with nothing left for you to cancel.

The telecoms ministry puts the deadline like this: “El plazo previsto por la legislación vigente es de 1 día hábil desde el momento que el usuario llega a un acuerdo con el nuevo operador”. One working day, counted from the agreement with the new provider. The official deadline is therefore short. Lowi quotes 24 to 48 hours on its own site.

So why bother with a Spanish number? Because your home SIM is temporary. Regulation (EU) 2022/612 covers roaming at domestic prices and runs until 2032, yet it lets the provider add a surcharge for abusive or anomalous use, meaning use in another member state for purposes other than periodic travel.

In plain English: moving to Andalusia is not travel. Sooner or later the home provider asks questions or sends a bill. A British SIM is worse off. Since 1 January 2021 there has been no obligation on UK operators to offer surcharge-free roaming across the European Economic Area.

Travel eSIM, home broadband or a Spanish number

Three questions get mixed up constantly. A travel eSIM, fibre at home and a Spanish mobile number are three separate contracts. This article covers only the third: the mobile contract with a Spanish number, the one you give to the bank, to Bizum and to the plumber. Short trips and home broadband have their own articles.

Staying two weeks? You just need data, not a Spanish number. Our eSIM comparison for Spain has the prices.

Fibre is a different contract. It has its own term, its own installation and its own bill. The options sit in our internet provider comparison.

More sits in our lifestyle section. Electricity, banking and paperwork live there side by side. New arrivals read it in order.

What daily life costs beyond the phone sits in our piece on real prices in Spain. Rent, power, insurance, groceries. The plan itself runs 7 € to 20 € a month.

The Spanish number unlocks the rest. Without it no bank code arrives, and without an account neither the electricity contract nor the mobile plan gets signed. The chain starts with your ID.

This is where the gap opens for every new arrival. You land, you need data for maps, appointments and forms, and the contract wants an ID number and an account first. That chain takes weeks. For those weeks you need something that works without Spanish paperwork.

Frequently asked questions

Plan, ID, account, number: each step depends on the one before it, and the order decides how many weeks you live without a Spanish line. We mapped the whole sequence once, office by office. In the right order. Not as a pile of separate articles. As one roadmap with dates and costs.

Verdict

Nothing about the network changes between 7 € and 20 € for the same 50 GB a month. Only the brand on the bill does. Neither plan ties you to a minimum term, and both ride infrastructure that a handful of groups now own. Switching saves a three-digit sum a year.

A home SIM survives a holiday, not a move. Regulation (EU) 2022/612 covers periodic travel, and UK operators have had no roaming obligation at all since 1 January 2021. Get a Spanish number as soon as your ID and account are sorted. Porting it later takes one working day.