Vodafone’s $5 International Roaming deal is still one of the best

Roaming the globe is easier with Vodafone’s deal.

Brodie Fogg
Jun 15, 2023
Icon Time To Read4 min read

One of the biggest inconveniences of international travel is having to know when to take out a second mortgage because you watched one TikTok after a few too many Bintangs. Most travellers are accustomed to the idea of a strictly WiFi-only trip abroad, but even the most experienced travellers have been stung with a killer phone bill upon returning home. That’s what’s still so great about the Vodafone $5 International Roaming deal for mobile and mobile broadband customers. It’s one less thing to worry about when planning your big trip away.

Graphic of a woman using international roaming on her phone in front of a red neon sign

How does Vodafone roaming work?

$5 per day to use your usual allowance. Simple.

Here’s a quick look at the key facts for Vodafone $5 Roaming:

  • Access to your included Vodafone calls, texts and data allowance while travelling overseas
  • No activation required. $5 is only charged on days when your Vodafone inclusions are accessed or used (e.g. if you make a call or use the internet)
  • $5 Roaming available for a maximum of 90 days in the calendar year
  • $5 Roaming is available on Vodafone’s postpaid mobile and mobile broadband plans in over 100 countries
  • For Vodafone prepaid customers, and postpaid customers travelling outside of the eligible roaming countries, additional rates are applied

Over the years, Australians have developed a well-founded mistrust of travelling abroad with their Australian SIM card. Most International Roaming plans have offered such bad value, historically, that purchasing a temporary SIM from the country you’re travelling to is widely accepted as the most economical way for Australians to use their phone overseas.

That’s not necessarily the case for Vodafone customers. One of the telco’s headline benefits is its $5 Roaming deal. The way it works is simple: for $5 per day, Vodafone will give you access to your regular calls, texts and data when you travel to over 100 countries. So if you travel overseas for 14 days, and you use your phone every day, you will pay $70 for the whole journey.

You will only pay your daily $5 fee if you use calls, texts or data. So you have access to public WiFi and don’t need to use your included calls, texts or data, you won’t be charged for $5 Roaming that day.

The $5 fee is charged the moment you use any of your inclusions; this can even be triggered by receiving a call or via background data usage if your phone is set to download updates automatically.

It’s typically safest to keep automatic downloads and updates switched off or set to WiFi-only when travelling abroad. And if you really want to manage your usage, keeping your phone in Airplane mode whenever you’re not actively using it should save you from accidentally using too much data.

Heads Up

Roaming with endless data

The most recent Vodafone plans in Australia offer some variation of endless, speed-capped data. So within Australia, going over your monthly data inclusions only slows down your connection, rather than incurring an excess data fee. However, this feature is only available for use in Australia, going over your data while roaming will result in an automatic 1GB data top-up charged at $5 for every additional gigabyte used. If you’re still on the Vodafone Ultra+ plan, you can use unlimited data while roaming but Hotspot/Tethering data is limited to 30GB, after that, you’ll be charged the $5 per GB excess data fee.

Vodafone Roaming plans

Which Vodafone plans is the $5 Roaming deal available on?

Vodafone’s $5 Roaming is available on all Vodafone Infinite and Plus mobile plans and all Vodafone Infinite Data mobile broadband plans. Here’s a summary of Vodafone’s most popular mobile plans that include international roaming:

And here's a quick round-up of popular Vodafone mobile broadband plans that offer $5 Roaming: 

  • Aland Islands
  • Albania
  • Argentina
  • Armenia
  • Austria
  • Bangladesh
  • Belarus
  • Belgium
  • Bolivia
  • Brazil
  • Bulgaria
  • Cambodia
  • Canada
  • Chile
  • China
  • Colombia
  • Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • Costa Rica
  • Croatia
  • Cyprus
  • Czechia
  • Denmark
  • Dominican Republic
  • Estonia
  • Fiji
  • Finland
  • France
  • Georgia
  • Germany
  • Ghana
  • Gibraltar
  • Greece
  • Guatemala
  • Hong Kong
  • Hungary
  • Iceland
  • India
  • Indonesia (includes Bali)
  • Ireland
  • Israel
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man
  • Kazakhstan
  • Kuwait
  • Kyrgyzstan
  • Latvia
  • Liechtenstein
  • Lithuania
  • Luxembourg
  • Macau
  • Macedonia
  • Malaysia
  • Malta
  • Mexico
  • Republic of Moldova
  • Monaco
  • Mongolia
  • Montenegro
  • Mozambique
  • Myanmar
  • Nauru
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • Pakistan
  • Papua New Guinea
  • Paraguay
  • Peru
  • Philippines
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Qatar
  • Romania
  • Russia
  • Samoa
  • San Marino
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Serbia
  • Singapore
  • Slovak Republic
  • Slovenia
  • Solomon Islands
  • South Africa
  • South Korea
  • Spain
  • Sri Lanka
  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • Taiwan
  • United Republic of Tanzania
  • Thailand
  • East Timor
  • Tonga
  • Türkiye
  • Ukraine
  • UK (England)
  • Uruguay
  • USA (America)
  • Uzbekistan
  • Vanuatu
  • Vatican City
  • Vietnam
  • Virgin Islands, U.S.
  • Scotland
  • Northern Ireland
  • Wales

Roaming with Vodafone Prepaid

If you’re roaming with Vodafone Prepaid, or roaming in a country where $5 Roaming isn’t available, you’ll need to use PAYG (Pay As You Go) roaming rates as your guide for how much you should expect to pay.

For a comprehensive list of PAYG and Maritime Roaming rates with Vodafone, head over to the official website. Otherwise, here are the prepaid roaming packs you can purchase from Vodafone:

$5 for 200MB

  • Calls: 25 incoming/outgoing call minutes (not including video calls)
  • Text: 30 international text
  • Expiry: 1 day

$15 for 750MB

  • Calls: 90 incoming/outgoing call minutes (not including video calls)
  • Text: 120 international text
  • Expiry: 3 days

$35 for 2GB

  • Calls: 200 incoming/outgoing call minutes (not including video calls)
  • Text: 300 international text
  • Expiry: 7 days

As you can see, those rates technically work out at $5 per day if we’re talking recharge duration, but the inclusions don’t offer a lot of wiggle room. 200MB per day can be used up in a flash.

If you’re a Vodafone prepaid customer, we’d either recommend switching to a month-to-month postpaid plan for the duration of your stay abroad, or simply buying a temporary SIM card in the country you visit.

  • Albania
  • Argentina
  • Armenia
  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Brazil
  • Bulgaria
  • Cambodia
  • Canada
  • Chile
  • China
  • Croatia
  • Cyprus
  • Czechia
  • Denmark
  • Estonia
  • Fiji
  • Finland
  • France
  • Germany
  • Gibraltar
  • Greece
  • Guernsey - UK
  • Hong Kong
  • Hungary
  • Iceland
  • India
  • Indonesia
  • Ireland
  • Isle of Man - UK
  • Israel
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Jersey - UK
  • Korea (South)
  • Latvia
  • Liechtenstein
  • Lithuania
  • Luxembourg
  • Macau
  • Malaysia
  • Malta
  • Mexico
  • Monaco
  • Montenegro
  • Nauru
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • Papua New Guinea
  • Paraguay
  • Philippines
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Romania
  • Russia
  • Samoa
  • San Marino
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Serbia & Megronteno
  • Singapore
  • Slovak Republic
  • Slovenia
  • Solomon Islands
  • South Africa
  • Spain
  • Sri Lanka
  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • Taiwan
  • Thailand
  • Tonga
  • Türkiye
  • U.K
  • USA (America)
  • Uruguay
  • US Virgin Islands
  • Vanuatu
  • Vatican City
  • Vietnam
Vodafone Roaming

What is international roaming?


In the simplest telco terms, international roaming is the use of your SIM card in parts of the globe not directly serviced by your provider. Using your Australian SIM card outside of Australia almost always comes at a cost.

The nuts and bolts of international roaming for each individual are ultimately decided by their provider (and global cellular network providers). When you use your Australian SIM card overseas, you and your service provider are essentially leasing the privilege from network providers from around the world.

Essentially, there’s no ceiling to how much money these providers can charge each other for international roaming costs. So while it might seem like your chosen provider is trying to rip you off for roaming costs, it’s usually the network provider overseas who is charging you an arm and a leg. Then again, the same goes for Australian providers and people travelling to Australia.

Sadly, it’s just one of those situations where both sides suck.

Vodafone Roaming FAQs

Here are the most commonly asked questions about international roaming with Vodafone:

Vodafone’s $5 Roaming is activated by default on all current Vodafone postpaid mobile and mobile broadband plans. If you want to double-check, you can see if roaming is enabled in the account settings at MyVodafone.

Yes. Vodafone’s $5 Roaming is automatically applied to all existing Vodafone postpaid mobile and mobile broadband plans. As mentioned above, you can enable and disable international roaming for your Vodafone service by logging in at MyVodafone. If enabled at the account level, Vodafone roaming will activate automatically the moment you connect to an international network using your Australian Vodafone SIM.

For postpaid Vodafone mobile and mobile broadband plans, data roaming costs $5 per day. As outlined in the article above, Vodafone’s $5 Roaming gives you complete access to your regular data allowance (80GB, 300GB or 600GB per month with Vodafone’s current mobile plans.)

Unlike other providers, Vodafone $5 Roaming isn’t an add-on pack that needs to be activated, it’s a default feature of postpaid Vodafone plans.

However, if you’re a prepaid Vodafone customer, data roaming can be a little more expensive, costing up to $35 for 2GB of data. Read more about Vodafone prepaid roaming costs here.

There are a few ways to avoid roaming costs with Vodafone. You can leave your phone on Airplane Mode so it doesn’t attempt to connect to any mobile network or for added security you can simply remove your Australian Vodafone SIM from your phone and keep it in a safe place while you travel. This will still allow you to connect to public WiFi and if you do need more mobile data, you can always purchase a SIM in the country you’re visiting.

Brodie Fogg
Written by
Brodie Fogg is the Australian editorial lead at Reviews.org. He has covered consumer tech, telecommunications, video games, streaming and entertainment for over five years at websites like WhistleOut and Finder and can be found sharing streaming recommendations at 7NEWS every month.

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