Does giffgaff Work in China?

giffgaff roaming charges in China

All of these come out of your giffgaff credit:

What you use	Cost in China
Data	20p per MB
Calls and voicemail	£1 a minute, charged per second after the first 30 seconds
Receiving calls	£1 a minute, charged in whole minutes
Sending texts	30p
Texts you receive	Free
Picture messages	30p to a UK or EU mobile, 24p to other mobiles

The rates are from giffgaff’s Zone A rate sheet, which lists China, checked Oct 25, 2026. giffgaff’s China roaming page showed the same rates in its latest Internet Archive copy, from 13 August 2026. We couldn’t load the live page on Oct 25, 2026, so the archived copy is the one cited here.

Your plan doesn’t help here. giffgaff’s help centre says your UK plan won’t work in the Rest of the world and you need credit for calls, texts and data. A plan’s calls, texts and up to 5GB of data only work in the EU zone.

giffgaff data roaming in China

At 20p per MB, 500MB of data on credit costs £100. At its launch price, the 1GB China add-on cost the same as 75MB on credit, so beyond light use the add-on worked out cheaper.

The giffgaff China add-on

giffgaff sells travel data add-ons for China in three sizes. These were the prices reported at launch:

Add-on	Launch price, July 2025
1GB	£15
5GB	£30
10GB	£45

ISPreview reported these prices on 28 July 2025, the day the add-ons launched, and Choose reported the same prices on 30 July 2025. Expert Reviews gave the same £15 to £45 range for China in a review updated in February 2026. giffgaff sells the add-ons only in its app, and neither its help articles nor the archived copy of its roaming page list China add-on prices, so current prices are not confirmed.

• Where to buy: only in the giffgaff app, under View travel data on the Home screen. You pay by Visa, Mastercard or Amex. PayPal isn’t accepted.
• How long it lasts: 30 days from the day you buy it. It can’t be bought ahead and started later.
• Where it works: China only. Hong Kong needs its own add-on.
• What it covers: data only. Calls and texts still come out of credit.
• Refunds: within 14 days of purchase, in full if you used no data or in part if you used some.
• No plan needed: you don’t need a giffgaff plan to buy one.

Making calls on giffgaff in China

A giffgaff call in China costs £1 a minute, and an incoming call costs the same. To ring a UK number, dial +44 and drop the first 0.

giffgaff says WiFi Calling isn’t supported abroad. It says VoLTE, which carries calls over 4G, works abroad on compatible phones, such as an iPhone XR or later on iOS 17.4 or later. Texts cost 30p to send and nothing to receive, so sign-in codes sent to your giffgaff number reach you at no cost. Our authenticator and SMS code guide explains which logins need a phone number.

Using giffgaff in China: set up before you fly

1. Add credit. The minimum top-up is £10. giffgaff says some countries require credit in your account before roaming works at all.
2. In your giffgaff account, open call services and check that roaming is enabled.
3. Decide on the credit spend cap. It’s off by default. Turned on, it stops all credit spending at £45 a month, including credit used to buy plans.
4. Buy the China add-on once you’re in China, so none of its 30 days is wasted.
5. On your phone, turn on data roaming. On an iPhone, go to Settings, then Mobile Data, then Mobile Data Options, and switch on Data Roaming. If you get no signal, restart the phone or pick a network by hand under Settings, Mobile Service, Network Selection.

giffgaff texts you its roaming charges when your phone joins a network abroad, unless you’ve turned roaming notifications off.

Do you need a VPN with giffgaff in China?

On giffgaff’s roaming data, that’s not confirmed, because giffgaff hasn’t said how the traffic is routed or whether blocked apps load over it. For hotel Wi-Fi the answer is yes.

• In a July 2026 r/giffgaff thread, a member asked whether the China add-on would just work for a parent’s trip. Nobody who had used giffgaff in China replied. One member suggested a travel eSIM, and another warned of “very expensive pitfalls”.
• BGR’s July 2026 article on phones in China describes roaming data leaving China through the home carrier’s territory, outside the firewall’s influence. It names no carrier, giffgaff included.

giffgaff’s own advice for trips outside the EU is to consider a local SIM. In China, a local SIM and hotel Wi-Fi both sit behind the firewall. China’s tourism ministry names Google and WhatsApp among the sites that need a VPN there. Its travel site adds that public Wi-Fi usually asks for a code texted to a Chinese SIM, which rules out logging in with a giffgaff number. Our eSIM vs VPN guide covers that choice, and our page on phone options for China compares roaming, eSIMs and local SIMs.

giffgaff vs Airalo and Holafly in China

At launch prices, giffgaff’s 5GB and 10GB China add-ons cost more than twice as much as Airalo’s 30-day plans of the same size. giffgaff’s add-on prices below are the reported July 2025 launch prices. The other prices come from giffgaff’s rate sheet and the eSIM sellers’ own sites, checked Oct 25, 2026:

Choice	Data	Price
giffgaff credit at 20p per MB	500MB	£100
giffgaff China add-on, launch price	5GB for 30 days	£30
giffgaff China add-on, launch price	10GB for 30 days	£45
Airalo	5GB for 30 days	£12.50
Airalo	10GB for 30 days	£21.00
Airalo	Unlimited for 10 days, at 1 Mbps after 3GB in a day	£27.50
Holafly	Unlimited for 10 days	£31.00

• At launch prices, giffgaff’s 10GB add-on cost £24.00 more than Airalo’s 10GB plan of the same length.
• Airalo and Holafly sell data only. A dual-SIM phone can keep giffgaff for calls and texts on credit while the eSIM handles data.

Our China eSIM comparison has more plans and how each routes data. For other UK networks, see Three UK, EE, O2 and Vodafone UK.