Rule card · United Kingdom
Keep your giffgaff number active while abroad
giffgaff deactivates a SIM after six months without a qualifying act. The SIM cannot be reactivated; a PAC is available for 30 days.
Checked against official pages on October 20, 2026. Rules move; when this one does, it goes on the changelog.
Rule at a glance
prepaid accounts only- If you do nothing
- Help article. SIM inactive after 6 months without a qualifying act, then deactivated. SIM cannot be reactivated. PAC available for 30 days after deactivation, then the number returns to the pool and is recycled
- Cheapest way to hold it
- One qualifying act every 6 months. A call, SMS or MMS to a non-excluded number, a mobile-data internet connection, or an airtime credit or plan purchase
- Roaming needed to receive codes abroad
- Unverified (The help article lists qualifying acts. It does not describe whether those acts, or inbound texts, work as roaming)
- Twelve months away, roughly
- The cost of one qualifying act each six months. Not a published retention charge
giffgaff's help article ends the SIM. Six months without a qualifying act, then the card is dead, and a PAC is a 30-day window after that death.
Six months, and what counts
The deactivation article states the inactivity test: "A SIM is considered inactive and deactivated when it has not been used in the last 6 months." To stop deactivation, the same article says, do any one of the following at least once every 6 months: "Make at least one call, SMS or MMS to another number (not including calls to emergency services or Member Services or 0800 numbers or texts/calls to free rated numbers)"; "Make at least one connection to the internet using your mobile data"; or "Make at least one Airtime Credit or plan purchase".
Emergency, Member Services, 0800 and free-rated numbers are the exclusions printed on that list. The article also says giffgaff sends a first communication one month before deactivation, and a second email roughly 5 days before.
The live terms page at giffgaff.com/terms returned an Incapsula challenge to WebFetch and to curl on 28 September 2026. The six-month wording on this card is the help article fetched on 28 September 2026 and re-read on 20 October 2026. The article itself points at the terms on Cancellation Rights for more information.
After it dies, 30 days for a PAC
The same help article answers reactivation in one line: a deactivated SIM cannot be reactivated. The number is a separate question. "You can request a PAC code from our agents within 30 days of being disconnected/deactivated." After 30 days or more, the article says a PAC cannot be requested and the number cannot be retrieved. It then says the number returns to the pool of available phone numbers and is recycled, and that giffgaff cannot reconnect it once that happens. Unused credit is a refund through an agent, also inside 30 days; after that the article says unused credit expires.
Three's support page says a disconnected PAYG number cannot be reconnected. That is Three's sentence. This 30-day PAC stays on the giffgaff help article. The Ofcom range that sits under both cards is on the UK page.
What the six months actually take
- Do one of the three qualifying acts inside each 6 months.
- Skip emergency, Member Services, 0800 and free-rated numbers if the act is a call or a text. Those are the exclusions on the list.
- Watch for the one-month warning and the roughly-5-day email.
- After deactivation, treat the SIM as finished. A PAC, if you still want the number, is 30 days.