We compared Sky and Virgin Media broadband plans for the best deal ahead of April price hikes

The time of the year that bill payers dread has come back around again as UK household costs are set to rise in April alongside inflation. It's a yearly occurrence with the likes of mobile, TV and broadband services usually inching up their prices by a few percent each time.

Among the providers set to increase their prices are Sky and Virgin Media, who provide broadband and TV to a vast proportion of us living in the UK. As such, we'll all be paying more for the same services by the time May comes around.

As for just how much, both providers have confirmed how much they're set to increase their existing contracts by. Sky says it will have an average increase of 6.2% on its broadband services, while Virgin will increase theirs by 7.5%.

If you've signed a new contract in the last few months, you might end up seeing a fixed annual price increase instead of a percentage - EE and Virgin are two of the providers known to offer this. As such, you may end up seeing an increase of anywhere between £2.50 and £3.50 on your monthly bill after April.

Either way, now is the ideal time to take a look at your monthly bills and assess whether it's worth sticking with your current provider or moving somewhere else to save some cash. To help you out, Jake Hackney from The Mirror has compared the latest broadband plans from Sky and Virgin Media to help customers make an informed decision.

Virgin Media's broadband plans now start at £23.99 per month for the M125 Fibre Broadband plan, which offers an average download speed of 132Mbps. Virgin suggests this plan is suitable for busy households with five to nine devices and can comfortably support multiple devices streaming or gaming simultaneously.

However, the price difference to upgrade to