Internet Cafes: What They Are and What Travellers Use Instead

The alternative is to carry your own connection. HelloRoam has travel eSIMs for 185+ destinations, so your own phone can have mobile data for maps, bookings and messages abroad, and you can skip the shared computer. If eSIMs are new to you, start with how a travel eSIM works.

Internet cafes at a glance

Paid computer terminals, an hourly rate, a few battered keyboards: that is the internet cafe in its simplest form.

Ofcom's Online Nation 2025 report finds that smartphones take up 77% of the time UK adults spend online on an average day. With a connection at home and another in your pocket, paying by the hour to sit at a shared terminal is now necessary for very few people.

Travellers followed. Roaming bundles, local SIMs and travel eSIMs replaced the trip to an internet cafe for many people heading abroad.

What an internet cafe is and why it caught on

The Cambridge Dictionary defines an internet cafe as a small, informal restaurant where you can pay to use the internet. Wikipedia casts the net wider, to convenience stores and businesses that sell nothing but internet time, and notes that use is generally charged by the minute or part of an hour.

The name changes with the country, as Wikipedia's internet cafe entry shows:

What unified all these formats was a specific economic moment. Home broadband did not exist for most households in the mid-1990s. A mobile phone made calls; it did not browse the internet. Getting online meant going somewhere. Internet cafes filled that gap with a practical if fiddly bundle: computer terminal, connection, printing, scanning, and sometimes international phone calls.

They were social spaces too. Backpackers sent updates home. Students finished last-minute work. The clunky keyboard and the slow-loading page were the price of admission for something that felt, at the time, like a nifty shortcut to a world most people had not yet seen.

The first internet cafes and the dial-up era

Wikipedia's history of the internet cafe traces the name to March 1994, when Ivan Pope ran a weekend Cybercafé at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. Later that year, on 1 September 1994, a commercial internet cafe called Cyberia opened in London; ArtsEmerson credits it as the city's first cybercafé.

The core uses were narrow. Email dominated everything. Early web browsing came second. Nobody was streaming; the bandwidth did not exist. A typical session might mean loading a single page, reading it, composing a reply, and leaving, all in under fifteen minutes.

Then broadband arrived and rewrote the economics.

Ofcom's provisional figures for June 2005 showed more UK households on broadband than on dial-up for the first time. Getting online from home stopped being a luxury, and the internet cafe's central purpose vanished. The sluggish dial-up speeds that had once been the only option suddenly looked ropey by comparison.

Internet cafes in the UK today

They still exist, though we could not find an official count of how many are left.

Three distinct types have kept going:

• Migrant community hubs: Document scanning, international money transfers and low-cost video calls.
• Gaming cafes: High-spec rigs, fast fibre and a social atmosphere a home setup rarely matches.
• Print and copy shops with terminals: A handful of screens for printing boarding passes or completing official forms.

For travellers, mobile data has largely taken over from the internet cafe. EE, Three and Vodafone each set their own roaming rules, so check your own network's roaming page before you go. As of October 2026, Three says Daily Go Roam passes are not included with its Lite plans or older Advanced plans, so you need to buy a Go Roam pass or pay a daily roaming charge. Vodafone says roaming is for short trips and holidays: if, over a four-month period, you spend more time abroad than at home, it may add extra charges, and it texts you 14 days before charging anything extra. A travel eSIM (a digital SIM you usually add by scanning a QR code, with no physical card) gives you a separate data plan instead.

Where internet cafes live on: South Korea and Japan

In South Korea, internet cafes are called PC bangs: rooms where you pay an hourly fee to use a computer, often to play video games with friends in person. In Japan, many net cafes double as manga cafes, and Wikipedia describes chains offering a choice of seats, from massage chairs to flat mats, with soft drinks, manga and online games included.

Why people still use internet cafes

Three things keep internet cafes in business. Not nostalgia, and not a lack of alternatives: access, printing, and gaming hardware that many users can't justify buying. Each serves a real need.

Where they earn their keep:

• Printing and documents: A passport photo printed on the spot, a visa confirmation scanned, a boarding pass produced when the airline app crashes. Travellers navigating consulate requirements often need this more than they expect.
• Gaming hardware: South Korea's PC bangs rent out powerful gaming PCs by the hour. Paying by the hour for a machine you could not justify buying isn't a compromise. It's a rational choice.

The part that catches visitors out is ID. In Tokyo, a local ordinance means you must show an identity document before you use a computer in an internet cafe, and the operator records your name, address and date of birth and keeps that record for three years from your last visit. Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department asks short-stay visitors to show a passport; if it does not show a home address, the cafe records your nationality and passport number instead. If all you need is maps and messages, an eSIM for Japan puts them on your own phone.

Security risks of using internet cafe computers

Shared computers in internet cafes carry specific, documented risks. The primary threats are keyloggers (malicious software that records every keystroke) and unsecured Wi-Fi that exposes unencrypted traffic.

Here's how it typically unfolds. You sit down at a shared terminal, open a browser, and sign into email to check a hotel booking. You tick the "remember me" box out of habit. What you haven't accounted for: a keylogger has already logged your credentials the moment you typed them. You log out, feel fine, and the data is captured.

Avoid banking on shared machines entirely.

Unsecured Wi-Fi compounds the problem. On an open or weakly protected network, unencrypted traffic, including login pages that lack HTTPS (the padlock symbol in your browser address bar), is readable to anyone on the same network with basic interception tools.

A VPN (virtual private network, software that routes your connection through an encrypted tunnel before it reaches the internet) reduces that interception risk significantly. Using your own phone or laptop on the cafe's network with a VPN active is materially safer than sitting at their hardware.

But a VPN doesn't protect you from keyloggers installed on the machine itself. The shared hardware is the risk. Your own device on the same network, running a VPN, is a different situation entirely.

Never click "Save password" when a browser prompts you on any shared machine. A saved password takes seconds to retrieve by whoever opens that browser next.

How to stay connected abroad without an internet cafe

A travel eSIM cuts the internet cafe question off at the root. You buy it before departure, switch it on at your destination, and your phone has its own data for the length of the plan; check when the plan's validity starts, because providers differ. No searching for a terminal open at the right hour. No shared hardware, no shared risks. If you use an iPhone, our guide to eSIMs on iPhone covers which models work and how to fix activation errors.

The framework:

If you need constant data on your phone: A travel eSIM is the practical answer. You pay for a set amount of data or days, not by the hour for a seat, and you stay connected between stops.

If you're travelling with a laptop or tablet: Your phone's mobile hotspot (tethering) can share the eSIM connection with a laptop or tablet over Wi-Fi, so one plan can cover several devices. Check that your plan allows hotspot use before you rely on it.

If you only need occasional access: Free Wi-Fi in cafes and hotels works for low-stakes browsing and checking maps, but isn't reliable for anything sensitive or time-critical. Public libraries are another option, though you may need to join first: in Birmingham, for example, library members can book computer sessions of up to three hours at the Library of Birmingham.

If you need to print: A local print shop wins outright. No eSIM replaces a printer.

Common pitfall: Buying an eSIM without checking device compatibility first. Not every phone supports eSIM: Apple lists the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR and later, with exceptions for some models sold in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao. Check your model on our list of eSIM compatible devices before you buy.

Opening your own internet cafe in the UK

Starting an internet cafe in the UK can still work, but the model you choose decides whether it succeeds or stalls. General-access venues compete with free Wi-Fi in coffee shops, so a gaming focus gives customers a reason to visit that a free connection does not.

Here is what the setup actually involves:

1. Research demand before signing a lease. Gaming-focused venues attract players who want high-spec hardware they can't afford to own. General-access venues serve a narrower demographic: migrants needing document services, tourists without local data, and seniors who need printing help. Know which group you're serving before you commit.
2. Handle the legal groundwork first. Business rates are charged on most non-domestic properties. When we checked in October 2026, GOV.UK said that under small business rate relief in England, a business pays no business rates on a property with a rateable value of £12,000 or less if it is the only property the business uses, and the local council decides which relief applies. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own business rates relief rules. If you keep customer details, the ICO says organisations, including sole traders, that use personal information must pay a data protection fee unless they are exempt. Check both official pages before you sign a lease, because the rules and fees can change.
3. Budget realistically for hardware. Gaming rigs with dedicated GPUs cost considerably more than general-use workstations. Factor in monitors, peripherals, networking kit, and furniture on top of that.
4. Get fibre broadband sorted before anything else. Shared bandwidth degrades fast when ten customers stream video simultaneously.
5. Niche down on the gaming angle. Esports events, tournament hosting, and monthly memberships generate more predictable revenue than walk-in hourly rates.

The economics are brisk but not forgiving. A well-run gaming cafe in a university city can turn a profit. A generic terminal shop in a suburb almost certainly won't.