The APRS frequency in the United Kingdom is 144.800 MHz, FM, 2 m band, 1200 baud. The same channel is used across essentially all of IARU Region 1, so a radio configured for the UK works unchanged in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the rest of continental Europe.
The rest of this page is the UK-specific detail: the band plan reference, path conventions given the local digipeater density, and the one genuinely British quirk — the LoRa APRS channel, which is not the European one.
For the worldwide table see APRS Frequencies by Country, and for the wider continental picture see APRS Frequency Europe.
144.800 MHz falls in the all-modes digital segment of the RSGB 2 m band plan, which follows IARU Region 1 practice. The RSGB publishes the current plan as a PDF and updates it periodically; if you are configuring a permanent station it is worth reading the live document rather than trusting a forum post.
Nothing in the UK licence mandates 144.800 for APRS. It is a coordinated convention across Region 1, and it holds firmly.
The UK has a thinner wide-area digipeater network than the US, and terrain in Wales, the Pennines and the Highlands blocks a lot of paths that would work over flat country.
WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1. The fill-in hop earns its place here more often than it does in a dense US metro.WIDE2-1.WIDE2-1 or no path.Avoid WIDE2-2 and longer. The channel is shared with the whole of the near Continent during lift conditions, and a two-hop packet from southern England can be repeated across the Channel during a tropo opening.
This is the detail that catches people out. Across most of Europe, LoRa APRS runs on 433.775 MHz. In the United Kingdom the community uses 439.9125 MHz instead.
The reason is congestion rather than regulation: the 433 MHz region is saturated with non-amateur short-range devices in the UK — car key fobs, weather sensors, doorbells, garage remotes — and a LoRa APRS iGate sitting there spends its life listening to noise. Moving up to 439.9125 MHz puts the channel in a quieter part of the 70 cm amateur allocation.
If you buy a ready-made LoRa APRS tracker from a European supplier, it will almost certainly arrive set to 433.775. Reflash the frequency before deploying it in the UK, or it will hear nothing and be heard by nobody.
The 30 m channel applies as everywhere: dial 10.1476 MHz USB (or the legacy 10.151 MHz LSB), 300 baud, with Robust Packet at 10.1473 MHz USB. This is the practical option for maritime mobile operation around the coast and out into the Atlantic, where VHF digipeater coverage disappears quickly.
The ISS digipeater on 145.825 MHz simplex is well within reach of a UK handheld with a small beam during a good pass. Swap your terrestrial path for ARISS,WIDE2-1 and check pass times on a prediction site before you go out.
If you are in a rural area with no digipeater within line of sight, running your own iGate is often more useful than raising power — it puts your area on the map for everyone else too.