In this article, a compact UWB planar antenna with corrugated ladder ground plane is presented. The antenna has a compact size of 15 × 20 × 1.5 mm3. The proposed antenna is fabricated on low cost, easily available FR‐4 substrate with relative permittivity εr = 4.3, permeability μ = 1, and loss tangent of 0.025. The thickness of the FR‐4 substrate is 1.5 mm. The impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna (magnitude of S11 <−10 dB) is 130.4% (2.4‐11.4 GHz). The peak gain of the proposed antenna is 3.5 dB and the peak radiation efficiency of the proposed antenna is 76%. Stable omnidirectional radiation patterns (H‐plane) and bidirectional radiation patterns (E‐plane) are observed in the entire operating frequency range. One side of the antenna with corrugated ladder ground plane results in the reduction of operating frequency of the proposed antenna and it reaches till 2.4 GHz whereas the other side of the antenna consist of the circular patch with a circular slot which results to resonant the proposed antenna in the higher operating band. With these properties, the proposed planar antenna is suitable for 2.4 (Wi‐Fi), 2.5/3.5/5.5 GHz (WiMAX) bands, 2.5/5.2/5.8 GHz (WLAN) bands, and other UWB wireless communication applications.