The best prepaid phone rates make it clear how much your monthly wireless service is going to cost. By paying in advance, you know exactly what your costs will be, so there are no surprises. If you find the right plan, you can even keep these costs nice and low every month.
The hard part is finding a prepaid phone plan that fits your wants and doesn’t cost too much. But we can help. We keep track of the best cell phone plans overall, including prepaid choices.
Even with the best prepaid phone deals, there will be some trade-offs. You won’t get any of the extras that come with more expensive plans. We’re talking about free access to streaming services or the ability to use your monthly data limit when you travel abroad. At most, you’re likely to get some hotspot info. If you need more than one line, you may want to look elsewhere for the best family cell phone plan, since only a few of the choices below offer discounts for extra lines.
But if you want to save money on your cell phone bill, you won’t have to worry about giving up network service. Even if you use a smaller wireless company, they still get their service from the big ones. So you’ll still use the same network as people who have cell phone deals that cost more. (If there’s too much traffic on a network, your speeds may slow down.) And 5G is also covered by this service.
Data is another thing you won’t have to give up. There are cheap prepaid plans with small amounts of data, but if you need a lot of data every month, you may be surprised to find that some of the best unlimited data plans are surprisingly cheap when they come from prepaid services.
Here are our choices for the best prepaid phone deals, along with a description of what we look for when making our choices.
The Best Value Prepaid Phone Plan
Mint Mobile | Mint Mobile | 15GB | $20/Month |
Verizon | Verizon | 15GB prepaid | $35/Month |
Visible | Visible | Visible Plus| $45/Month |
AT&T | AT&T | 16GB 12-month prepaid | $25/Month |
AT&T | AT&T | Unlimited data plan | $40/Month |
TextNow | Text Now | 0GB | Free |
Tello | Tello Economy | 5GB | $19/Month |
T-Mobile | T-Mobile Connect | 3.5GB data | $15/Month |
Cricket | Cricket | 10GB | $40/Month |
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How We Pick the Best Prepaid Phone Plans?
To find the best prepaid phone plans, we have to look beyond the big providers, even though AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon all offer prepaid plans. We are also looking into ideas from smaller carriers that use the cell towers of the Big Three to cover their areas. Since smaller carriers usually offer cheaper service, most of the plans we look at for the best prepaid phone deals are from them.
We put a lot of weight on the monthly price when choosing the best plans, but we also pay attention to how much data comes with each plan. Even if a carrier doesn’t charge much for data, it might not give you enough for your wants. We’re choosing deals with the best balance of price and data. We also look at a wide range of data limits, since some people can get by just fine with a couple gigabytes of data each month, while others need an unlimited plan.
As was already said, prepaid plans don’t come with many perks. Still, we pay attention to any special extras that come with the best prepaid plans, since those can add value to a plan beyond its monthly cost.
Stay tuned with cell phone store, we are going to publish more posts like this.