Best Low-Cost Cell Phone Plans - Consumer Reports

The Big Four carriers’ shell-game-like pricing practices have become so convoluted, you need an accounting degree to decipher them. They continually shift prices up or down according to the number of phone lines you need and the amount of data you're purchasing. They further complicate matters with “special” short-term offers to lure customers from rivals. We’ve decided to omit most of these specials from our calculation tables because of their extremely short lifespan and their fragility (deal benefits often vaporize when a customer buys a new phone or makes other changes). The good news: Some of the wilder, very short-term pricing deals seems to have abated—at least for now. And in some ways, comparison shopping has become a tiny bit less onerous.

Here’s a short rundown of the major carriers, which we update periodically. (Read our review of the best cell phone carriers to find out whether the small providers outpace the big companies.)

Sprint

Sprint is among the lowest rated carriers in our Ratings for both monthly billed service and its prepaid service. But is currently has a limited time offer it hopes you can’t refuse—at least if you're coming from AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon.

For a “limited time,” Sprint says it will charge the customers half the rates their current carriers charges for comparable service if they switch over. So what you pay depends on what your current carrier is billing you. Let's say you're a Verizon customer paying $80 a month to share 12GB of data between two phones, which have an access fee of $20 each. Your total monthly charge is $120. Sprint will sell you a 12GB plan for $40 and charge you $10 for each phone accessing that data for a total of $60. That’s a pretty good deal.

What’s more, Sprint will reimburse you for the early termination fee or the remaining installment payments on a phone you bought from your previous carrier, up to $650 per phone line. Sprint will also give your credit for turning in your old phone.

That part of the deal works like this: You get an American Express gift card equal to the cost of your termination fees minus the buy-back value of the phone. For example, let's say the early termination fee from your old carrier is $400 and the buy-back value of your device is $100. Sprint will send you a $300 gift card.

However, you won’t get a gift card if the buy-back value of your phone is higher than the fees for ending your commitment to your current carrier. Sprint won’t say how long the offer to switch will be on the table, but the company has set a deadline for when the discounted rates will expire: May 31, 2018. Also, switchers will have to fork over $30 per line in activation fees. One final detail: should your decide that Sprint service isn’t for you—for instance if you have poor coverage at your home—you have 30 days to return your phone and get out of the deal.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile doesn't offer data-sharing cell phone plans. You have to purchase data for each phone in your household. The carrier’s plan calculator has been tweaked to present your options more clearly than before, showing you the immediate impact on your total monthly bill as you add or subtract phone lines and experiment with the data allowances for each phone. T-Mobile’s plan costs are only slightly cheaper than those offered by telecom behemoths Verizon and AT&T, but the carrier does have an additional edge for media streaming enthusiasts: Content from Spotify, Netflix, and a plethora of other popular music and video providers doesn’t count against your data allowance.

AT&T

AT&T stubbornly clings to variable-rate access fees that can mislead customers into spending more money when they’re trying to save. For instance, it charges less per phone ($15 instead of $25) when you buy more than 5GB of sharable data. And that kind of pricing could lead a data-frugal family of five to pay more a month ($225) for sharing 5GB of data if they don’t have the math skills to see that splurging on a 15GB data bucket would actually lower their monthly bill to just $175. One saving Grace: AT&T's customers gave it good marks in our survey for voice, text, and Web service.

Verizon

Big Red keeps things simple: It charges a flat $20 for every phone tapping into its sharable data plans. And like AT&T, it has received good marks for voice, text, and Web service in our survey.

One bright note from the “cell war” chaos between the Big Four carriers is the appearance of no-contract plans, which separate the purchase of the phone from the service charges. This effectively gives you an interest-free loan you can pay off over about two years. When you’ve paid off the phone, your monthly bill goes down accordingly. And there are no termination fees; if you want to leave the carrier, you just pay any remaining balance on the phone.

In our survey of about 90,000 subscribers, nearly half of the people who switched cell phone carriers in the past year saw their monthly rates drop by $20 or more, which is why, perhaps, more should consider shopping around.

The good news: We’ve already done the math for you in the tables below to help you find the best deal. And to make sure your needs are covered, we’ve presented the service-cost breakdowns for one to five family members for light, medium, and heavy data service. All you need to do is figure out how much data your family needs, which we also help you do in our "Tips for Choosing a Plan."

—Mike Gikas

T-Mobile Simple Choice

Sprint Unlimited

AT&T Next on Mobile Share

Verizon Simple Plans

If you're thinking about what your next smart phone should be, check our cell phone buying guide and Ratings.

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