In order to save, you always need to make some sacrifices, but you might not have to give up as much as you’d expect in order to save big on your mobile phone service. Customers all across the United Kingdom have been making the switch from their standard 24-month contract plans, and moving to a SIM Only plan. These plans only provide you with the SIM card and the amount of usage you choose when you sign up for the plan – that means no new phone, but massive savings in the long run.
The title isn’t a lie, you can actually save up to £50 every single month; depending on your current plan and the lowest amount of usage you’re willing to choose. There are plenty of great value monthly contracts for SIM Only customers, and some of them start as low as £8 per month (less than £100 for an entire year). Vendors such as Orange, O2, Vodafone, and even T-Mobile are currently offering a variety of these plans, and the low rates can be astounding at times.
Comparing the Cheapest SIM Only Plans
There’s no better way to see what types of plans are available than simply going to each individual vendor’s website and seeing what they offer under the SIM Only category. Let’s start with O2, for £8 per month under a 12-month contract, you’ll receive 100 anytime minutes, 100 O2 to O2 minutes, 100MB of mobile internet, and unlimited text messaging every month. Obviously this isn’t a lot of minutes, and O2 isn’t the biggest service provider so the O2 to O2 minutes aren’t a huge seller.
Regardless of the low usage, £8 per month is a great deal when it includes unlimited text messaging. Now, how about Orange’s cheapest SIM only plan, which also can be obtained for the low price of just £8 per month? Orange’s plan offers 500 anytime minutes, 500 text messages, and 100MB of mobile internet. Compared to O2, you get a lot more minutes, but you lose the unlimited text messaging and instead are forced to stay under a 500 message limit.
Next, there’s T-Mobile, who also offers an £8 per month plan. So far there hasn’t been a whole lot of data usage in these plans, and let’s be honest – 100MB isn’t going to last very long if you plan on using YouTube or downloading apps. Thankfully, T-Mobile’s plan allows 500MB of mobile internet, along with 500 text messages, and 250 minutes. Therefore if you’re in the market for an £8 a month plan, you’re going to need to decide whether you’d like more minutes, more texting, or more data.
Finally there’s Vodafone, who doesn’t have an £8 per month SIM only plan, but they have the next best thing – a £9 per month plan! This plan offers 300 anytime minutes, 500 text messages, 250MB of mobile internet, and on top of that you receive 750MB of UK Wi-Fi. Essentially, this is twice as much data as T-Mobile’s plan, but 75% of it is UK Wi-Fi instead of actual mobile internet; and you get 50 more minutes every month, but pay one more pound.
More Usage without Breaking the Bank
You’re free to be the judge of what plan would work best for you in the previous category, but let’s move on to some other plans that offer some more minutes and data, but cost a few more pounds. This time we’ll start with Vodafone: For £16 per month, you’ll receive 1200 minutes, unlimited texting, 750MB of mobile internet, and 750MB of UK Wi-Fi. This is a great middle of the line plan, but how does it compare to the others?
T-Mobile offers a similar plan for £16 per month, which provides 1000 minutes (200 less than Vodafone), unlimited text messaging, but also a whopping 3GB of mobile internet (twice as much as Vodafone). This is pretty interesting, since Vodafone clearly beats T-Mobile’s £8 plan, but T-Mobile is the definite winner for the £16 plan.
O2 kind of gets blown out of the water here, as their £16 a month plan offers a mere 600 anytime minutes, unlimited texting, and only 750MB of mobile internet – however, you do get 500 O2 to O2 minutes as well. Orange is definitely a step up from O2, but a slightly odd plan that is very minute heavy. This plan provides 2000 minutes, unlimited texting, but only 500MB of mobile data.
Beyond these plans, there are also some that are around £12 - £14 per month, as well as ones around £26 - £30 that offer unlimited talk, text, and web. It is always a good idea to know what all of your options are, and compare your previous mobile phone service usage to find which plan will be the most compatible.
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