

In Verizon's case, there are two choices, since you can also buy phones at full retail cost and opt for a month-to-month contract.)įor the next scenario, I wanted to compare the most rock-bottom price you can get with Verizon and T-Mobile for a non-refurbished phone. (Check and you'll find that each national carrier has some sort of prepaid option. What happens if you're trying to get the least expensive phone you can, period? Once again, a prepaid carrier may offer you the cost advantage on the lower end of the scale, too.Īlthough most known as a post-paid carrier, Verizon also has a prepaid branch that gives you unlimited talk, text, and Web. The cost graduates to $210 per month for unlimited data for up to 5 lines. T-Mobile's family plan rates, on the other hand, promise unlimited 4G data with no cap, and start at $100 for 2GB of data per month for two people. Verizon will sell you 2GB of data for $60 per month, and go up to 10GB of data for $100 per month, minus the monthly access fee per device. Verizon and T-Mobile both offer pooled data plans. The math gets a little trickier when you factor in lines of service for multiple family members. Regardless, T-Mobile's plan saves you $645 dollars on a Galaxy S3 over the course of two years compared to Verizon's contract plan for a new line of service. Metro PCS - No contract carrier (merging with T-Mobile) For instance, the $70 plan got you on-demand video and unlimited Rhapsody Music. The old MetroPCS' LTE plans were actually $450 more economical than T-Mobile's over 2 years, with plans ranging from $40 to $70 per month, depending on add-on services. With T-Mobile's no-contract plan, however, you skip the activation fee, and the $70 unlimited monthly rate gets you all the LTE data you can eat, on top of limitless calls and texts. Over two years, you'll pay almost $3,000 for the Galaxy S3 on Verizon, assuming you're activating a new line of service. I chose 4GB of monthly data, but Verizon also offers plans for as low as 1GB per month to as high as 10GB per month. Verizon's new pooled Share Everything data plan (required for new contracts,) means you'll pay a monthly access fee for any device, on top of the monthly bundle for unlimited talk, text, and a portion of 4G LTE data.
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*Up-front cost equals $109.99 down payment, plus $20 per month for 24 months. If you're a new cell phone customer, or switching from another carrier, chances are good that you'll be tacking a nominal fee onto the transaction, and that adds to the phone's overall cost. In addition, Verizon and others add an activation fee for new lines of service. The trade-off for a "cheaper" Verizon phone is committing to two years of data fees no matter what, and getting slapped with a multiple-hundred-dollar termination fee if you try to leave early. The Galaxy S3 isn't really $200 that's the price that Verizon and the rest subsidize so you pay less up-front than a T-Mobile customer, who will pay almost $600. The first difference between the two carriers is the cost of the phone. Samsung's Galaxy S3 makes a good model device, thanks to its ubiquity across seven carriers the 16GB version has a $199.99 base price for most contract providers, though prices will start to drop once the Samsung Galaxy S4 hits shelves. subscribers, and T-Mobile, which is now the country's largest prepaid network since swallowing up Metro PCS and now killing off its own two-year contract model. There's no question that the prepaid model is designed to save you money over a two-year contract agreement, but how much do you really gain by going prepaid, and what might you lose from the subscriber experience?įor the sake of comparison, I'm going to break down the cost of ownership over a two-year span for Verizon, the carrier with the most U.S. Now that T-Mobile has smashed into the center of the no-contract wireless game, the tussle for your business between the contract and no-contract carrier model is even more urgent. This article originally published and was updated most recently on. And unlike all the others, an opportunity to get rid of your cell phone bill by referring just 9 people that switch to Solavei. No contracts, no credit checks, unlimited everything - 4G speed up to 4GB. Keep in mind when you read the math comparisons, here is how it breaks down with Solavei (a MVNO of T-mobile):Īs you will see with the above two-year total, Solavei is the BEST option to go with. Compare for yourself why it will make sense for you.

And why it makes sense to go with Prepaid. I have posted an article below that shows why it makes sense for most to choose an MVNO rather than go directly to one of the top 4 providers.
