It is true if you have many lines and you like to get high end new phones 2 years (or whatever the carrier cadence is these days) that postpaid lines are the best deal.Disagree. We spent a couple of years trying MVNO's. It was a nightmare. Regularly deprioritized (or whatever you want to call it when we have full signal but no data). Terrible customer service. Broken promises. No deals on good phones.I'll probably pass on this year, my 14 Pro Max is still going strong except for a somewhat noticeable decline in battery.
One plug for saving some money. Please do not let "the big 3" carriers lure you with discounts on phones. All they do is jack up the base rate to compensate for the "free" device or device discounts they provide. If Apple provides a trade-in without service activation discount, that's probably the best deal when paired with a cheap MVNO.
The baseline for a plan with some data should be around $15. At most you should be paying $25 for unlimited. I've really enjoyed Mint Mobile as a MVNO, but there are others. Real easy to activate the service on an iPhone with an eSIM.
If you are paying more than $25 a month you are getting a bad deal - unless some of the add-ons like network prioritization are helpful to you. But I'm never in a situation where I don't have WiFi and/or I am being "deprioritized" in a congested network.
We switched to Verizon and have been very pleased. Massively better experience as far as network reliability goes. We pay under $200/month for 5 lines of unlimited - and that includes Verizon giving us $1000+ per line for new phones every 3 years - that's $140/month of subsidy. So we'd actually be WAY behind with an MVNO after factoring in the cost of hardware.
I think a lot of people think they are saving money by holding onto their old phones for a long time, but if you are on a plan like this and aren't taking advantage of getting a new phone once yours is paid off, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. And if you're on an MVNO - make sure your calculations are including the cost of hardware.
Prepaid has gotten much better and is essentially equal in quality to postpaid if you choose the right carrier.
We have Total Wireless, nominally pay $60/mo but since they so frequently offer credit card spend offers, we really only pay ~$40-$45/mo on average. We get unlimited everything--talk, text, data, hotspot, international roaming, all at the same priority as the best available consumer Verizon postpaid plan. Also get Disney+ ad free and Hulu ad free for an extra $3.99/mo. Of course we buy our phones but that costs us each about $500 every 2 years once you account for trade in. So an extra $42/mo + $45/mo = $87 month with phones.
I think generally 4 lines is the split -- if you have 4+ lines postpaid will be a better deal, but if its 3 or fewer prepaid typically will come out on top.
Of course you need to be able to self service on prepaid -- you can't just call if there's a problem and expect useful support. But knock on wood I've never had a problem that required calling or contact support.
Statistics: Posted by HooCares — Mon Sep 15, 2025 12:25 pm — Replies 119 — Views 9280