Best NBN 500 plans

Australia's NBN providers have introduced three new speed tiers for NBN plans that offer even faster internet speeds, but there's a catch. 

If your household has a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) or Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) connection, you can already sign up for an NBN 500 plan and get access to faster internet speeds.

So which NBN 500 plans are the best? The answer depends on your needs but it won’t take long to find thanks to this round-up of the best NBN 500 providers and deals.  Here’s everything you need to know about NBN 500 plans in Australia when it comes to value, price and upload speeds.

If you want to save but still get access to faster NBN 500 speeds, the SpinTel Home Turbo plan is our current pick of the lot.

Priced at $64 for the first six months, this NBN 500 plan comes with unlimited data, typical evening speeds of up to 500Mbps and upload speeds of up to 42Mbps. After the honeymoon ends, you're looking at a price of $84.95 per month.

Our database tracks the prices and speeds attached to NBN plans from over 30 different providers. When it comes time to make our monthly pick for the best NBN 500 plans, we favor the plan with the lowest price, unlimited data, no contract and the highest typical evening download speeds.

Our comparison of the best 500Mbps NBN plans also tended to focus on and highlight introductory deals because that's the easiest way to save money when choosing any NBN plan. The other reason we compare NBN plans this way rather than over a longer period of time is that the cost of NBN tends to change every July, which makes longer term predictions less reliable and useful.

For a snapshot of how our current pick for the best NBN 500 plans compares to the most popular NBN 500 plans in our database, check out the widget below.

It's early days but most NBN 500 plans offer a fairly comparable level of performance. Despite that, there’s often a big difference in the prices attached to each provider.

At the time of writing, signing up for an NBN 500 plan starts at around $80 per month (without any discounts) with prices going as as high as $95 per month depending on the provider.

What does paying more get you? More often than not, the answer is faster upload speeds. Relative to some of the other NBN speed tiers, there’s a decent amount of variety when it comes to the upload speeds offered by NBN 500 providers. The highest offer the full 50Mbps that this speed tier is capable of achieving, but many others fall short of that mark and end up somewhere around 40Mbps. 

Depending on what you plan on using your NBN 500 connection for, that might not be a an issue. For some, the chance to save an extra $10 or $15 per month is going to make more sense than squeezing an extra megabit or so out of their fixed-line internet connection.

It's also worth remember that most NBN 500 providers will give your first handful of months at a discount before bumping you up to the regular price. If you stick with the same provider for too long, you might end up paying more for it. Fortunately, most NBN 500 plans in Australia are no-contract so you can always shop around for a better deal once the honeymoon is over. 

The SpinTel Home Turbo plan isn't just our favorite NBN 500 plan this month, it's also the cheapest when it comes to promo pricing. 

Priced at $64 for the first six months, this NBN 500 plan comes with unlimited data, typical evening speeds of up to 500Mbps and upload speeds of up to 42Mbps. After the honeymoon ends, you're looking at a price of $84.95 per month. It's also worth noting that, as with other high-speed NBN plans, this one is only available to Aussies with HFC or FTTP connection. 

For a sense of how this plan compares to other NBN plans that offer maximum download speeds of 500Mbps when it comes to intro pricing, check out the widget below.

As with other speed tiers, the price you pay when you sign up for a new NBN 500 plan as a new customer is usually more generous than the one you'll end up paying after your first few months are up. The typical evening download speeds might change, but the story remains the same. 

If you prefer to set and forget but don’t want to pay more for that peace of mind, it might make sense to go with an NBN 500 plan that comes with cheaper ongoing pricing but costs a little more up-front instead. If that’s how you prefer to play things, then the Exetel One Plan might be a good fit.

Priced at $80 per month, the Exetel One Plan will only be available to customers with a HFC or FTTP connection. It will offer typical download speeds of up to 500Mpbs and upload speeds of up to 40Mbps.

Perk-wise, there's not a lot to write home about here. However, if you refer a friend, both you and them will save $1 on the cost of your internet. Alternatively, you can pay for a Warp Speed add-on to temporarily boost your typical evening speeds up to 811Mbps for an extra $1 per day. 

Last but not least, you can 'hibernate' your connection when you go on holiday. If you make use of this feature, you can shave $1 per day off the cost of your monthly internet. That doesn't sound huge, but if you're travelling for a month or more, that discount can add up quickly to a more sizable sum.

For a sense of how this plan compares to other cheap NBN plans that offer download speeds of 500Mbps or more, check out the widget below.