The best Prepaid mobile plans in Australia (January 2023)

It’s great to see telcos competing in the Prepaid space nowadays because it means you can pair a handset—iPhone 14, Google Pixel 7 or whatever other available phone you fancy—with a great value plan.

Buying a Prepaid plan means you’re in control of how much you spend each month. There’s no contract, and the bill comes upfront, so you don’t have to worry about potential bill shock at the end of the month. Prices start at around $10 and stretch up to hundreds of dollars for long-expiry Prepaid plans.

As always, all of our returning winners have been vetted to ensure they’re the best picks at the start of the month.

The competition in this category gets tighter each month, but while Prepaid mobile plans that cost more tend to offer more data, we cap costs at $50 and stick to Prepaid monthly plans (28 days, 30 days or an actual month). TPG’s recent plan refreshes have seriously shaken things up, and we particularly like that the telco offers actual monthly Prepaid plans instead of 28-day or 30-day alternatives.

If you want to save money, go with last month’s winner: the TPG 45GB Mobile Plan. It has identical first-year dollar-to-data value albeit at a cheaper monthly price. Admittedly, that cheaper price comes with less data. That’s why we’ve gone with the TPG 60GB Mobile Plan this month. New customers get six months of promo pricing before the plan reverts to a reasonable monthly cost.

Here’s our prepaid mobile plans comparison, with a daily updating list of popular Prepaid mobile plans with at least 60GB of data.

In the interest of fairness, we keep this category maxed out at $20 a month and exclude promo pricing. Those parameters have seen both Woolworths Mobile and Coles Mobile come away with the crown in the past. This time around, we’ve gone back to a recent favourite.

The Catch Connect 30 Day Plan – 18GB is a great Prepaid pick for those looking to save money. It says basically all you need to know in the plan name, too, except for the $15 recharge fee you pay every 30 days. That’s a good price to pay for 18GB of data on the Optus network, though you shouldn’t expect any perks with this plan.

Below is a daily updated list of popular Prepaid mobile plans that don’t cost more than $20 per recharge.

The last time we updated this page, Kogan lost the top slot for long-expiry prepaid plans to Lebara's $300 Large Plan. However, the tables have since turned and put the Kogan Mobile Extra Large – 365 Day Flex Plan back on top.

Kogan has won the top spot back by knocking a whopping $229.90 off the usual price of this plan. Rather than pay $529 for 500GB of data, you're paying $300. Although the dollars-to-data ratio here is definitely the draw-card, this winning plan also comes with some great international talk and text inclusions.

For comparison, below is a daily updating list of popular long-expiry Prepaid mobile plans.

If you're looking to pick up a prepaid plan for less than the price of a burger, the biggest decision you'll need to make is whether you want a fixed price or want to take advantage of a timely discount. With the former, you know what you're getting. Meanwhile, the latter will give you more bang for your buck but only for a limited time. You'll eventually have to change providers or get stuck paying a higher price.

For the purposes of this list, we're going to go with the first one and specifically the Catch Connect 30 Day 4GB Prepaid plan. It's a little lighter on the data allowance than some of the promo-packed options but comes with all the same coverage you'd expect from any provider on the Optus network. It’s a good pick for families, though there aren't any perks or bundling bonuses to speak of.

For comparison, check out the list of popular Prepaid plans below that come with at least 1GB of data and don’t cost more than $15 per recharge.

If you're looking for a prepaid option that includes access to the faster speeds offered by 5G, price differentiation might not matter as much as coverage. While both Optus and Vodafone have significantly grown their respective network footprints when it comes to 5G, Telstra still leads with over 80% of Australia's population.

For that reason and especially if your biggest or only concern is being covered by Australia's 5G networks, Telstra's own $60 Pre-Paid Mobile Plan is a good place to start. That said, it's not necessarily going to be the best place to end your search. This month we're giving the edge to ALDI's $55 Mobile Plan as a result of the lower standard pricing, unlimited international calls (to selected countries) and longer expiration period.

For comparison, below is a daily updating list of popular Prepaid plans with 5G and at least 30GB of data.

Prepaid mobile plans with unlimited data can be hard to come by. It used to be the case that there were no options for those Australian consumers who didn't want to choose between unlimited data and prepaid. There are plenty of prepaid plans with lots of data, but not all that many with unlimited data. Still, there are a few good options out for those willing to look for them.

Our pick of the lot is the Felix $35 Subscription. This prepaid month-to-month plan will last you a full month (as opposed to 28 or 30 days) and comes with unlimited data (speed capped to 20Mbps). You also get a bunch of nifty perks including WiFi calling, unlimited SMS and calls within Australia, eSIM and automatic renewal. Felix will even plant a tree for each month you stick with them and throw in the first month for free.

At the time of writing, the other prepaid provider that those looking for unlimited data might want to consider is Vodafone. As with its postpaid mobile plans, Vodafone's prepaid SIM-only plans come with both a standard data allowance and a speed-limited pool of 'infinite data' that kicks in if you exceed that limit. If that arrangement works for you, be sure to check out the round-up of Vodafone's prepaid plans below.

Prepaid mobile plans may not be as perk-packed as SIM Only alternatives, but there are still a handful of telcos that offer unlimited international calls.

The cheapest in our comparison engine is the Coles Prepaid $20 for 30 Days plan, which offers unlimited international calls to 15 countries. However, if you're ranking your options by the number of destinations you can dial, then we still fancy last month's pick for this category: the Lebara $49.90 Extra Large Plan.

This prepaid plan comes with unlimited talk and text to 60 selected countries, plus 500 minutes to 12 selected dialling destinations, and 50 minutes to a further 10 countries.

International inclusions aside, this particular Lebara plan also comes with 80GB of data to use every 30 days. Sign up and activate by 31 January 2023 to score 20GB of bonus data for the first three months, which can be stored in a 200GB data bank if you don't get through it.  You'll also score access to Lebara's 5G trial, which is currently slated to run through until the end of January 2023.

For a better sense of how this compares to some of the other popular Prepaid plans from the telcos in our database that offer unlimited calls on plans with at least 10GB of data (Gomo, Coles Mobile, Lebara, Aldi Mobile, Exetel, Amaysim, Lycamobile, Boost Mobile, Woolworths Mobile and Optus) check out the widget below.

Last month, the Boost $30 Prepaid plan was the popular choice for the prepaid plan on the Telstra network but this month the users are choosing the $25 Aldi Mobile plan. 

That $25 recharge price happens every 30 days for 22GB of data, though you also score 25GB of bonus data on the first six recharges (just get in by 31 January 2023). You can roll over data continually from one recharge to the next, plus this Aldi Mobile Prepaid plan comes with great international call inclusions.

Optus' $30 prepaid plan is usually the people's choice when it comes to the most popular Optus mobile plans. However, this time around, the homegrown hero has been dethroned by the Catch Connect 120GB long expiry option. Get in before the 7th of February, and you'll be able to get 120GB for $120. 

For a sense of how this plan compares to some of the other options available from Optus, check out the widget below.

The TPG 12GB Mobile Plan is one we consider each month for our best budget category, and it’s once again the most popular pick on the Vodafone network.

We like that it has an actual monthly renewal cycle (instead of 28 or 30 days) and comes with 12GB of data for $20 a month. Currently, new customers get $10 monthly pricing for the first six months.

When choosing a Prepaid plan, it’s important to note the differences between plans (recharges), subscriptions and starter packs. Prepaid plans are the best indicator of ongoing value, especially when compared to starter packs. Subscriptions, on the other hand, are a convenient auto-recharging option that can offer SIM Only-like value.

Pick a plan duration that works for you. If you need data in a pinch, you can opt for plans with fewer than 28 days. Most Prepaid plans in our comparison engine, though, hang around that monthly point: either 28 days, 30 days or an actual month. Monthly plans are the easiest way to determine ongoing costs, and you’ll want to factor in an extra recharge per year for an ongoing 28-day Prepaid plan.

Cost and data are the main indicators of value, but also keep an eye out for the network. The Telstra network is the largest, followed closely by the Telstra wholesale network and then Optus, with Vodafone not far behind. Quality coverage should result in a better Prepaid experience, from call reliability to download and upload speeds. Note that the areas where you use your phone for work and play may have better mobile reception from one of the smaller networks. Finally, it’s worth factoring in any perks, such as international calls, but perks like this aren’t essential if you don’t intend on using them.

At the start of each month, we compare all relevant Prepaid recharges and subscriptions to pick new winners or confirm the continued reign of incumbent victors. Most of our categories involve monthly plans, which offer either 28 days, 30 days or a full month. When determining first-year value in our comparisons, we count 30-day recharges 12 times and 28-day plans 13 times.

We compare ongoing recharge pricing with included data, making sure to treat short-lived bonus data as a perk rather than an indicator of long-term value (though data rollover can potentially change this). To stop costs from blowing out, we cap the spend of our best value ($50), best cheap ($20), best big-data ($50) and best cheapest ($15) category contenders at specific max prices to find a balance between cost and data.

For the long-expiry category, we evaluate all of the plans in our comparison engine that have durations of 180 days up to a year. With this category and others, we also consider the network that the plan is offered on in the context of its pricing. Finally, for the international-calls category, we choose the plan that offers the greatest number of countries, albeit at a reasonable price.

Below are the answers to some of the more pressing Prepaid plan questions.

Take a look at the most popular Prepaid plans in Australia according to WhistleOut’s comparison engine.