Best family mobile plans in Australia

Australia's best family mobile phone plans, bundles and data-sharing options for you and yours. Check out a snapshot of some plans with family mobile options below.

Nathan Lawrence
Jun 19, 2025
Icon Time To Read10 min read

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Family mobile plans in Australia take different forms. Some let you combine a small number of bills under a single account, while others use data sharing, where multiple plans share a single pool of data – potentially up to 20 friends and family members, depending on the plan.

And even if a telco doesn’t offer formal 'family' mobile plans, you still might be able to gift data to other users, as long as they’re with the same mobile provider. This can still be useful for families who'd prefer more manual control over data allotments.

Which providers offer family mobile plans?

A quick overview before we dive deeper.

There are a couple of ways providers define a family mobile plan. The first and most common is a plan that involves data sharing. The second is pretty much a standard mobile bundling discount with the word "family" used in its branding – the more plans on one account, the bigger the saving.

Of the 30+ mobile providers in our database, only four offer family plans with data sharing, while three offer bundle discounts that increase based on the number of linked mobile plans – though two of these require you also have your NBN plan with that provider.

Four other telcos don’t offer family plans but do let you gift gigabytes to other users, as long as they’re with the same telco.

Providers with data sharing plans

Data sharing is what most people think of when they're looking for family mobile plans. These plans let you add multiple plans to an account, then create a single data pool they all dip into. Sometimes the setup is simple – all plans cost the same and add the same amount to the pool. Other times there's a main, more-expensive plan with lots of data, and each added plan is relatively cheap and might only add a small amount to the pool, if anything.

The four mobile providers from our database that offer family mobile plans with data sharing are Optus (postpaid), Telstra (postpaid), Vodafone (postpaid), and ALDI Mobile (prepaid). To provide a quick comparison, here's a look at the cheapest mobile plan from each that's eligible for data sharing:

Providers with mobile bundling discounts

Mobile bundling discounts also aren't common, and only one provider in our database markets this as a "family" plan. Unlike a more common mobile and internet bundle, where you receive a discount for having a single mobile and internet plan with the one provider, some bundles increase your discount the more mobile plans you have on the same account. Sometimes this involves an internet plan, sometimes not.

This is useful for families where all services are being paid for by the same bank account. It simplifies your admin by wrapping everything into the one internet and phone bill each month, while decreasing that bill at the same time.

The three providers in our database that offer multi-plan bundle discounts are Yomojo (prepaid mobile only), Exetel (NBN + prepaid mobile), and Superloop (NBN + prepaid mobile).

Once again, we'll go into more about these providers detail further on, but for now here's a quick comparison of cheapest eligible mobile plan from each:

Providers with data gifting

Plans with data gifting aren't specifically aimed at families, but might appeal to your needs. Rather than everyone dipping into the one big data pool, each plan has its own separate data allowance and you can manually gift some of your data to someone else on the same provider.

This could give parents more direct control and oversight over just how much data their kids are using because you know exactly how many GBs you've had to top them up each month. But it has the downside of requiring you manually share that data, instead of it automatically coming from a shared pool.

The the five telcos from our comparison engine that offer data gifting are Belong (postpaid), Woolworths' Everyday Mobile (postpaid and prepaid), More Telecom (postpaid), and Tangerine Telecom (postpaid).

Here’s a quick look at the cheapest eligible mobile plan from each of these providers:

Finding the best family mobile plans

Five things to look out for when making your choice.

Just what exactly defines the “best” family mobile plans will vary based on your needs. While you're the best judge, there are some commonalities to keep an eye out for as you read on:

  • Fixed or combined data pool for sharing
  • Ability to add multiple plans under the same account
  • Similar call/text and other inclusions compared to standalone mobile plan equivalents
  • Speed caps vs. overage fees
  • Data banking/rollover

Now we'll take you through how some bigger providers handle their family plans, looking at what you might expect to get if you sign up.

Optus family mobile plans


When it comes to Optus family plans, you have a few options – and you might need to break out the calculator when figuring out which is best for you. The quick summary is you can pretty much share data between any mobile plan that starts with "Optus Plus" or "Optus Choice Plus", but just what you opt to combine will be up to you.

The good news is, there's no limit to how many plans you can add to an account's data pool. There is a limit of four Kids Plus Plans for each account, however.

Whatever you pick, you can avoid unecpected excess data fees. If your little ones are prone to going overboard, Optus will simply slow your mobile connection, instead of automatically charging you overage fees. Granted, it will slow you to a painful 1.5Mbps, at which point you might decide buying a data top up is worth your while. But at least you'll avoid any nasty bill shock.

Optus Plus Family Plan

The Optus Plus Family Plan is $165 per month for 320GB, which can be shared between up to four SIMs. The plan is the same cost and has the same data no matter how many SIMs you get with it, so this plan is really only worth considering if you'll use all four SIMs or if your family's mobile data needs are high. Optus family plans have the same features as standalone Optus SIM-only plans, including no excess data charges, but a family plan also comes with a free McAfee Parental Control subscription – whether you want that is up to you.

If you have more than four family members, you can add a $29 Optus Plus Kids Plan to the above setup (Optus also sometimes refers to this as the "Optus Kids" plan). This doesn't add any data to your data pool, but does include unlimited talk and text and can use the shared data from other eligible plans on your account.

pro
Reasons to buy
  • Healthy data pool
  • Up to four family members
  • Reasonable per-user price (if you use all four services)
  • Can add up to four Plus Kids plans and unlimited Choice Plus plans
  • McAfee Parental Control
  • Unlimited Data Day add-on
  • No excess data fees
con
Reasons to avoid
  • Not as flexible as some other family plans, especially if you need fewer than four services
  • No difference in price or data if you have one, two, three, or four active services (within the core Family Plan)
  • Extra user costs stack up
  • No bundling discounts
  • Not available for prepaid Optus users

Optus Choice Plus plans

A more flexible option is to simply grab multiple Optus Choice Plus plans (SIM only or with phone repayments). Much like the Family Plan, these plans share data with other Choice Plus plans on the same account.

Each plan adds its data to a central pool, sharing it with the rest. This gives you a bit more customisation with regards to how much data you have in your pool, and is probably better if you need less than four active mobile services.

You can also add Choice Plus plans to the Family Plan's data pool. And you can add Kids Plus plans to a Choice Plus plan.

pro
Reasons to buy
  • Link unlimited services
  • More control over the size of your data pool and monthly bill
  • Can add a Plus Family Plan, up to four Plus Kids plans, and unlimited Choice Plus plans
  • Unlimited Data Day add-on
  • No excess data fees
con
Reasons to buy
  • Extra user costs stack up
  • No bundling discounts
  • Not available for prepaid Optus users

Vodafone family mobile plans


pro
Reasons to buy
  • Increasing discounts for more users
  • $5 Roaming works with the data pool
  • Add up to 10 eligible plans
  • Control data pool allocation
con
Reasons to avoid
  • Not available for prepaid users
  • Discounts max out after five users
  • Endless data not shareable
  • Plenty of ineligible plans

Vodafone offers a mix of data sharing and bundle discounts.

The telco lets users combine up to 10 eligible SIM-only, tablet, or mobile plans under a single account. The data from these combined Vodafone SIM-only plans is then pooled and shared, making this a good option for family mobile plans. Plan eligibility includes all Vodafone SIM-only plans, except for "Ultra+", "Vodafone Infinite", "Vodafone Infinite Data",  "Vodafone BYOD", "Plus", "Team", and "Promo Plans". You also can't data share with prepaid plans.

While this sounds like a lot of exclusions, the main takeaway is it applies to the Vodafone's most common plans: Small, Medium, and Large, which can also be paired with a phone repayment plan and include $5 International Roaming.

Bundling Vodafone mobile plans under a single account also introduces discounts: 5% for two plans, 10% for three, 15% for four, and 20% for five or more. If you’re worried about any data hogs on your makeshift family plan, the account owner can control who has access to the collective pool via the My Vodafone user portal. 

Telstra family mobile plans


pro
Reasons to buy
  • Pooled Telstra data
  • Up to 20 SIMs
  • All Telstra Upfront plan inclusions
  • Telstra network reach
  • Uncapped Telstra 5G speed
  • No excess data fees
con
Reasons to avoid
  • Telstra plan premium pricing
  • Cheapest Telstra plan has 50GB of data (and isn't cheap)
  • No bundle discounts
  • Not available for prepaid users
  • 1.5Mbps post-pool speeds
  • Most users will have way more data than thhey need

If you're in the market for a Telstra family plan, you have two options: straight-up data sharing, and mobile plan bundling. Though its bundling isn't about discounts to existing plans, rather you have the option of adding a cheaper plan to an account that already has a more expensive one.

All Telstra Upfront plans (SIM-only or with a phone repayment plan) share their data with other Upfront plans on the same account. Each plan adds its data to a single pool, which they all dip into and can use equally.

While this approach has the advantage of tailoring your family plan to your needs, Telstra's cheapest Upfront plan has a whopping 50GB of data, so you might find you don't need nearly as much data as you end up paying for. And if everyone already has more than they need, there's not much benefit in data pooling.

If you have one of the two most-expensive plans – the Essential or Premium plan – you can add a cheaper Mobile Bundle Plan to your account. Each Mobile Bundle Plan adds $52 to your monthly bill and only 25GB of data to your shared pool. This is cheaper than Telstra's Upfront Basic plan, but $52 for 25GB is about double what you might pay a smaller provider for the same amount. And given the Essential plan has 180GB and the Premium plan has an enormous 300GB, it's still very possible you'll be paying top dollar for way more data than you need.

There aren’t any notable family-specific perks outside of data sharing, but you effectively have all of the inclusions of Telstra Upfront plans, including no excess data fees (capped at 1.5Mbps speeds after the data cap) and access to the Telstra Rewards program.

ALDI Mobile family plans


ALDI Mobile's Family Plans are helpfully labelled as such, and are separate products to its normal mobile plans.

An ALDI Mobile family plan comes in three varieties. Each is a prepaid plan and has a different maximum number of services it can support. The data inclusions are shared across all family members, but the other inclusions are specific to each service. E.g. two devices share 50GB, but each gets 4,000 (unshared) MMS.

  • 50GB Family Plan: 50GB of shared data for up to two services, unlimited calls and SMS, 4,000 MMS, plus 200 minutes of shared calls and 100 shared SMS to 30 destinations
  • 100GB Family Plan: 100GB of shared data for up to four services, unlimited calls and SMS, 6,000 MMS, plus 400 minutes of shared calls and 200 shared SMS to 30 destinations
  • 150GB Family Plan: 150GB of shared data for up to six services, unlimited calls and SMS, 8,000 MMS, plus 600 minutes of shared calls and 300 shared SMS to 30 destinations

All ALDI Mobile family plans are 5G enabled (capped at 150Mbps) with 30-day expiries. They also have unlimited data rollover (just recharge within 24 hours of expiry) as well as unlimited standard talk and text to 20 selected destinations.

pro
Reasons to buy
  • 5G included
  • Telstra Wholesale network reach (great for 4G)
  • Multiple family plan options
  • Decent pooled data inclusions
  • International talk/text inclusions
  • Unlimited data rollover
  • WiFi calling available
con
Reasons to avoid
  • 150Mbps speed cap
  • Telstra network pricing
  • Standalone ALDI plans have more data
  • eSIM not supported
  • Average number of support pathways
  • Telstra Wholesale has much less 5G coverage than the full Telstra network
  • Not customisable

Yomojo family mobile plans


pro
Reasons to buy
  • Bundle discounts
  • eSIM supported
  • Optus 4G only (no 5G)
  • WiFi calling supported
  • Decent number of support pathways
  • Good reported customer satisfaction
con
Reasons to avoid
  • Max discount necessitates max-price plans
  • No data pooling/sharing
  • No endless data
  • PAYG international roaming
  • No international inclusions
  • No international SMS
  • No 5G

Yomojo family mobile plans are another way for prepaid users to save money by putting multiple plans under a single account. The second SIM you add gets you a 5% discount, after which each additional SIM gets you 2.5% off, up to a maximum of 15% for six SIMs. All Yomojo's standard prepaid plans are eligible, which means you get all of the basic plan inclusions like eSIM.

Note that data isn’t pooled, so each bundled plan will use its individual plan allocation. If you run out of data, Yomojo advises topping up via add-ons. 

Total SIMs on your account
Discount
One
Two5%
Three7.5%
Four10%
Five12.5%
Six15%
Data sharing, data pooling and data gifting

Kind of like how data rollover and data banking are effectively the same thing, data "sharing" and data "pooling" are mostly used interchangeably between mobile providers that offer the feature. Data pooling is most often used in reference to family plans, wherein multiple plans are bundled under a single account. For eligible plans, that data is pooled into a total amount and shared with all users under that single account.

Alternatively, some telcos let users "gift" data. Data gifting lets you manually share data with other users, as opposed to a pool from which other SIMs can freely draw. While not as hands-off as data sharing, one big advantage is data gifting can usually be done between between customers on the same provider, as opposed to being limited to SIMs on the same account. Gifting can also be limited to certain use cases. For example, Optus customers can donate their unused data to specific charities. But not many providers do this.

Mobile providers with data gifting

Data gifting can be an alternative to family mobile plans.

For a family plan  alternative, consider going with a telco that offers data gifting. Belong, Everyday Mobile, More, and Tangerine all offer data gifting for their respective SIM-only customers. Everyday Mobile and Optus also offer data gifting for their prepaid users. Basically, data gifting allows you to gift data, typically in gigabyte increments, to users with the same telco.

Here’s how data gifting works for the mobile providers we track in our database:

  • Belong: data gifting in 1GB increments up to five times per month (with at least 1.3GB in your data bank).
  • Everyday Mobile: data gifting of up to 50% of your plan allocation (excluding data add-ons, bonus data, data bank and data gifted to you).
  • More: data gifting in 1GB increments of up to 50% of your plan allocation.
  • Optus: data donating up to 10GB (SIM-only) or 5GB (prepaid) per donation every 12 hours, with at least 5GB (SIM-only) or 2GB (SIM-only) remaining of your plan allocation.
  • Tangerine: data gifting of up to 50% of your plan allocation.

Here’s a list of the cheapest SIM-only plans from the telcos in our comparison engine that offer data gifting.

Family mobile plan FAQs


Does Telstra offer family plans?

Telstra doesn’t call what it offers a family plan, but it does allow up to 20 users to bundle SIM-only plans under a single account. Data from those bundled Telstra plans is pooled and shareable among users. It also has a Mobile Bundle Plan, which is a bit cheaper and can be added to either of its two most-expensive Upfront plans.

Is it cheaper to have a family mobile plan?

It’s not always cheaper to have a family mobile plan, though you can potentially save money with providers like Vodafone and Yomojo. Data pooling is an option for pairing eligible larger allocation plans with smaller ones to save money overall. Alternatively, consider going with a plan from Belong, Everyday Mobile, More, Optus or Tangerine to share excess gigabytes via data gifting with other users using the same telco.

What is the best phone service for a family plan?

The best phone service for a family plan is determined by what you need. Optus offers a simplified family plan for four users. Vodafone and Yomojo have bundling discounts. Telstra lets users bundle up to 20 eligible SIM-only plans. And Aldi Mobile offers three different family plans with incrementally larger data allowances, number of services allowed, as well as international text and talk inclusions.

How many devices/lines can you have on a family phone plan?

The number of family phone plan lines is determined by the mobile provider. Telstra allows up to 20 on its Upfront plans. Vodafone has bundling for up to 10. Optus packages four, but you can also link its postpaid plans to the same account and share data between them. ALDI Mobile’s priciest family plan is for six services, while Yomojo also offers up to six lines per account (albeit without data sharing).

Nathan Lawrence
Written by
Nathan Lawrence has been banging out passionate tech and gaming words for more than 11 years. These days, you can find his work on outlets like IGN, STACK, Fandom, Red Bull and AusGamers. Nathan adores PC gaming and the proof of his first-person-shooter prowess is at the top of a Battlefield V scoreboard.

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