The best student mobile plan discounts in Australia

Being a student requires a close eye on your monthly budget. Even if you have part-time work, rent costs a fortune and the bills can pile up.

Knowing where to find a student-friendly discount can be a lifesaver. Services like Unidays aggregate savings on clothes, tech, food services and more. But what about your mobile phone bill? Do any of the Aussie telcos offer decent student discounts?

All the eligible Optus mobile plans with student discounts are right below. To score your discount, all you have to do is click "Go" next to the plan of your choice and enter the promo code you received from Optus upon checkout.

Optus is one of the few telcos currently offering a SIM-only phone plan that is only available to current students, and it’s a great value plan too.

Nowadays, Optus will let students sign up for its Medium Optus Choice Plus Plan at a discounted rate of $39 per month for the first twelve months. After that honeymoon period, you'll go up to the usual $62 per month.

Optus Choice Plus Student Plan

• $39 per month for 12 months (no lock-in contract).
• 100GB 5G data.
• Unlimited national calls and text plus unlimited calls and text to 35 international destinations.
• $5 for 5GB global roaming data.

When it comes to student discounts, the value is clear to see and doesn't invite too many terms and conditions. On the other hand, it's a shame that you can't get the same discount on a cheaper plan with less data.

To get in on the action, you must enter your student email at their Student Hub, then apply the promo code they email you at checkout.

Optus' student savings promotion doesn't just apply to selected mobile plans. From time to time, you can also save on select home internet plans with the telco.

Vodafone used to have a small but great value selection of student discount mobile plans, however, in recent times, it has moved away from focusing on students in favour of making their plans cheaper for everyone.

While Vodafone has a selection of offers tailored to students in tertiary education, for the most part these are the same offers available to everyone with a boost in inclusions. For example, where a SIM plan ordinarily includes 100GB of mobile data, students may be offered 200GB instead.

Vodafone Small SIM Only Plan (Student Offer)

• $39 per month for 12 months (no lock-in contract).
• 200GB 5G data.
• Unlimited national calls and text plus unlimited calls and text to 37 countries.

Add another $10 per month and Vodafone with double the data of the Small plan to 400GB per month. Add $20 and your monthly data limit is a whopping 800GB per month.

This seems like a lot of data, but it could be exactly what you're looking for if you rely on mobile data rather than a fixed-line internet connection at home.

Our methodology for choosing the best student phone plans isn't too far off how we think about choosing and recommending the best mobile plans and internet plans in general.

However, for the purposes of this guide, we're factoring in student discounts into our comparison of the market. This can change the results in significant ways as not all providers actually offer student-friendly savings options. In some ways, it's similar to how we tackle student-friendly laptops.

The best place to start when looking for your next mobile plan provider is the choice between a SIM-only plan or one that factors in the cost of a brand new device. If you're happy with your current device and don't mind sticking with it for longer, you'll have a lot more choice when it comes to providers.

On the other hand, those who want or need a new phone to go with their mobile plan are likely to end up at one of the big three (Telstra, Optus and Vodafone) as the usual alternatives steer clear of device-based plans.

One you've made that choice, the next thing to look at is data. If you're a heavy data user seeking the best bang for their buck, you may want to install a data usage tracking app on your phone to get a sense of just how much you're already using each month.

After determining how much data you need your next mobile plan to include, the next step is to get a sense of which networks offer the best coverage for your local area. Once you've done that, you should be able to thin and filter the possibilities to hone in a mobile plan that includes as much data as you need at the lowest price, while also giving you the best coverage.

Money can be tight when you’re on a student’s budget, and your mobile phone bill is a great place to trim some fat. Here are our top tips:

• Right-size your mobile plan - telcos love to seem generous when they offer enormous mobile data inclusions in their SIM Only phone plans, but how much data do you really need? Don’t fall for the ‘rainy day’ fallacy and overpay for data you’ll never use.
• Bank that data - data banking is a common phone plan feature that accumulates unused data each month and makes it available when you exceed your data allowance in the future.
• Do you really need that new phone? There’s a good chance you are reading this article on your phone, so it’s a great time to turn your handset over in your hands and judge whether it needs to be replaced or not. Adding a handset to your phone plan will likely double your monthly bill.