The best student mobile plan discounts in Australia

• Cheap mobile plans are generally cheaper
• 365-day prepaid plans
• Optus student plans
• Vodafone student plans
• Does Telstra offer student discounts?
• How can students save money on their monthly phone bill?

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?

Specific "student" mobile plans. And when they do crop up, it's usually still cheaper to just grab a low-cost mobile plan from a smaller provider. Even if you want to grab a new phone at the same time, it's cheaper in the long run to sign up to a budget plan and buy the phone outright than it is to grab a handset repayment plan from one of the big three providers, barring special deals.

On top of that, special student mobile plans often add value via big data allocations, rather than discounted rates. This is good if you need lots of data, but not so much if you don't.

So, to get started, let's take a quick look at the cheapest plans in our database. We've ordered them by the monthly cost for at least the first six months or recharges. This is because many plans come with intro deals that last about this long, and the best way to save money on a phone bill is by changing providers every six months or so to hop between these special offers for new customers.

365-day prepaid plans can often be better value in the long term, as long as you can keep within your data allowance. The concept is simple; you pay a fee upfront and get phone service for a year.

Obviously, this eliminates your monthly phone bill entirely, and the plans tend to offer good value.

Be sure to consider your data usage before signing up. You’re free to use the included data at any time – it’s not renewed each month – so you need to have enough included data so that you don’t run out before the end of the plan period.

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.

We don't have the Optus Student Plan in our database, but you can compare the below details with other Optus plans to get an idea of what you're saving.

Optus Student Plan

• $39 per month for 12 months (no lock-in contract)
• 200GB 5G data (includes 100GB bonus data)
• Unlimited national calls and text plus unlimited calls and text to 35 international destinations
• $5 for 5GB global roaming data in select destinations

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, though much more so during the first twelve month discount period.

New customers pay $39 per month for the first twelve months, during which time the data inclusion is a huge 200GB per month. This 200GB includes 100GB of bonus data, which continues to apply until you cancel your plan or Optus decides to discontinue the service. After the first 12 months, the monthly fee increases to $59.

So, is this good value? Yes and no. The deal price is great if you need that much data (which most people don't), but the ongoing price is actually more expensive than several other SIM-only and prepaid plans in our database with 200GB or more.

The deal also gets you a twelve month free subscription to Perplexity Pro, which is a sort of consolidated AI search/answering/research tool that combines multiple LLMs (such as GPT-4, Claude 3, and LLaMa 2) under a single product. So, there's also that, if it's something you're interested in. But be sure to mark a cancellation date in your calendar to avoid getting charged for the service once your free subscription to it ends.

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.

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.

And if you really do need a big slab of data like the Optus student plan has, here's a look at the cheapest plans in our database that have at least 180GB, ordered by their total cost over the first 24 months after signing up:

Vodafone offers discounts and bonus data for students for the first 12 months after signing up, after which the bonus data disappears and price of the plan increases. The bonus data and discounts apply to Handset and SIM-only plans, but if you do pick up a handset, keep in mind you'll need to stick around until you pay it off, which for most people is 36 months. That would mean 24 months of no discount and no bonus data.

Vodafone Small SIM Only Plan (Student Offer)

• $39 per month for 12 months, then $53
• 200GB 5G data per month for 12 months, then 100GB
• Unlimited national calls and text plus unlimited calls and text to 37 countries.

Here's a look at Vodafone's standard plans, without the student discount or bonus data:

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.
• Intro discounts – Many providers offer good discounts for an introductory period, usually for new customers and for about six months, but sometimes for anyone and/or up to a year. After this, the price can as much as double. But given there are no lock-in discounts for prepaid and SIM-only plans, you can jump ship and pick up another intro discount without ever paying full price.