Optus mobile plans review

When you’ve got the second largest mobile network in Australia, one of the best ways to compete with the largest (Telstra) is with great value plans. That’s exactly the underlying philosophy of the Optus vs Telstra battle: Telstra has the larger network, but Optus has plans that are competitively priced with some solid inclusions.

Optus offers mobile plans across Postpaid mobile plans, SIM Only plans for BYO phone users, and Prepaid for those eager to manage costs. No Optus mobile plans have a contract, while the Postpaid and SIM Only plans were recently upgraded to remove excess data charges and, instead, cap data speeds at 1.5Mbps if you happen to go over.

Postpaid mobile plans are identical in what they offer on the plan side of things, with the only difference being they cost more because you’re paying off a handset. Scroll down for the section dedicated to those, but we’re going to focus on Optus’ SIM Only and Postpaid plans here.

The cheapest Optus SIM Only plan is the $55 Optus Choice Plus Plan, which costs $55 a month and comes with 50GB of data. It may be the cheapest, but it still includes Optus 5G support, like on Telstra and its reworked Upfront plans, which also includes 5G support from its cheapest SIM Only plan upwards.

Stacked next to other SIM Only plans with 50GB of data, though, and it becomes quickly apparent that Optus isn’t the best telco choice for the best pricing, even if plans that use its network are. For example, Optus MVNOs like Moose Mobile, Spintel or Dodo offer better pricing, even without promotional discounts, and more data. 

Pay $10 more per month and you can get quadruple the amount of data with the $65 Optus Choice Plan which comes with 200GB of data to play with each month.

The popular $59 Vodafone SIM Only Plan is the main competitor in this space, with 360GB of data for a usual price of $59 per month, and a reduced price of $49 per month for the first 12 months while Telstra comes in at $13 extra. You can see the most popular SIM Only plans below with at least 150GB of data.

The $79 plan comes with an extra inclusion which is a $10/month credit for a subscription of your choice to a streaming website. This plan includes 360GB of data and is also discounted currently to $69 per month for 12 months

Finally, the $85 Large Choice Plus SIM Only plan from Optus comes with 400GB of data and includes a $20/month credit for a subscription of your choice to a streaming website. This plan probably isn't currently worth it with the above plan being $69 for 12 months but would be once the promo price runs off as it would only be $6 more expensive but comes with an extra $10 credit on subscriptions.

Optus offers a range of Prepaid plans, including one 365-day long-expiry plan, one 186-day plan, a few 28-day Prepaid plans, and a cheaper option that runs for a week. Like other Prepaid telcos, Optus treats a month as 28 days, which means you should factor in 13 recharges if you’re looking to determine first-year pricing.

Optus Prepaid plans also include 5G but at speeds up to 150Mbps only (except for the 80GB plan at speeds up to 250Mbps).

There are three 28-day Prepaid plans, which start with the $35 Optus Prepaid SIM. This plan comes with 40GB for the first 3 recharges and you'll get unlimited data on weekends with Autorecharge.

That $35 recharge fee may sound decent, but it doesn’t hold up against other cheap prepaid plans, especially after 3 months once the data drops to 20GB. A handful of plans are costing less than $20 for the first six months and coming with at least 45GB of data. You can see some of these cheap Prepaid contenders in the list of cheap plans with 40GB or more below.

The next plan comes with 65GB of data and regularly costs $49. However, the 65GB data drops to 35GB after 3 months, but also comes with unlimited data every weekend with AutoRecharge.

The most monthly data you can get with an Optus Prepaid plan is with the Optus Prepaid $59 plan, which comes with 85GB of data for the first three months before reverting to 45GB. That plan is also includes unlimited data on weekends.

For long expiry plans, Optus offers the $180 Prepaid plan with 140GB on the first 3 recharges (90GB ongoing) and a 186 day expiry, and the $350 Prepaid plan with 300GB on the first 3 recharges (220GB ongoing) and a 365 day expiry.

Finally, the last Optus Prepaid plan is the $13 Prepaid plan with 5GB data (additional 5GB with AutoRecharge) and comes with a 7-day expiry.

These days, Optus SIM Only and Postpaid mobile plans come with endless data, finally following in the footsteps of Vodafone and Telstra, instead of automatically charging an extra $10 per 1GB of data. You can also share your data with eligible plans under the same account, and both perks apply from the cheapest plan through to the most expensive.

All Choice Plus plans come with 2 entertainment perks where you can save 10% on subscriptions through SubHub and save $15 per month on Optus Sport. 

The $65 price point is also where unlimited standard talk and text with 35 selected countries kicks in, while the 360GB plans include the extra monthly credit to spend on subscriptions, on top of bigger monthly data caps. 

Optus Prepaid plans also have perks:

• Unlimited data every weekend on the 28-day plans
• Data rollover (up to 200GB)
• Day rollover (up to 84 days)
• Unlimited standard national talk and text
• International calls to select countries on the $35 plan and over (amount varies depending on the plan)
• 50 international SMS on all plans
• 5G network included (at speeds up to 150Mbps on all plans, except the 80GB plan at up to 250Mbps)

All in all, Optus plans have some great features.

You have stacks of support options if you need help with your Optus mobile plan. If you’re a fan of human contact, there’s phone support or you can head into an Optus Store. In terms of online assistance, you’ve got plenty of choice. Chat with a representative via responsive Twitter or Facebook, speak with someone in online chat, use self-service online or check out the forum for help from other Optus mobile users. You can also check usage and tweak your plan from within My Optus, which is also available as an iOS or Android app.

The three big telcos tend to cop the most flak online when it comes to user reviews, and this is true of Optus. If you look at either the 3,000+ reviews on Product Review or the 600+ reviews on Trustpilot, you’ll see an overwhelming majority of one-star reviews. According to the amalgamation of these scores and in comparison to the other providers that are part of our internal tracking system, Optus has the lowest average reported customer review scores out of all tracked telcos.

Click on the ‘Go’ button on the plan you most like the look of below to head directly to the corresponding sign-up page on the Optus website. Confirm the plan you’d like by choosing ‘Select Plan’, or pick ‘Build your own plan’ if you want to customise it, then either create a new Optus account or use your login details if you’re an existing Optus customer. Follow the prompts from here to complete the process.

You can see a daily updating list of the most popular Optus plans below (across SIM Only, Postpaid and Prepaid).

At the time of updating this review, there were 56 different handsets available through Optus (that includes storage variants of the same model). Most of those handsets are Apple or Samsung, but Optus also offers Google, ZTE, Oppo, and Motorola handsets, as well as some branded low to mid-tier handsets on Prepaid.

Here are a few of the most popular Optus mobile phone plans.

Coverage is the cornerstone of a good mobile phone plan, and Optus claims to have the second-largest coverage footprint behind Telstra. The network is available across the country and covers 98.5% of the population.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you can get Optus coverage in 98.5% of Australia. Like the Telstra and Vodafone networks, Optus coverage is like a dense ring around the coastline, with tendrils of signal stretching inland. Most people should find that they can comfortably use an Optus service wherever they live and work.

Opensignal, a company that analyses mobile network performance through apps people install on their phones, claims that Optus customers can get a 4G signal more often than people using either Telstra or Vodafone. In the same report, Telstra is shown to have the fastest average download speeds, with Optus in second place and Vodafone in third.

This is interesting data to take a look at, but ultimately your experience will depend on where you use your phone. You can take a look at the coverage map below as a guide to whether there is an Optus signal around you, but you should still find a way to test the network before you sign a contract, like buying an Optus Prepaid SIM card and using it in your phone for a few days.

While Telstra's 5G network rollout is ahead of Optus, they are both lightyears ahead of Vodafone's next-gen network rollout. Optus also has one of the healthiest 5G product offerings. All three of the big telcos offer 5G phones, but Optus is one of the few providers offering a solid 5G home modem solution at the time of writing.

It's always worth pointing out that it's still early days for Australian 5G, so don't expect too much (and be sure to check your address in the coverage map above) but we've been fairly impressed with what we have experienced with Optus 5G so far.

We've managed to get roughly 300Mbps down on average with Optus 5G in the North Sydney area (outdoors, of course). That barely touches what 5G is actually capable of, but it's still faster than most NBN connections. With that said, indoors coverage for Optus 5G has been almost non-existent in our tests. We know that 5G is weaker indoors but our own experiences aren't indicative of what every customer should expect. If you're close enough to a 5G site, with a clear line of sight to the tower, it's possible you'll get better indoor Optus 5G coverage than we've managed.