Top SIM-Only Plans in Australia

For under $20 per month, you can expect mostly limited-time deals with six-month discounted pricing. These plans are great for getting great data per dollar value in the short term, but are best suited for people who are always on the lookout for the latest deal. 

Most of the deals below have been heavily discounted for the first six months, after that you'll pay the regular monthly price (sometimes twice as much). 

Plans between $30 and $40 per month also offer limited-time pricing for the first six months but there are more options at this price range with permanent pricing if you're not interested in switching as often. For example, Telstra MVNO Belong's $30 per month deal offers ample data with great speeds and it will only ever cost you $30 per month. 

If you're looking for even more data, you're looking at spending somewhere between $30 and $40 per month for the first six months and around $50 or more for typical pricing that will get you between 50GB and 100GB of monthly data. 

Here are the most popular SIM-only plans with 50GB of data or more. 

Vodafone MVNOs offer some of the cheapest SIM-only plans in our database and are a great place to start if you're looking at cheap SIM plans.

The Vodafone network recently expanded to piggyback on the Optus network in many regional and remote areas. As a result, the Vodafone 4G network's population coverage is all but equal to Optus' (around 0.1% difference). Vodafone's 5G coverage is harder to compare, given the telco doesn't provide clear statistics on this part of its mobile network. But suffice to say, it's smaller than Telstra and Optus.

Vodafone MVNOs get full access to its network, although the MVNO decides whether to limit a plan to 4G or to include 5G. All Vodafone MVNOs place speed limits on their plans, ranging between 100Mbps and 250Mbps, depending on the plan in question.

Optus network providers get full access to the Optus network, but it's up to the provider to choose if they want to limit the plan to 4G or include 5G, and what speed caps they place on their plans. Even so, the harshest speed limit is 100Mbps, which is the same max speed as an NBN 100 plan. In short, it should be fast enough for just about anything you want to do on a phone. 5G plans are usually limited to 150Mbps or 250Mbps.

As for perks and extras, that's entirely up to each provider. Below we've listed the most popular plans from Optus MVNOs in our database, ranked by popularity with our readers over the last seven days:

Telstra and Boost Mobile customers get access to the full Telstra mobile network. The rest are restricted to the slightly smaller, but still expansive, Telstra Wholesale network.

That said, the Telstra Wholesale network only covers about 1% more of the population with 4G than the Optus and Vodafone networks. Not only that, the Optus 5G network is actually bigger than Telstra Wholesale – 80.5% population coverage vs. 75%.

So, while Telstra MVNOs do still have great coverage, it's worth noting most people likely won't notice much of a difference in coverage – especially if you live in a well-populated area.

You’ll find other popular Telstra network SIM plans below.

Coverage is important when looking for the best SIM-only plan, especially if you live outside of a major metropolitan area. There are three major networks: Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone. All three network operators sell access to smaller providers, called Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs).

MVNOs can offer cheaper plans than the Big Three because they have fewer overheads like physical stores, big marketing budgets, large staff counts, and extra plan perks, among other things. This is why you'll usually find the best SIM-only plan for your needs from an MVNO, as opposed to from Telstra, Optus or Vodafone directly.

As for coverage, Optus and Vodafone grant their MVNOs full access to their networks – though some MVNOs choose to limit their cheapest plans to 4G access only.

Telstra is different. It only offers its MVNOs access to the Telstra "Wholesale" network, which has a smaller coverage footprint than the full Telstra network. The only exception is Boost Mobile, which is the only MVNO with full network access.

As for which network has the best coverage, it depends on if you want 4G or 5G. The full Telstra network has the widest coverage for both 4G and 5G. That said, it's worth remembering that Telstra's coverage claims are based on the use of external antennae and range extenders. The coverage map for those looking to stay connected with a mobile device may be slightly smaller.

The Telstra Wholesale network is a close second for 4G, with Optus an even closer third. But for 5G, Optus' coverage is significantly ahead of the Telstra Wholesale network – sadly, Vodafone doesn't publish clear 5G statistics, so we can't compare it to the others.

The benefit of eSIM is not having to wait for a physical SIM card to arrive by mail to start using your new SIM-only plan. SIM activation should take around half an hour, but it may take longer. Just remember not to remove your old physical SIM card for your current plan before the new one is ready to go.