How To Lower Your T-Mobile Cell Phone Bill

To cut down your T-Mobile cell phone bill, you can downgrade to a cheaper plan with less premium data or add multiple lines to your account. Seniors aged 55 and above, military and veterans, or first responders also qualify for additional discounts. You can also try negotiating with customer service or switch to a more affordable MVNO cell phone provider.

Here’s a rundown of the ways you can lower your T-Mobile bill:

• Downgrade to a cheaper plan
• Create a family plan with multiple lines
• Get a senior, military and veteran, or first responder discount
• Negotiate a deal with customer service
• Switch to a more affordable MVNO cell phone provider

The first and easiest way to lower your T-Mobile bill is to downgrade to a cheaper plan. Ask yourself–what do you really need in a cell phone plan? Even though T-Mobile’s more expensive Experience More and Experience Beyond plans offer a myriad of free streaming services and roaming data, if you’re trying to save money, you might want to hold off on the perks for now.

Instead, switch to T-Mobile’s cheapest cell phone plan, the Essentials Saver plan, for $50 per month. The Essentials Saver plan includes everything you need in a plan and nothing more: Unlimited talk, text, and 50GB of premium data. Since there are no annual contracts, you can switch without paying any fees.

All T-Mobile plans come with unlimited data, so if a plan says “50GB premium data” it just means you get 50GB of high-speed data, and after you meet this data cap, your speeds may be slower. For most customers, 50GB is plenty of data to use in a month, but you can check how much data you use in a month to judge whether you truly need “unlimited premium data” included with the more expensive T-Mobile plans.

Only the Experience More and Experience Beyond plans include a price guarantee for five years, so by opting for a cheaper plan like the Essentials or Essentials Saver, you are subject to price increases.

Another way you can make a dent in your T-Mobile bill is to create a family plan with multiple lines. “We switched to T-Mobile primarily because we were adding lines for our kiddos, and it was a much better deal compared to our previous carrier,” explains Sarah Aller, a satisfied T-Mobile customer who discovered that T-Mobile offered the best coverage around her kids’ schools.

Here’s a look at plan prices when you add multiple lines:

Even with just two lines on a family plan, you can save at least $10 every month. On some plans, like T-Mobile Essentials, Experience More, and Experience Beyond, the third line is included for free.

This tip doesn’t apply to everyone, but it’s worth signing up for if you can get it. If you’re a senior, a member of the military or a veteran, or a first responder, you can get a handy monthly discount.

• For seniors ages 55 and above, T-Mobile offers a $5 monthly discount on its cell phone plans.
• Military and veteran families, and first responders get four family lines for $25 per line per month, or discounted prices for one line shown below:

First responders also get extra services such as free registration to Wireless Priority Service and the T-Priority network slice. Both these services ensure that first responders get higher priority coverage.

If you don’t want to change your plan, you can also try reducing your T-Mobile cell phone bill by negotiating with customer service. If you haven’t negotiated a bill before, let it be known that T-Mobile doesn’t want to lose you as a customer, so there are often deals held in reserve to stop you from cancelling your account.

There are multiple ways to go about this, but we suggest going straight to the phone and connecting to a retention agent. This way, you can bypass the customer support agent who might not be able to offer you the best deals.

To connect to a retention agent, go to your T-Life app or call +1-800-937-8997 or 611 from your T-Mobile phone. After connecting with support, say you want to cancel your plan. The support agent will transfer you to a retention agent. If they don’t, keep asking or hang up and try again.

Once you’re on the phone with retention, repeat that you’re thinking of cancelling but might stay if they can offer you a discount. Although this isn’t a foolproof way of getting a deal, you might unlock offers that aren’t usually available to regular customers.

"The representative simply checked if their loyalty program included any secret discounts when I inquired about it," says Hone John Tito, a T-Mobile customer who called customer service to negotiate a deal. As a business owner of a game hosting service, Tito needs a cost-effective plan that keeps him connected no matter where he goes. This can get expensive, so Tito regularly searches for ways to reduce expenses. Through his negotiation, Tito successfully received a $25 monthly discount, additional hotspot data, and a free subscription to Apple TV+ for one year. “[T-Mobile] offers flexibility and perks you won’t always see on the surface–if you know where to look.”

T-Mobile’s plans start at $50 per month, which is still a pretty penny to pay for a cell phone plan. One of the ways you can still get the same coverage offered by T-Mobile is switching to Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile is a T-Mobile Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), which means it rents network capacity from T-Mobile. Mint Mobile can offer cheaper plans than T-Mobile because it doesn’t pay to maintain the towers, but you still get the same reliable coverage.

Mint Mobile offers prepaid plans for three, six, and twelve month timeframes from $15 to $30 per month to start. Plans come with 5GB to unlimited data, although the unlimited data has a high-speed data cap of 35GB. There is an upfront payment for all plans, so if you get the 5GB plan that costs $15 per month for three months, you pay $45 at the start of your plan.

“It’s totally the same quality. I’ve never had an issue,” says Monica Yoshida, who switched from T-Mobile to Mint Mobile last year. “Their new customer promo is especially amazing.

It’s just $15 per month for three months, which is so doable.”

MVNOs customers do get deprioritized speeds, but Yoshida has rarely experienced this.   “I listen to a lot of podcasts in the car, and I’ve hardly noticed slower speeds or bad service. Yoshida also enjoys the customer experience with clear communication and alerts as seen below.

Besides Mint Mobile, there are plenty of other MVNOs that offer affordable services while using T-Mobile’s towers.

“The coverage is the same. It’s technically deprioritized as a MVNO, but I’ve seen zero signs of that,” says Chili Palmer, an MVNO customer in Utah who previously was on a flagship T-Mobile family pla, but finds that MVNOs provide a better deal.

Here’s a look at some of the best T-Mobile MVNOs: