T-Mobile vs. Mint Mobile Cell Phone Plans: For Cheap Unlimited Data, Only One Wins

First things first, let’s compare T-Mobile vs. Mint Mobile plans.

Below, we take a closer look at each of the plans, comparing it to its closest competitor from the other carrier. This gets a little tricky when you compare a big carrier like T-Mobile to a smaller prepaid carrier. But you see the steep differences in price and data amounts below.

Are you ready to spend $100 per month on premium data with T-Mobile? Or are you more comfortable spending $30 per month for unlimited high-speed data with Mint Mobile? It all comes down to your need for premium data.

T-Mobile offers premium data (which is not subject to deprioritization) on all of its plans. Mint Mobile only offers unlimited high-speed data on its Unlimited plan—this means that while speeds can be deprioritized below T-Mobile’s customers when the network is busy, they aren’t capped. Up until a few months ago, Mint Mobile had a data cap of 40GB on its Unlimited plan.

Typically, prepaid carriers don’t offer premium data. You won’t find it with Mint Mobile. But Mint Mobile’s truly unlimited high-speed data is a great benefit. While it can get deprioritized, I’ve rarely experienced this, nor has my husband, who uses it during long commutes and hours at work. If you don’t actually need the fastest speeds at all times, then Mint Mobile will be hard to beat at $30 per month.

You can get multi-line discounts on a T-Mobile family plan (you can get up to six lines with the discounts capped for lines three to six). When Kelly first got a T-Mobile line on her own, she was paying $50 per month. Now she pays $20 in a family plan of seven lines. All of Mint Mobile’s lines are $15 per month (on its annual plans), no matter how many lines you add to your plan.

When you add four lines to a T-Mobile family plan, you can get a monthly discount of $25 to $46, depending on the plan. So the more people you add to your family plan (at least up until three lines), the cheaper your monthly bill. However, on a T-Mobile family plan, you cannot mix and match different plans for each line. If someone in your T-Mobile family plan wants the more expensive plan, then everybody must pay for the most expensive plan.

Mint Mobile gives you more freedom, allowing you to mix and match data plans so that if someone wants to pay for more data, their individual bill is higher, but it won’t affect yours.

T-Mobile family plan vs. a Mint Mobile family plan (on the most basic plan for each):

On T-Mobile’s Essentials plan with four lines, each person pays $25 per month (not bad!). For Mint Mobile, the 5G plan will stay $15 per month, no matter how many people are on your plan. But keep in mind that your monthly bill could go higher if you add more data mid-cycle or if you pay for a larger data plan.

Like with Kelly’s family plan situation, a T-Mobile line ends up being a lot more affordable on a large family plan. But a Mint Mobile plan may be the way to go if it’s just a couple of people on basic data plans (like for me and my husband).

T-Mobile doesn’t offer you any plans as low as $15 per month. But of course, there’s more to a plan than the price. Read on!

T-Mobile beats Mint Mobile hands down for the number of perks it offers to its customers. Compared to all three big carriers, T-Mobile offers some of the best perks out there: T-Mobile Tuesdays, cell phone deals, autopay discounts, T-Satellite service, Netflix, Apple TV+, Hulu, travel data, and even extra discounts when you bundle with T-Mobile Internet.

I have absolutely no FOMO when it comes to extra perks. Kelly says she never even uses T-Mobile Tuesdays. She tells me that T-Mobile Tuesdays is not a simple perk—usually, you have to download specific apps and create accounts to get the deal. In short, it’s a hassle.

T-Mobile is known for its popular T-Mobile Tuesdays, free streaming subscriptions, and large range of extra perks. If you love new phone deals, weekly freebies, and extra ways to sweeten up your plan, you’re going to love T-Mobile. I personally never used T-Mobile Tuesdays, nor did I use my free Netflix subscription. In a way, I felt like T-Mobile charged for extra perks that often went unused. This is probably why I prefer Mint Mobile with its sparse deals. While perks are nice, I don’t feel most customers need those add-ons unless they already pay for the services and would save money bundling them with T-Mobile.

T-Mobile has “the best 5G coverage” and “offers the best 5G speeds in most metro areas.” That means that most urban and suburban areas can access T-Mobile’s fast 5G speeds, though it may not be as reliable in more rural areas. Kelly says she has noticed fast speeds in her area, but her service cuts out completely at times on road trips outside of the city.

I agree with Kelly. Even though Mint Mobile customers can technically get deprioritized behind T-Mobile customers, I have personally never noticed a difference in coverage performance. However, I have shorter commutes than Kelly and generally don’t go on my phone unless I’m connected to Wi-Fi. So while Mint Mobile and T-Mobile work off the same network, if you’re a light data user (like me) who doesn’t rely on her phone, then Mint Mobile’s coverage and potential deprioritization will never trouble you. But if you’re a heavy data and cell phone user (like Kelly), T-Mobile’s plans will probably be the best option for you.

Hit a dead zone? T-Mobile offers something Mint Mobile definitely doesn’t: satellite texting. When you hit a dead zone with T-Mobile, your service could automatically link up to a Starlink satellite so you don't have to miss out on sending and receiving text messages. It’s free with T-Mobile’s Experience Beyond plan, and costs an extra $10 per month on T-Mobile’s Essentials Saver and Experience More plans.

While Mint Mobile doesn’t bake this service into any of its plans, you can use T-Satellite as a non-T-Mobile customer for only $10 per month. All you need is an unlocked, satellite-optimized phone with eSIM capabilities.

Kelly thinks the service isn’t worth it, at least not if you barely spend time in rural areas or go camping. I totally agree that it’s not a service that people commonly need. Again, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on being connected all the time. In fact, I’d prefer to be unreachable now and then.

T-Mobile wins out on speed tests, but Mint Mobile’s low speeds don’t interfere with my scrolling. Kelly and I took a few speed tests at our workplace in Draper, Utah—a large building with thick walls and a dense employee population. I got around 21Mbps download speeds in the morning and 7Mbps in the afternoon. Kelly got 33Mbps download speeds in the morning and 18Mbps in the afternoon. But the reality is that both of us are typically connected to Wi-Fi while at work. Here’s a fun story: I disconnected from my work’s Wi-Fi to test the speed and completely forgot to reconnect. I scrolled like I normally do and never noticed a difference for the rest of the afternoon.

Interestingly, at home, I get around 8Mbps. I even took my kids to a park out near a river, and still got around 7Mbps. That seems quite low, but my browsing experience wasn’t affected (even right at the river’s edge). I could scroll through Twitter and Instagram, and send and receive messages.

So while bigger speeds seem more reliable, you’d be surprised how little speed you need to comfortably scroll and browse the internet on your phone. For this reason, I think premium data is sold as “reliable” to most customers, but as little as 7Mbps is quite comfortable for most internet scrolling. Even Instagram stories still load!

Both Kelly and I have rarely had to interact with customer service with each of our carriers. While Mint Mobile has no in-store support, T-Mobile does have physical locations you can visit. She did once call customer support with questions about her coverage at home and was met with generic advice that wasn’t helpful.

The Mint Mobile chat in the app and on its website is fine—the rep always seems like a real and knowledgeable person. As for T-Mobile, Kelly agrees that in-person help or chatting online isn't as useful as you’d hope. At the end of the day, there are factors that even a big carrier like T-Mobile can't control, like slow speeds due to your network tower's distance from your home.

Ultimately, I think T-Mobile beats Mint Mobile in the customer service category because Mint Mobile’s SIM activation process (arguably the most important step to getting new service) was not straightforward and a bit stressful. Unfortunately, in my situation, the Mint Mobile customer service rep was completely unhelpful, and only a Reddit thread could offer me a solution. It seems that even four years later, some SIM activation issues persist. While this may not be the case for every customer, it seems to be an ongoing pitfall.

By no means is T-Mobile inferior—it’s just for a very different type of user. For the Big Carrier experience and copious amounts of premium data, Kelly thinks “it’s worth it” because she’s paying only $20 per month on her T-Mobile family plan. Kelly doesn’t want to feel like she’s on some off-brand mobile carrier. And she’s right: It’s the same network as Mint Mobile, but it’s definitely not the same plans or service.

Premium data, T-Mobile Tuesdays, full-flight texting, trade-in phone deals, and extra accessory deals—there are a lot of ways to add value to your T-Mobile plan. I still think Mint Mobile is worth the switch for the good basic service. I don’t want to pay a lot of money for stuff I don’t need. And maybe, you are like me and have ROMO: Relief of missing out.

But if you like all the extra stuff at your fingertips, then T-Mobile is absolutely the right choice for you.