Which is actually better, prepaid or postpaid cell phone plans? The short answer is: it depends on what you want.
Prepaid plans: Prepaid plans require you to pay your bill before you receive service. These plans almost never require a contract, so you’ll be paying month to month. If you don’t pay your bill, your service will be cut off. Postpaid plans: Postpaid plans allow you to pay your bill after you’ve received service each month. They often give you options for paying for a new phone over many months as well. Because you’re not paying up front, postpaid providers often require a credit check before you sign up.
So, the strict difference between prepaid vs. postpaid plans is when you pay your bill. But it’s generally true that prepaid plans are cheaper and offer more flexibility, while postpaid plans are more expensive and offer more perks. Let’s take a look at a few examples of what we mean. Here’s a traditional, postpaid plan from Verizon Wireless. It comes with unlimited talk, text, and 5G LTE data. It requires no contract, but you will have to get a credit check before you sign up. Here’s a very similar plan from Verizon prepaid. This plan comes with unlimited talk, text, and 4G LTE data. It’s $10 cheaper than the postpaid plan, and it sometimes comes with a special deal or offer on a device when you activate a new line. For example, here’s a plan from Visible Wireless. Visible is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which is a fancy way of saying it’s a small company that uses a larger company’s cell phone towers to bring service to its customers. In this case, it uses Verizon’s network. What’s the catch? Well, you won’t get any special perks or benefits. Also, on some MVNO plans you’ll get slower data speeds when the network is congested (but this is also possible on most lower-tiered unlimited plans, including those from major carriers). As we discussed above, prepaid customers tend to have cheaper bills. But how much cheaper? Let’s look at a comparison. Here are some leading unlimited data plans from prepaid companies. Meanwhile, here’s a look at the cheapest line of unlimited data plans from each of the three major postpaid carriers—AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. If you’re going on price alone, prepaid carriers are the clear winner. And these cheaper plans definitely make sense if you just want a barebones plan for yourself or for your kids. But there are some benefits of postpaid plan performance that are worth thinking about. Postpaid plans often have higher data caps than prepaid plans. For example, Metro by T-Mobile (a prepaid provider) gives you 35 GB of full-speed data before throttling kicks in, while a postpaid T-Mobile plan will give you 50 GB. Deprioritization is an issue with almost every single prepaid plan, but also the lowest tiers of postpaid unlimited plans. You have to bump up to the pricier plans before you see deprioritization disappear completely. We hope that this information helps you decide which kind of mobile plan is right for you. Check out our lineup of the best cell phone plans—both prepaid and postpaid—if you still need help deciding!
