Pay as you go phone plans, where you buy credit and it lasts until you use it, are rare now. T-Mobile retired its Pay As You Go plan in 2014. What is left comes from a handful of prepaid brands, and each one works differently. If you use a phone for a few calls a month, these are the plans that cost the least over a year.
Every figure is from the brand’s own site, read on October 8, 2026.
True pay as you go
| Brand | What you buy | What it costs to use | How long it lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| H2O Wireless | $10, $30 or $100 of credit | 5 cents a minute or text, 10 cents a megabyte | 90 days for $10 and $30, 365 days for $100 |
| Page Plus | A $10, $25, $50 or $80 card | 6 cents a minute | 120 days, or a year for the $80 card |
| Ting Mobile | The Flex plan, $10 a month | $5 for each gigabyte of data. Talk and text are unlimited | Billed monthly |
| Tello | $20 to $50 of credit | 1 cent a minute, 1 cent a text, 2 cents a megabyte | 3 months |
| Black Wireless | $10, $30 or $100 | Talk and text | 30 days, 90 days or 365 days |
H2O Wireless has the plan that suits a phone kept for emergencies. $100 lasts a year. H2O says that “As long as you recharge before your airtime expires, any unused balance will be carried over”. Let the balance reach zero and you have 30 days to add money before the account is cancelled.
Tello has the lowest rates by far, at a cent a minute. Its credit expires after three months.
Tracfone’s minute bundles
Tracfone sells bundles of minutes with a set number of service days. The minutes cover talk, text and web.
| Price | Minutes | Service days |
|---|---|---|
| $19.99 | 60 | 90 |
| $24.99 | 100 | 90 |
| $29.99 | 120 | 90 |
| $39.99 | 200 | 90 |
The $19.99 bundle works out to $6.66 a month, which is the figure on Tracfone’s own label. Unused minutes carry over, Tracfone says, “as long as any Tracfone service plan is active and in use within any six-month period.” More on our Tracfone page.
Pay for the data you use
Google Fi’s Flexible plan charges a base and then by the gigabyte: “$20 per month for 1 line + $10/GB of data”. In a month where you use no mobile data, the bill is the $20 base, before taxes.
It suits someone who is on Wi-Fi nearly all the time. At 2 GB a month it costs $40, and an ordinary plan is cheaper.
The cheapest monthly plans may beat them
Do the sum before choosing pay as you go. A small monthly plan often costs less than you would spend on credit.
| Brand | Plan | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Tello | Build your own. Tello gives the minimum plan value as $5 | From $5 a month |
| US Mobile | Light, 2 GB | $10 a month, taxes and fees included |
| T-Mobile | Connect, 5 GB with unlimited talk and text | $15 a month |
Connect is T-Mobile’s lowest-priced prepaid range today. Its plans run for 30 days and have to be refilled.
Which one
For a phone that mostly sits in a drawer, H2O’s $100 a year or Tracfone’s $19.99 for 90 days.
For a few calls and texts each week, Tello’s pay as you go credit, or its $5 plan.
For normal light use with some data, skip pay as you go. US Mobile’s $10 plan or Tello’s 2 GB plan will cost less and you will not run out.
The full price ranking is on cheapest plans.