Choosing the cheapest cell phone plans

Deciding on the cheapest cell phone plans depend on many variables such as the type of service you want, the type of phone you’re getting and even how many people are in your plan. For demonstration purposes, we’re going to talk about the cheapest cell phone plans that offer the most in minutes, data, and text for a single user that wants a smartphone such as an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S3. 

Prepaid cell phones services provide the most economical and cheapest cell phone plans for the budget conscious buyer. You’re not locked into a contract which means there are no fees should you be unable to pay your bill for the month. When comparing to even cheapest cell phone plans on contract, you’ll find that prepaid cell phones get the most bang for your dollar.

Boost Mobile - Running off the Sprint Network, Boost Mobile offers what they call, shrinking payments. Your monthly prepaid bill starts at $55 a month for a smartphone like the Samsung Galaxy S3. This is for unlimited data up to 2.5GB, voice, and text with no additional services charges. After 18 consecutive on-time payments your payment can be reduced to $30. Even without the shrinking payments, Boost Mobile offers the cheapest cell phone plans.

AT&T Go Phone - This prepaid version of the AT&T phone service offers $60 for unlimited minutes of talk time and 2GB of unlimited data. If you stream a lot of media or are online often with apps, you can purchase more data at $10 per 1GB. The AT&T network is said to be the most reliable but it they certainly don’t offer the cheapest cell phone plans available.

MetroPCS - An independent cell phone company that runs a piggy-back signal off of T-Mobile service. As the second cheapest cell phone plans on the market, they provide unlimited data, text, and talk for $60 a month.

Cricket Wireless - Cricket Wireless may not have the cheapest cell phone plans available but they make up for it in the amount of data you can transfer. At $70 a month, you get unlimited talk, text, and data up to 10GB.

When searching for the cheapest cell phone plans, something to be careful about is data throttling. While most plans say that you receive unlimited data, it truly isn’t completely unlimited. There is a limit on how much data you can transfer before the network slows the rate of transfer down. This can cause buffering.