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VPNs for ad-blocking These days, bundles and family plans are far less common but there are a handful of providers still catering to you and yours. Even for providers that don’t offer family plans, there are still ways you save with options like data sharing from Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. There are family mobile phone plans where you get multiple SIMs with shared inclusions for a single cost (e.g. ALDI Mobile and Optus) then there are “family” plans, which are just your standard data-sharing options repackaged as a family offer. So while we’re talking bona fide family plans here, we’ll also touch on the next best thing offered by alternative providers. And if you’re looking for the best phone plans for kids, specifically, you can read more about that here. Before we take a closer look at your options, here’s a breakdown of the top five most popular plans with at least 20GB of data that allow data sharing or data gifting. As for which we think is better value… There are three family mobile phone plans offered by ALDI Mobile at $45 for 44GB and two users, $80 for 88GB and four users and $110 for 132GB and six users. If you do the math, those deals are very decent. The $45 Family Plan works out at $22.50 for 22GB per month per user, the $80 Family Plan works out at $20 for 22GB per user and the $110 plan works out at $18.33 for 22GB per user. Each plan includes a total data pool that each user shares. So if one family member has a stronger appetite for data than the others, it will be deducted from the overall family data pool (rather than an excess charge or top-up fee). The account owner can also set individual usage limits if one member of the family is using more than their fair share of data. Take a look at the most popular individual phone plans from ALDI Mobile to compare them against the family value plans. Not only is the Family Plan cheaper per user than a quarter of $49 Optus Choice Plus accounts, but each user also gets over double the amount of monthly data than they would on the standalone plan. When it’s time to add another SIM to your litter, you can simply add another mobile SIM for an additional $29 per month. This doesn’t get you any extra data, however, so you’ll be sharing your total pool between five. Here’s a quick summary of the most popular individual Optus plans for comparison: Endless data plans offer an allotted amount “max speed” data (your included data amount). Once you exceed that amount of data, you can continue to use your smartphone’s internet connection but your download speeds crawl to a painfully slow 1.5Mbps on most plans. There’s also a new provider on the block, felix mobile, which offers endless data with a generous 20Mbps speed cap at just $35 per month. That said, each member of the family would need to have their own individual felix plan, which could become costly very quickly. In addition, Telstra customers on the $68 per month Upfront plan or better can add up to five discounted plans to their account. You can pick between a $47 per month mobile plan with 15GB or a $10 per month mobile broadband plan with 10GB. On the face of it, $47 for 15GB might not seem great, but if you want to keep your whole family with Telstra, the maths checks out. Telstra’s cheapest Upfront plan is currently $58 per month and includes 40GB of data. It’s also speed capped at 250Mbps. If you were paying for two, you’d be looking at $116 per month with a shared data pool of 80GB. Alternatively, if you take up the $68 per month plan and the bundle plan, you’re looking at $115 per month with a shared data allowance of 195GB. You’re also not subject to the speed cap. While this is only a small saving, you get more than twice the data to share. This trend continues even when you max out the number of bundle plans you add. Customers on bundle plans can also get a new device. Just note that if you cancel or downgrade the $68 per month Upfront plan, you’ll stop being eligible for bundles. For example, four $45 SIM plans on the same account get a total of 160GB to share across each device. But thanks to Vodafone’s Bundle and Save system, each of the four plans would be discounted by 15%, costing $38.25 per month each ($153 in total). $153 for 160GB is pretty good value. Vodafone’s Bundle and Save discounts are available on the postpaid phone, tablet, and mobile broadband plans. Here’s every Bundle and Save discount through Vodafone:
2 plans: 5% off each plan 3 plans: 10% off each plan 4 plans: 15% off each plan 5 or more plans: 20% off each plan
Note that the discount doesn’t apply to handset repayments. Even better, Belong allows unlimited data banking - and that includes gifted data. So, theoretically, if one person in the family didn’t use much data at all, they could either send it to another family member or keep it for a rainy day. Belong now has access to the Telstra 5G network, but speeds are capped at 100Mbps on all of its mobile plans. Woolworths Mobile also offers 10% off your grocery shop (up to $500) once per month. That’s a potential saving of $50 per month depending on the size of your monthly shop. Woolworths Mobile’s overall value makes it a constant front-runner in our recommendations for the best mobile phone plans every month. Here’s the full breakdown:
2 plans: 5% off each plan 3 plans: 7.5% off each plan 4 plans: 10% off each plan 5 plans: 12.5% off each plan 6 plans: 15% off each plan
Data is not shared between SIMs. There are a few catches here. You can only gift up to half of your standard monthly data allowance, there’s a gifting minimum of 1GB per transaction and you cannot give away any bonus data. More mobile plans typically include access to the Telstra 3G and 4G networks, but some plans do include 5G. However, speeds are capped at 100Mbps on all of its 4G mobile plans and 250Mbps for the provider’s 5G offering. That said, Tangerine’s take on this particular perk comes with many of the same constraints. You have to be gifting to another Tangerine customer, you have to be giving away more than 1GB, you can’t offload any bonus data and you’re capped at 50% of your standard data allowance. Still, for some, this might make a lot of sense as a way to use up the generous amount of data that a Tangerine SIM-only plan gets you. For example, Optus’ family plan gives you 320GB to use across four users. Getting a comparable 100GB per month on a mobile plan from the same provider would ordinarily cost you around $59 per account. That works out to be a significantly higher total of around $236 per month (though it does work out to an extra 80GB of data). So long as the individuals sharing your family mobile plan aren’t regularly exceeding the data allowance, then it does come out to be a little cheaper than the alternative. However, if your household is a little more hungry for data than dollars then it might be worth investigating one of the data gifting plans we’ve included above.
