BEST PAYG SIMS & DEALS FROM £5

1 For light users on a tight budget

1PMOBILE www.snipca.com/26575 Base tariff:

1p per minute; 1p per text; 1p per MB Network: EE 1pmobile’s proposition is very simple. You pay £10 for the SIM, which includes your first £10 of credit and all your basic requirements cost a penny when that’s used up. If you use less than 500MB of data a month, you should save money compared to rival networks – and if you need more data, competitively priced ‘data boosts’ give you 500MB for just £4, or a whole gigabyte for £6 (see screenshot below). What’s more, credit rolls over with no expiry period, provided you top up at least every 120 days, so your £5 or £10 could stretch a very long way. Charges are higher for premium numbers and text services, and costs also rise significantly while abroad. But with tethering bundled in, 1p is a tempting option even for those that need more calls or data.

2 For moderate users

GIFFGAFF GOODY BAGS www.snipca.com/26576 Base tariff:

15p per minute; 5p per text; 5p per MB Network: O2 Giffgaff is owned by the same company as O2 (Spanish firm Telefonica) and so operates on the same network, but its PAYG pricing is more attractive. Priced £7.50, the cheapest Goody Bag (as the packages are called, see screenshot above right) will get you 1GB of data, 250 minutes and unlimited texts – and the £10 and £12 bundles take that up to 3GB and 500 minutes, or 4GB and 750 minutes. Giffgaff also allows tethering and offers low pricing on international calls (2p-5p per minute). It’s not as flexible as others though. Bundles expire after a month, and there’s no rollover.

3 For heavy users and travellers

THREE www.snipca.com/26577 Base tariff:

3p per minute; 1p per text; 1p per MB Network: Three Of the major networks, Three’s call and data allowances are the cheapest. Its base tariff undercuts EE, O2 and Vodafone, and its mid-range and high-end bundles are particularly good value. £15 gets you 5GB of data, 3,000 call minutes and 3,000 texts, while another £5 raises your data allowance to 12GB. It’s a shame Three doesn’t allow tethering, although credit for unused data does roll over into the next month. Three is also a good choice for roaming: its ‘Feel at Home’ feature lets you use your allowance in more than 60 countries around the world – not just within the EU but also in Australia, New Zealand, the US and more.

4 For international calls

O2 INTERNATIONAL SIM www.snipca.com/26578 Base tariff:

30p per minute; 15p per text; £3 per MB Network: O2 O2’s standard £10 PAYG SIM includes 2GB of data, which is a good deal – and it allows tethering too, which almost makes up for the fact that unused data doesn’t roll over at the end of the month. O2’s real strength, though, is its international bundles. These let you stay in touch with a wide range of countries at very low prices. For example, it’s just 2p per minute to call US mobile phones and landlines, 2p for Spain landlines and 3p for South African landlines. The catch is that UK calls are expensive, and data usage outside the tiny 100-200MB bundles is astronomically pricey – so it makes sense to buy a second SIM for everyday use and save this for international calls.

5 Best unlimited data deal

THREE ALL YOU CAN EAT www.snipca.com/26577 Base tariff:

3p per minute; 1p per text; 1p per MB Network: Three Three’s £35 All-you-can-eat option isn’t the cheapest unlimited PAYG deal – that’s Giffgaff’s £20 Goody Bag. But with Giffgaff, only your first 9GB of data is served at full 4G speeds, after which you’re reduced to 384Kbps between 8am and midnight. Three’s deal is nearly twice as expensive, but gives you unlimited data at full 4G speeds, subject to Three’s Trafficsense traffic management (explained at www.snipca.com/26430). You can’t tether it to a tablet or laptop, but if you need serious amounts of data in the palm of your hand, Three’s offer is the best.