Best pay as you go SIM deals 2023: Nab a DAZZLING offer this October
Want to browse, stream and call without a contract? We’ve picked out the best pay as you go SIM deals for you
The best pay as you go SIM deals are ideal for people who don’t want to get tied into a long-term phone or SIM-only contract, particularly if their usage tends to wax and wane through certain months or they’re worried about ongoing costs and potential price rises.
To help you find the best pay as you go SIM deal for your needs, we’ve rounded up the four best into categories below: the best overall, the best with unlimited data, the best budget option and the best deal if you have a need for speed.
It isn’t an exhaustive list, but rather offers that the experienced SIM deal-watchers at Expert Reviews have given the thumbs-up after comparing them against the competition.
1. The best pay as you go SIM deal overall
This Smarty pay as you go SIM deal represents insanely good value for money: you can currently pick up 100GB of 5G data for a mere £12/mth on a rolling monthly contract. Just make sure to be quick because this offer from our favourite mobile network overall won’t be around for long.
View deal at Smarty
2. The best pay as you go SIM deal with unlimited data
This iD Mobile SIM only deal is ridiculous: you can currently pick up bottomless 5G data for £18/mth on a rolling monthly contract. Just make sure that you get in there as soon as possible because this offer from the four-star mobile network won’t be around for long.
View deal at iD Mobile
3. The best pay as you go SIM deal on a budget
We’re big fans of Voxi’s combination of low prices and unlimited social media scrolling. This double data deal is no exception: for £10/mth on a rolling contract, you’ll get 30GB of 5G data, as well as unlimited use of Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram. That’s up from the usual 15GB you’d get for a tenner a month, making it an excellent choice if you’re watching the pennies.
View deal at Voxi
Which mobile network should you go for?
Now that you’ve perused our list of the best pay as you go SIM deals, which mobile network should you sign up with? To help you find the best fit for your needs, we’ve rounded up three of our favourites below to help you decide.
1. Smarty: The best all-rounder
Smarty posted class-leading results in the latest Expert Reviews Mobile Network Awards, bagging the coveted Overall Winner award. It’s a virtual network operated by the same firm behind Three, with its SIM-only deals giving you lots of data at low prices. Even its big-data plans won’t break the bank.
In the survey we conducted for the awards, over 92% of users said they would recommend Smarty to friends or family, while more than 81% of users were satisfied with its customer service and it had some of the best scores for reliability. Three’s network delivers strong 4G performance and some of the fastest 5G speeds, with RootMetrics’ testing putting its median 5G download speed at nearly 200Mbits/sec. 5G coverage is also improving, with Three one of only two networks to reach over half the UK population.
If Smarty can maintain its quality of service as it grows, it’s going to stay the no-frills network to beat.
2. Voxi: The best for social media and streaming
Vodafone-owned Voxi is a budget-friendly network with interesting ideas: its Unlimited perks give you limitless data to use on the biggest social media services, making its cheaper SIM-only deals fantastic value. A gargantuan 98% of Voxi users told our annual survey they were satisfied with the network’s value for money, while nearly 90% said they would recommend it to others.
Vodafone may now be in third place when it comes to performance, having ceded second place to Three, but its UK-wide median download speed (23.8Mbits/sec) and 5G median download speed (130Mbits/sec) are far from bad. Most importantly, Voxi had excellent results for reliability: 21% of its users told us that the network was always fast enough for streaming video, while 55% told us it was fast enough most of the time.
3. iD Mobile: The best for unlimited plans
iD Mobile remains one of the cheapest options for SIM-only deals, especially if you want lots of data and are willing to sign up for a two-year plan. It also lets you roll unused data over to the next month, only adding to the value of its plans.
iD Mobile uses Three as its host network, which means good 4G coverage, growing 5G coverage and decent speeds across the board, particularly if you’re lucky enough to have access to 5G. That said, there’s evidence both from our survey and from Ofcom’s research that customer support needs to be improved: only 29% of iD Mobile’s customers told us they were very satisfied on this count.
So how do we find the best pay-as-you-go SIM deals for you? At Expert Reviews, we put a lot of thought into the offers we recommend and always want to get the most for your money. We’ve outlined our full deal-hunting strategy in a dedicated article, which you can read by clicking on this link.