Keep your teen happy with a mobile plan that does it all, and your wallet happy because it won't cost you a fortune.
All our picks for the best mobile plans for your teenager come with unlimited standard calls and texts within Australia, and there's options for how much data you're after too.
333
Mobile plans compared
49
Mobile providers
4
Expert picks
We take these factors into account when choosing our winners:
Keep in mind: Our best picks might not always be the best for you. Always compare your options and choose the one that best suits your circumstances.
Southern Phone is our top pick for the best mobile plan for teenagers this month.
The amount of data you get in return for the monthly cost is great - even when the price reverts to $25 a month after 3 months.
Plus, you get access to an Australia-based customer support team and have the benefit of being with a carbon neutral provider at no extra cost.
The best cheap plan for teenagers this month comes from Dodo.
Get 30GB of data for just $20 on your first 3 months. After that, data will revert to 15GB per month.
This plan has no lock-in contract and includes $100 international call credit. You can also have your SIM delivered to you for free anywhere in Australia.
felix is bagging the best unlimited data mobile plan category this month.
Use the code 'FELIX50' upon checkout and get unlimited data for only $20 on your first 3 months. This plan also provides unlimited data banking and unlimited standard calls and texts.
felix is a certified carbon neutral telco and aims to plant one tree every month you stay with them.
Belong is our top pick for the month if you're after a high data plan.
Signing up with Belong's 160GB plan means you're essentially paying $0.34 per GB which is good value for month.
You also get access to Telstra's 4G and 5G wholesale networks, unlimited data banking when you pay on time and unlimited international calls and texts to 30 selected countries.
Here are a few things to consider when trying to pick the best plan for you teen:
Data pooling on bundled plans can be great for families. Just make sure everyone's getting their share of the data and one person isn't hogging all of it!
Optus allows you to purchase several postpaid mobile plans together and enable data pooling with them. This combines their associated data limits into one, accessible to everyone with a pooled plan, and also places them all onto a single bill.
With Vodafone, you can bundle together several postpaid plans onto one bill and activate data pooling between them. Not only will everyone who is bundled in have the ability to use this data, but you can also control who has access to the pool and how much they can use to stop someone going way overboard.
Prepaid plans require you to pay ahead of time for a certain amount of monthly usage and your services are usually cut off when you go over this limit. Postpaid plans will usually let you go past the limit but will charge you for the excess at the end of your payment period.
We recommend a prepaid plan with unlimited talk and text for your teenager. This means that they'll always be able to contact you, but you'll both have to agree to purchasing extra data if they use it all up.
On the other hand, the major benefit of a postpaid plan is that you generally get more value for money overall.
If your teenager is under the age of 18, you'll have to put your name on their phone plan because they legally can't. However, this doesn't mean that you have to be the one who pays for it.
Having your teenager pay for their own phone plan, especially a prepaid one without the possibility of bill shock, can help them with responsibility or learning to budget.
This depends on a couple of things: how much your teenager wants to use the Internet on their phone, and how much you're willing to pay for. It's probably a good idea to sit down with your teenager and hammer out a compromise based on what both of you want.
To help you out, here's how much data common mobile activities consume:
| Activity | Data use |
|---|---|
| General web surfing | 2.5MB per page (roughly 60MB per hour) |
| Social media | 150MB per hour (90MB without videos) |
| Music streaming | 90MB per hour |
| Standard video streaming | 720MB per hour |
| HD video streaming (1080p) | 1.5GB per hour |
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