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Family mobile phone plans in Australia

Signing up to a family mobile plan lets you share data with your and your family members. Find out which providers offer it, and how it works.

Looking for a way to have your family's mobile plans sorted in one place? Some mobile providers in Australia have the added feature of data sharing on its plans so that you can freely share data amounts with the rest of your family to avoid someone spending too much.

Optus data sharing

Parents and children using a digital tablet and smartphone together

If you have any Optus postpaid mobile plan, you can share data between multiple plans that are grouped under a single account. This works with all of Optus's postpaid offerings, starting from $39 monthly for 10GB.

There's no way to control this data pool — if your plans are linked on the same account, anyone can burn through all the data if they feel like it. Considering the expense of Optus's plans, you could be better off buying your kids a cheaper prepaid plan with more data instead of sharing, especially if you think your kids are heavy mobile users.

Interested in data sharing with Optus? Find out more on how it works here

You'll find the mobile plans that have data pooling options from Optus listed below.

1 - 3 of 5
Name Product Data Price Apply Price
Optus Small Choice Plus Plan $49
PostpaidNo lock-in contract
Optus Small Choice Plus Plan $49
Postpaid
  • Unlimited national calls & texts
  • Optus 5G/4G network
30GB
No excess data charges
$49
per month
Go to site
View details
  • Unlimited standard national calls & texts
30GB
Data
$49
per month
Optus Medium Choice Plus Plan $59
PostpaidNo lock-in contract
Optus Medium Choice Plus Plan $59
Postpaid
  • Unlimited national calls & texts
  • Optus 5G/4G network
100GB
No excess data charges
$59
per month
Go to site
View details
  • Unlimited standard national calls & texts
100GB
Data
$59
per month
Optus Large Choice Plus Plan $69
PostpaidNo lock-in contract
Optus Large Choice Plus Plan $69
Postpaid
  • Unlimited national calls & texts
  • Optus 5G/4G network
220GB
No excess data charges
$69
per month
Go to site
View details
  • Unlimited standard national calls & texts
220GB
Data
$69
per month
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Vodafone data sharing

Vodafone's data sharing is just as simple as that offered by Optus. As long as you have multiple of its standard Infinite and Plus postpaid plans bundled under a single account, you'll be able to share max speed data between them. Just like Optus, this data is pooled automatically and you can't control how much of it each user gets access to.

Vodafone's "infinite data" works the same for this as it normally does: when you exceed your shared data pool cap, all users will be restricted to 2, 10, or 25Mbps on further downloads depending on the plan, but not charged. Vodafone offers a little incentive for you to consider bundling, offering 5–20% bundling discounts on multiple plans, but you may still be better off just buying a cheap plan for the kids.

Here are Vodafone's plans that are eligible for data sharing.

1 - 3 of 11
Name Product Data Price Apply Price
Vodafone Large SIM-only Plan
PostpaidNo lock-in contract
$60/mth when you stay connected with the plan, instead of $65/mth. Eligibility criteria, T&Cs apply. Ends 14.12.23
Vodafone Large SIM-only Plan
Postpaid
$60/mth when you stay connected with the plan, instead of $65/mth. Eligibility criteria, T&Cs apply. Ends 14.12.23
  • Unlimited national calls & texts
  • Vodafone 5G/4G network
300GB
No excess data charges
$60
per month
Go to site
View details
  • $60/mth when you stay connected with the plan, instead of $65/mth. Eligibility criteria, T&Cs apply. Ends 14.12.23
  • Unlimited standard national calls & texts
300GB
Data
$60
per month
Vodafone Small SIM-only Plan
PostpaidNo lock-in contract
$40/mth when you stay connected with the plan, instead of $45/mth. Eligibility criteria, T&Cs apply. Ends 14.12.23
Vodafone Small SIM-only Plan
Postpaid
$40/mth when you stay connected with the plan, instead of $45/mth. Eligibility criteria, T&Cs apply. Ends 14.12.23
  • Unlimited national calls & texts
  • Vodafone 5G/4G network
40GB
No excess data charges
$40
per month
Go to site
View details
  • $40/mth when you stay connected with the plan, instead of $45/mth. Eligibility criteria, T&Cs apply. Ends 14.12.23
  • Unlimited standard national calls & texts
40GB
Data
$40
per month
Vodafone Medium SIM-only Plan
PostpaidNo lock-in contract
$50/mth when you stay connected with the plan, instead of $55/mth. Eligibility criteria, T&Cs apply. Ends 14.12.23
Vodafone Medium SIM-only Plan
Postpaid
$50/mth when you stay connected with the plan, instead of $55/mth. Eligibility criteria, T&Cs apply. Ends 14.12.23
  • Unlimited national calls & texts
  • Vodafone 5G/4G network
150GB
No excess data charges
$50
per month
Go to site
View details
  • $50/mth when you stay connected with the plan, instead of $55/mth. Eligibility criteria, T&Cs apply. Ends 14.12.23
  • Unlimited standard national calls & texts
150GB
Data
$50
per month
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ALDImobile's family pack

With ALDImobile, you can buy a one-size-fits-all prepaid Family Plan. This plan offers you and up to 3 other users access to 72GB of data total for $80. This plan includes controls that let you set individual limits for certain users, meaning one person can't hog all the data if you don't want them to.

All the controls on the account will only be accessible by whoever purchased it and unused data rolls over from month to month.

1 - 1 of 1
Name Product Data Price Apply Price
ALDI $95 Family Plan
PrepaidNo lock-in contract
100GB for the first recharge, then 200GB for the next 3 recharges. Reverts to 100GB/recharge after. T&Cs apply. Ends 7.2.24
ALDI $95 Family Plan
Prepaid
100GB for the first recharge, then 200GB for the next 3 recharges. Reverts to 100GB/recharge after. T&Cs apply. Ends 7.2.24
  • Unlimited national calls & texts
  • Wholesale Telstra 5G/4G network
200GB
$95
per 30 day recharge
View details
  • 100GB for the first recharge, then 200GB for the next 3 recharges. Reverts to 100GB/recharge after. T&Cs apply. Ends 7.2.24
  • Unlimited standard national calls & texts
200 GB
Data
$95
per 30 days expiry
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More providers with data sharing options

While they may not be as family-focused as the ones we've delved into above, the below MVNOs have data sharing or gifting between phones on the same provider. These providers include:

  • Belong. You can gift any amount of data you want to other Belong mobile users. This data will get saved in their data bank if it doesn't get used up.
  • Lebara. You can send 2GB per interaction to another Lebara mobile account, up to 5 times per 30 days.
  • Better Life. While all Better Life plans can receive data gifts from other Better Life accounts, only XL and XXL plans can actually do the gifting. Data is gifted in 1GB increments and can only be gifted until you have at least 150MB left.

Other family mobile bundles

Outside of simple data sharing plans, there is a provider with incentives for families and households to sign up. Yomojo allows you to put up to 6 different mobile plans on the same account, with a sliding discount to the total cost for each plan you add. The maximum discount is 15% with 6 plans attached.

You can take a look at Yomojo's mobile plans in the table below.

1 - 3 of 5
Name Product Data Price Apply Price
Yomojo 6GB
PrepaidNo lock-in contract
Yomojo 6GB
Prepaid
  • 200 standard national minutes + unlimited std. nat. texts
  • Optus 4G network
6GB
$14.90
per 30 day recharge
View details
  • 200 standard national minutes + unlimited std. nat. texts
6GB
Data
$14.90
per 30 days expiry
Yomojo 25GB
PrepaidNo lock-in contract
Yomojo 25GB
Prepaid
  • Unlimited national calls & texts
  • Optus 4G network
25GB
$24.90
per 30 day recharge
View details
  • Unlimited standard national calls & texts
25GB
Data
$24.90
per 30 days expiry
Yomojo 40GB
PrepaidNo lock-in contract
Yomojo 40GB
Prepaid
  • Unlimited national calls & texts
  • Optus 4G network
40GB
$29.90
per 30 day recharge
View details
  • Unlimited standard national calls & texts
40GB
Data
$29.90
per 30 days expiry
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Is data sharing with your family a good idea?

Data sharing can be convenient for businesses where extra data might be floating around and you have an incentive to keep it all under one name for accounting purposes. It's also potentially useful for families where one person may be paying all the bills anyway and data may otherwise be going to waste — for example, one of the parents may not really use all that much data but the kids need extra.

Whether you're actually saving money by grabbing a family data sharing plan depends on your exact circumstances. However, because the providers who allow for data sharing and gifting tend to have lower value or more expensive plans overall, you might not really save all that much, even with bundling incentives and discounts.

Rather, you could be far better off getting a plan for yourself with a reasonable amount of data included and then buying a sensible prepaid plan for the kids with a level of data that you've both agreed upon. That way, you won't be paying any excess data charges if the kids go over the cap and you also won't be paying for data you may potentially never use.

Click here to see our best picks of mobile plans for your kids


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