How much do unlimited phone plans cost around the world?

5G becoming the new normal means we’re consuming more mobile data than ever. An unlimited phone plan gives you the freedom to stream or download outside of a Wi-Fi connection without worrying about being capped or incurring overuse fees, but these also tend to be the most expensive plans on offer. Because we’re obsessed with this sort of stuff, we wondered which countries have the cheapest unlimited phone plans and which charge the most for this holy grail of services. We decided to find out.

Before diving into the figures, we want to point out that this guide just gives you an idea of how much the cheapest unlimited plan costs in each country. We’re not saying each one is definitely the cheapest unlimited plan you can find, nor are we promoting or being paid by any of the providers. These are just the cheapest options that our research uncovered for each nation. It’s also quite complicated to make this comparison because the definition of an unlimited plan and what perks are on offer varies from place to place. It’s often a case of comparing apples with oranges, and there will be a bunch of caveats to the figures that we’ll discuss below.

That’s our way of saying that you’re very welcome to take to the comments section to tell us how wrong we are, but at least read the article first. Deal?

How much do unlimited phone plans cost around the world?

We investigated the cheapest unlimited phone plans in 16 countries from across the globe. We then converted the monthly cost of each plan into the equivalent amount of US dollars to make the comparison easier. The results are in the table below, ordered from cheapest to most expensive.

Th country with by far the cheapest unlimited plan of those we surveyed is India. The 349 rupees for a month of the Jio unlimited plan works out to just $4.17 per month, which is more than $10 less than the next least expensive country.

We’re going to go more into the caveats about these plans below, but there’s an interesting quirk of this Indian plan that’s worth highlighting. While it offers unlimited data on a 5G network, usage is capped at 2GB per day on 4G. India was the only country we came across that incentivizes 5G so strongly in this way, and the measure is most likely to ease the burden on a heavily loaded 4G network in such a populous country.

South Korea is the most expensive country to get a cheap unlimited plan, with the Choice Basic plan from KT (Korea Telecom) working out around $65 per month. As with almost every figure in this exercise, this price could have an asterisk next to it. It’s the cheapest unthrottled data plan, but there are cheaper options from the same provider that could be said to be unlimited. We’ll expand on that further below.

It seems that subscribers in the United States are getting a pretty good deal with the $20-per-month Visible unlimited plan. The most affordable unlimited plan in most countries falls within the $16 to $33 price range, and Visible’s offering is at the cheaper end of that scale.

But there’s only so much you can read into this analysis. Let’s take a look at why that might be.

Why is it tricky to compare unlimited phone plans?

This is where we start anticipating perfectly fair criticism of this exercise. There are many reasons why it’s tough to do a like-for-like comparison of unlimited plans in different countries. We could spend all day outlining these caveats, but it’s easier to just give you a quick summary of the main ones.

Some countries don’t have unlimited phone plans

This one is self-explanatory. Service providers in some nations are evidently not willing to offer an unlimited amount of data to consumers, even at a slower speed (see below) or for a very high price. In fairness, such operators tend to compensate with an extremely large data allocation on their top plans. Brazil and France are two examples of this that we came across, with the most generous data plans in both countries topping out at 300GB per month. In fairness, that works out to around 20GB per day, which even the most heavy data users would have to work hard to deplete.

Many unlimited plans slow you down at some point

It’s common for a plan that purports to offer unlimited data to have a nominal maximum data allocation. Once you reach this level of usage, your connection speed is heavily throttled, restricting how effectively you can still use your data plan for the rest of the month.

This is an important caveat to be aware of when you sign up for an unlimited plan. It raises the more philosophical question of whether these plans that technically offer unlimited data should be referred to as truly unlimited. It also throws an unwelcome spanner into our own analysis.

The most expensive country on our list is South Korea, but it’s also a prime example of this issue. The provider, KT, has a number of plans available, with the Choice Basic plan being the cheapest of those that offer “absolutely no limit” on data usage. However, you can get plans for as little as 39,000 Korean won ($28) that offer unlimited data. We didn’t count that plan in our analysis as there’s a measly 1GB cap on unrestricted access, after which your connection speed is slowed to just 1Mbps.

At least it was relatively easy to decide which Korean plan to use for our study. O2 in Germany has a number of unlimited plans without any type of cap, but the kicker is that the more you pay for the plan, the faster your connection can be. We’ve used the €29.99 Unlimited Basic plan in the table, but it’s painfully slow at 3Mbps. Subscribers can up that to 15Mbps on the €39.99 ($43) Unlimited Smart plan, or pay as much as €99.99 ($109) for the Unlimited Max plan to get speeds up to 300Mbps.

You might think that we could have only chosen plans without these fair usage policies for our comparison, but they are few and far between. Just as some countries don’t have any unlimited plans at all, many more nations only have unlimited plans that throttle you at some stage.

Each plan has different perks

While the data allocation might be one of the main features of the plan you choose, it’s far from the only one. Some plans don’t have a huge data allocation but offer perks such as roaming in other countries, free international calls, streaming services, or other benefits to make them worth paying extra for. It’s tough to compare such plans to those that technically offer unlimited data in certain circumstances but little else.

The super cheap Jio plan in India is great if you’re in parts of the vast country that have 5G coverage. If not, you haven’t really got an unlimited plan, and you’re restricted to 100 text messages per day. Those on the Rakuten plan in Japan but not within the Rakuten coverage area are effectively paying for a 5GB allocation, though you’d presumably choose a different provider in those circumstances.

Many plans have promotional prices

When we compare products, we’ll often look at their respective retail prices. The trouble with trying to do that here is that many phone plans, unlimited or otherwise, are almost always on sale. If we’re trying to give you an idea about which the cheapest plan is, do we take the stated value of the plan according to the provider or the semi-permanent sale price you’d almost certainly pay?

The United States is a good example of this issue. At the time of writing, Mint Mobile is running an introductory offer on its unlimited phone plan, allowing you to pay the equivalent of just $15 per month. But that offer only lasts for three months, after which you’re kicked up to the normal $30-per-month rate. We chose not to use that introductory offer as the cheapest in our study. To complicate matters further, the $20 Visible unlimited plan is also a promotional rate, but you get this one for 24 months. We deemed that suitably lengthy to consider it fair for comparison.

We came across the same dilemma in other countries during our research, which is why you should take it all with a big pinch of salt.

Do you need an unlimited phone plan?

As we’ve already touched on, the unlimited plan from any provider tends to be the most expensive available. It might be a nice safety net to have, but do you actually know how much data you use? Unless you’re constantly streaming YouTube or TikTok videos, it might be much less than you think. I’m not much of a video streamer but I don’t hold back with my browsing or Spotify, and I struggle to go through 3GB per month.

Even if you’re terminally online and burning data like there’s no tomorrow, knowing how much you typically get through each month might allow you to choose a better plan. Some of the fixed data allowance plans have enormous allocations and are cheaper than unlimited plans.

We can look to Italy for an example. The €24.99 Vodafone unlimited plan was the cheapest unlimited option we found, but Iliad has a plan for just €14.99 that offers a whopping 350GB of data per month. How much more data do you need?