A few frills, a reasonable price and a solid network make Cricket Wireless an attractive prepaid cell phone option.
AT A Glance
- Plans start at $25 a month
- Notables: AT&T’s solid network and coverage; cheap family plans
Cricket Wireless cell phone plans
Cricket Wireless plans range from no data to unlimited data, with plenty of choices in between.
- Unlimited talk and text: $25
- 2 gigabyte: $30
- 5GB: $40
- Unlimited: $55
- Unlimited Max: $60
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Data speed on Cricket’s standard unlimited plan is capped at 3Mbps, which is slower than the 4G LTE speeds most smartphone users expect. Data speed is not capped on the Unlimited Max plan.
Cricket offers a $5 monthly discount if you opt for automatic payments on 5GB and larger plans. The same is true for Cricket’s Group Save discount, which is an attractive feature for people shopping for a family cell phone plan. With Group Save, you get $10 off your second line, $20 off your third, fourth and fifth lines.
» MORE: 4 ways to get a cell phone plan with no credit check
Cricket Wireless’ network
Cricket is owned by AT&T and uses that carrier’s network, but Cricket’s LTE download speeds are capped at 8 megabits per second. That’s slower than what AT&T customers typically experience but still plenty fast to stream video and scroll through Instagram.
» MORE: How an MVNO can save you money
How Cricket Wireless compares on prices
1GB or less 2-4GB 5-7GB 8-10GB Unlimited
*Project Fi customers pay $20 for unlimited talk and text. Data is billed at a rate of $10 per gigabyte.
**Republic Wireless customers pay $15 for unlimited talk and text. Data is billed at a rate of $5 per gigabyte.
AT&T GoPhone
$35 (1GB) $50 (8GB) $65
Boost Mobile
$35 (3GB) $50
Cricket Wireless
$25 (talk and text only)
$30 (2GB) $40 (5GB) $55
MetroPCS
$30 (2GB) $40 (5GB) $50
Project Fi*
$20 (talk, text and Wi-Fi)
$30 (1GB)$40 (2GB)
$50 (3GB)
$60 (4GB)$70 (5GB)
$80 (6GB+)
$80
Republic Wireless**
$15 (talk, text and Wi-Fi)
$20 (1GB)$25 (2GB)
$30 (3GB)
$35 (4GB)$40 (5GB)
$45 (6GB)
$50 (7GB)$55 (8GB)
$60 (9GB)
$65 (10GB)N/A
Sprint prepaid $45 (4GB) $65
Straight Talk Wireless $30 (1,500 minutes, unlimited texts and 100MB data) $35 (2GB) $45 (10GB) $55
T-Mobile prepaid
$45 (4GB) $55 (6GB) $70
Verizon prepaid
$30 (500MB) $40 (3GB) $50 (7GB) $60 (10GB) $75
Virgin Mobile
$35 (5GB) $45 (10GB) $60
Keep an eye on your cash. NerdWallet breaks down your spending and finds you new ways to save each month.
Stephen Layton is a staff writer at NerdWallet, a personal finance website. Email: slayton@nerdwallet.com.
Updated August 29, 2018
