Your wireless carrier is probably going all-in on 5G, and it's going to cost you. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon are all pushing hard to move people to their latest plans for 5G service, especially for single lines, but those plans may cost more than you're paying for your older plan.
But there's a big world out there of virtual carriers that resell the big players' 5G service for less, especially for single lines. And if you want to upgrade to 5G, but don't want to pay $80 per month, you can use these to get on board.
There are two big warnings, and a small one, if you go the virtual carrier route. First, if you have a big multi-line family plan, the multi-line discounts from the big carriers may match the pricing from virtual carriers that offer smaller multi-line discounts. Second, the smaller carriers tend to offer fewer phones on monthly payment plans than the big guys do.
The smaller warning is around something called deprioritization. While most virtual carriers no longer have speed caps (Verizon's Visible being an obnoxious exception), data on virtual carriers may be put in a queue behind users of the carriers' own branded plans. YouTuber Stetson Doggett has some great videos on this issue.
This list is a bit different from our story on the best cheap cell phone plans. I'm only going to list high-gigabyte data plans here, because part of the point of 5G is that there's massive capacity and you should be able to use all the data you want. If you're just looking for the cheapest basic cell-phone service, check out our story.
I'm also not including any AT&T-based plans here. As of mid-2022, AT&T's 5G network is significantly behind T-Mobile's and Verizon's in terms of performance. While we are starting to see really good signs for the future, there's still not much more that people are getting from AT&T's 5G that they aren't getting from 4G based plans—yet.
US Mobile
US Mobile is my personal favorite low-cost 5G carrier. It's run by a real phone geek, Ahmed Khattak, and it uses the Verizon 5G network. The "unlimited premium" plan is the one with mmWave 5G as well as C-band and a 100GB data allotment, while "unlimited basic" has C-band and 30GB. Unlimited Premium is $45 for a single line and Unlimited Basic is $35, whereas Verizon charges $90 for a single line with 50GB on these networks.
Spectrum Mobile / Xfinity Mobile
The "cable company mobile" plans both use Verizon's network and have access to all of Verizon's 5G resources. Both carriers' "unlimited" (really 20GB) plans cost $45/month for a single line, with some multi-line discounts. Both are available only to subscribers of their same-branded cable internet services. Both also got higher ratings than Verizon itself did in our Readers' Choice survey, so they're a good bet to switch to if you have the option.
Mint Mobile
Our Readers' Choice winner in 2022, Mint Mobile uses T-Mobile's 5G network. YouTuber Stetson Doggett showed in comparative speed testing that Mint gets similar, ultra-fast download speeds to T-Mobile on the carrier's mid-band 5G network, although T-Mobile has a shorter ping time.
Mint's "unlimited" (35GB) plan costs $30/month—a big savings over T-Mobile's $65 "Essentials" price and also less than Metro by T-Mobile's $40 basic unlimited price.
Google Fi
Google Fi also uses T-Mobile's 5G network, along with US Cellular's in rural areas. While it isn't the cheapest virtual operator, people like it because of the Google branding, and the large amounts of tethering and roaming on its more expensive plans.
Google Fi's base "simply unlimited" (35GB) plan costs $50 for a single line where "Unlimited Plus" (50GB) costs $65. You have to go up to T-Mobile's $90/month Magenta Max plan to get anything near Fi Unlimited Plus's amount of tethering (40GB on Magenta Max.)