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Choosing a wireless plan from AT&T may require extra columns in a spreadsheet, courtesy of an additional set of subscription options coming from that carrier on May 27.
This new Build-A-Plan option presents a customer with an unlocked phone (as required by its fine print) with a series of choices. After a base rate of $15 a month for unlimited calling and texting and 1GB of data, customers will have to consider how much data they want for on-phone use and how much to share with other devices via a phone’s mobile hotspot feature.
You can upgrade from the default 1GB to 5GB for $5 extra, to 15GB for $10 extra, to unlimited data with streaming video at standard-definition resolution for $20 extra, and to unlimited data with ultra-high-definition streaming video (aka 4K, as in more than the resolution of an iPhone 17 Pro Max or a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra) for $35 extra.
Reserving 5GB of any of those extra-data allocations adds $5 to the bill; 25GB of hotspot tacks on $15, and 50GB costs $20 extra.
These rates don’t factor in taxes and fees, like AT&T’s existing unlimited plans, but unlike the OneConnect bundle of fiber and wireless AT&T began selling last month. (OneConnect also includes a wireless package that is itself different from AT&T’s standalone subscription offers; things have gotten a little confusing lately with the Dallas telecom firm.)
Buying wireless service with limited allotments of data may feel like a throwback-telecom exercise, if not a return to some of the wireless industry’s less appealing moments. But prepaid services such as Mint Mobile and Consumer Cellular, which sell cheap phone plans for people who use less data, remain popular, as our Readers’ Choice awards regularly show.
Comparing Build-A-Plan to the Unlimited Your Way plans that AT&T rolled out in March reveals some money-saving possibilities. In particular, it might be hard to justify getting the Value 2.0 plan with its 5GB of priority data and 3GB of mobile hotspot, which runs $50 with autopay. You could get 5GB of high-speed data and have it all available for hotspot use with Build-A-Plan for $25.
If you need unlimited data and 50GB of mobile hotspot (many people might find the 25GB hotspot tier more than sufficient) but don’t care about UHD streaming, Build-A-Plan would cost $55 a month. The cheapest Unlimited Your Way plan to meet those criteria, however, would be the $70 Extra 2.0 option.
But while all Unlimited Your Way plans include some priority data that should not get slowed by the carrier to cope with network congestion, Build-A-Plan’s unlimited-data options don’t include any, per a fine-print item: “On unlimited plans, AT&T may temporarily slow data speeds if the network is busy.”
The carrier’s press release doesn’t spell out what happens if you max out a 1, 5, or 15GB quota, but an AT&T publicist clarified in an email that customers in those situations will see their speeds throttled back to 128kbps, a 2G-grade trickle, until the next billing cycle. They can also buy 5GB of supplemental data for five days for $8.
Subscribers to these plans should keep a close eye on their data use and be prepared to take advantage of Build-A-Plan’s advertised flexibility to change plans from month to month.
Build-A-Plan also parts company with AT&T’s earlier offerings by not offering any multiple-line discounts. In Value 2.0’s case, that can bring the cost of one line down to $30 a month in a household with three active lines.
Build-A-Plan also doesn’t offer autopay discounts, despite requiring subscribers to set up automatic payments. Finally, there’s no international roaming included, but the requirement of an unlocked phone means anybody who signs up for Build-A-Plan can and should download the eSIM of their choice for a trip out of the US.