Mobile phone tariffs that cost £10 or less!

Keep your mobile spending to a minimum with these budget deals.

Mobile phone packages can promise the earth, but a lot of the time you end up paying for features you never actually use. So if you want to keep your spending on your mobile to a minimum, which are the best deals to go for?

Contract deals

With contract deals, the rule of thumb is that the longer you sign up for, the cheaper your monthly tariff will be. That’s very much the case with the clutch of tariffs that cost £10 or less a month that I’ve found:

Vodafone at £10 a month

Vodafone currently offers a two-year contract, boasting 100 free minutes each month as well as 500 text messages.  The monthly cost comes to £10.

Orange at £10 a month

Orange offers a couple of different tariffs, each with a monthly cost of £10. If you’re a big texter, then you may like to go with the tariff offering unlimited texts as well as 30 free minutes a month. However, the alternative offers 500 texts and 100 free minutes.

Both are 24-month contracts.

Three at £10 a month

With Three, you can take advantage of 100 minutes and 100 free texts on its 24-month contract, with a free phone thrown in on top.

Sim-only deals

Of course the trouble with these deals is that they require you to sign up for a full two years, a long time, by which point the tariff may no longer be competitive, or the phone you get with it may be past it. However, you can go for much shorter deals if you’re happy with your existing phone, in the shape of sim-only packages.

Here are some of the best I could find for less than £10.

Virgin Mobile at £8.68

Virgin offers a monthly sim-only deal at just £8.68. The deal provides you with 100 minutes of free call time and unlimited text messages.

Three at £10 a month

Three offers two different sim-only deals, one on a monthly rolling contract, and one on a 12-month contract, both of which will set you back £10 a month.

The monthly sim deal provides users with 3,000 text messages a month, as well as 100 minutes of call time and 1GB of internet usage. Meanwhile, the year-long deal offers the same text and internet allowance, but with the free call time bumped up to 300 minutes per month.

Orange at £10 a month

Like Three, Orange offers two different sim-only deals, one on a monthly rolling contract, and one over a 12-month term. The monthly contract includes 100 minutes and unlimited texts, while the year contract boosts that call time to allowance to 300 minutes. Both deals will set you back £10 a month.

Pay as you go

Of course, if you really want to keep your spending as low as possible, and don’t fancy signing up to any contract, no matter how short, then a pas as you go tariff may work out the best for you. Indeed, as we explained in Pay as you go phones are better value than contract! for some users they work out as the best option.

With the deals below, you not only get £10 of credit, but additional freebies on top! Because of a lack of space, I’m just focusing on four of the main mobile networks.

O2 at £10 a month

With O2 Unlimited, so long as you top up by £10 each month, you will enjoy entirely free text messages to all other O2 users. Alternatively, by going on the Text & Web pay as you go tariff, topping up by £10 will nab you 500mb of internet usage and 300 free UK texts.

And then there’s the Favourite Place tariff, which allows you 500 UK minutes to O2 mobiles and standard landlines from a chosen postcode.

With O2, you can switch between the different tariffs month by month.

Vodafone at £5 or £10 top-up

Vodafone has a few Freebee packages which are worth considering. So long as you top up by £5 during the week, you can enjoy 100 UK minutes and unlimited texts all weekend. Alternatively, with the Freedom Freebee a £10 top-up will get you 100 minutes, 300 texts and 50mb of web use.

With the Text & Web Freebee, a £10 top-up gets you 399 texts and 500mb of web access, while a £10 top-up on the Talk Freebee will give you 1,000 free minutes to all other Vodafone users.

Orange at £5 or £10 top-up

Orange gives its pay as you go tariffs wacky animal names, but the three main ones to consider here are the Monkey, Dolphin and Canary tariffs.

With the Monkey deal, for a £5 top-up you get 25 free texts, plus free music and daily internet. For £10, this jumps to 400 free texts, plus music and internet.

On the Dolphin package, a £10 top-up you’ll get 400 free texts plus free internet, while with the Canary package that £10 will get you 100 free evening and weekend minutes, plus 100 texts or photo messages.

T-Mobile at £10 top-up

T-Mobile offers just the two packages to consider here, the Text plan, which offers unlimited  free UK texts and, and the Talk plan, which offers 100 free anytime minutes to mobile and landlines.

Both require a £10 monthly top-up.

The giffgaff alternative

Finally, there is an alternative to the mainstream mobile networks which I really like called giffgaff. The firm, which runs on the O2 network, employs a community ethos – there aren’t any call centres to call if you have any issues, instead fellow giffgaff users will answer your questions on the firm’s site. And they are rewarded for doing so, as answering questions will see them rewarded with either cash or mobile phone credit.

And as a result, giffgaff is able to offer some seriously attractive deals in the form of monthly ‘goodybags’ (which are basically rolling sim-only deals), three of which will set you back £10 or less. There’s the £5 goodybag, which provides you with unlimited texts to other phones in the UK. Then there’s the £5 a month ‘Hokey Cokey’ goodybag, which gives you 60 minutes, 300 UK texts and a free extra minute for every minute you get called.

For £10 a month, the goodybag will not only provide you with 250 minutes, but unlimited UK texts and internet usage, all on the O2 network. That strikes me as a pretty incredible deal. And when they say unlimited, they really mean it – so long as it is not for commercial or automated use, PC use or tethering.

What do you think about giffgaff or any of the other deals? Let us know your thoughts using the comments box below!

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