If you’re a light mobile user, it’s best to choose a low-cost Pay As You Go tariff with no monthly subscription or credit expiry.
If you only use your mobile phone from time to time (e.g. for trips away or emergencies), it’s normally best to choose a fairly cheap Pay As You Go SIM card with no regular monthly charges. When choosing a network, it’s also important to look at a number of other factors including the minimum usage requirement, coverage and how you can top-up your SIM card.
In this article, we’ll discuss our top things to look out for when choosing a Pay As You Go SIM card as a light mobile phone user. We’ll also review a selection of recommended networks that we think are particularly well suited for light mobile users in the UK.
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Choosing a Mobile Network For Light Usage
As a light mobile user looking for a Pay As You Go SIM card, we think there are six really important things you need to look out for in your mobile network:
No Regular Monthly Charges
As a light mobile user, it’s highly likely you’ll want to stay away from SIM cards that have a regular monthly charge. This includes any Pay As You Go tariff that requires you to top-up every month.
Because of this, Pay Monthly SIM cards and Pay As You Go bundles should normally be ruled out from your search (we’d only really consider them if your typical mobile phone bill exceeds £5/month). It’ll be better to instead choose a “traditional Pay As You Go tariff” where there are no regular monthly charges and where you only pay for what you actually use (so you’ll pay nothing in the months when you don’t use your handset).
Credit That Doesn’t Expire
When it comes to topping up your account, it’s important to choose a mobile network where your credit doesn’t expire. It’s also worth looking at the minimum top-up amount and at the methods that are available to you for topping up.
On the best Pay As You Go mobile networks, your credit will never expire and you can top-up from as little as £5 each time (many other mobile networks require a minimum top-up of at least £10). You should ideally look for a range of available top-up methods, both in-store and online. The ability to top-up your account automatically when the balance drops below a certain amount can also be useful.
Typically, on most of the larger Pay As You Go networks, your credit doesn’t expire providing your SIM card remains active. However, on some smaller networks, top-ups are sold with only a 90-day validity period. On these networks, if you don’t use your credit within 90 days of topping up, it will expire and will be removed from your account.
Minimum Usage Requirements
The issue of minimum usage requirements is also something that’s worth investigating very closely.
In the UK, all Pay As You Go networks have a minimum usage requirement for keeping your SIM card active. On the best mobile networks, you’ll only need to use your SIM card for a chargeable call or text message once every 270 days. However, on some other mobile networks, this can be as short as 84 days.
On SIM cards with a very short inactivity period, it’s possible for your SIM card to get inadvertently disconnected (this is particularly easy to happen if you only use your phone from time to time). Upon disconnection from the network, you’ll normally lose your phone number and any remaining credit on your account.
Where possible, we recommend choosing a mobile network that only requires you to use your phone every 270 days. For a wider selection of mobile networks, you can also consider mobile networks that require you to use your phone every 180 days.
Reliable Coverage
The level of coverage you can get on your phone is another important consideration. You’ll want to make sure your mobile phone is actually available for you to use during trips away from home and during those “emergency situations”. The availability of all three types of coverage can therefore be beneficial (2G, 3G and 4G coverage).
In the UK, there are only four network coverage providers: EE, O2, Three and Vodafone. All other companies offering a mobile service are known as virtual network operators (MVNOs for short). Virtual network operators piggyback on one of the four coverage providers, so you’ll get the same underlying coverage as when using the host mobile network directly (e.g. customers on ASDA Mobile get the same coverage as customers on EE).
Customer Support
The availability of customer support can be another important thing to consider when choosing a Pay As You Go network.
Most mobile networks offer telephone support, whereas others emphasise online-only support (e.g. via an online forum, e-mail or web chat). For instance, if you’d like the ability to pick up the phone to talk to customer support, you should avoid mobile networks like giffgaff that have purely online support.
Low Prices & Availability of Bundles
Finally, and probably slightly less important than the other five factors, it’s worth looking at the exact per-minute, per-text and per-megabyte rates. Generally, it’s worth choosing a well-priced mobile network but this shouldn’t dominate your decision, especially when compared to the other factors listed above. The reason for this is if you’re only spending £1 or £2 on your phone bill each month, the actual savings from choosing a slightly cheaper mobile network will be small and measured in pennies. You should expect to pay in the region of 8p/minute, 4p/text and 5p/MB.
As well as having access to low Pay As You Go rates, it’s also worth choosing a mobile network where you have the option to buy a bundle when you need one. This can be useful in situations where you need to use your handset a lot (for instance, if you wanted to make a long phone call or if you wanted to use the internet more extensively during a trip away from home).
Recommended Networks
At present, we’d recommend the following SIM cards for a light mobile user:
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ASDA Mobile
On ASDA Mobile, you can top-up from £1 each time (£5 if you’re topping up in-store with a voucher). Optionally, you can also decide to set up an automatic top-up for when your Pay As You Go balance drops below a certain amount. On a SIM card from ASDA Mobile, you’ll get 99% population coverage from EE, including on 2G, 3G and 4G. Bundles are available to buy from £5/month, and as long as you keep your SIM card active, your top-ups will never expire. |
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giffgaff
The minimum top-up on giffgaff is £10 each time and will also give you free calls and texts to other giffgaff members for 3 months after top-up. Regular Pay As You Go rates are 15p/minute, 5p/text and 5p/MB, with the option to buy a goodybag bundle when you need one from £5/month. |
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1pMobile
1pMobile offers coverage from the EE network. Alongside their traditional Pay As You Go tariff of 1p/minute, 1p/text and 1p/MB, data boosts are also available to buy (e.g. giving you a discount of 40% when you use 1GB of data per month). It isn’t possible to buy an all-inclusive bundle on 1pMobile. |
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Vodafone Pay As You Go 1
On the tariff, you’ll pay 20p/minute, 20p/text and 20p per 5MB of data. The maximum charge, however, is capped at £1 per day for unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and up to 500MB of data. What this means is you can batch up a number of long phone calls (e.g. when catching up with friends and family) in order to save money on them. Vodafone offers 99% population coverage on their 2G, 3G and 4G network. You can top-up from £5 each time and your credit will never expire providing your SIM card remains active (you’ll need to use it for a chargeable activity at least once every 270 days). Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to buy a one-month bundle unless you switch to Vodafone’s Big Value Bundles tariff. |
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O2 Classic Pay As You Go
If you’re looking for low rates on one of the four big providers, O2 offers a Classic Pay As You Go SIM card. You’ll pay 3p/minute, 2p/text and 1p/MB when using the service. Top-ups are available from £10 each time and you’ll need to use your phone at least once every 180 days to keep the SIM card active. Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to buy a one-month bundle unless you switch to the Big Bundles tariff. Three also offers the same rates on their 321 tariff, but with 3G and 4G network coverage only. For this reason, we’d typically recommend the Classic Pay As You Go plan from O2 over the similar plan from Three. |
ASDA Mobile is our recommended network for the majority of light mobile users. With 
If you only use your mobile phone from time to time, but tend to use it quite a lot on the days when you do, For information on how other mobile networks compare to this, please see our in-depth guides to topping up, the minimum usage requirements you need to comply with, mobile network coverage, accessing customer support and Pay As You Go rates.
More Information
For more information about Pay As You Go deals, you can read our other in-depth guides around this topic. In particular, it’s worth seeing our overview of the best Pay As You Go SIM cards and our comparison of traditional Pay As You Go deals.
Web Dude said:
Yes, Ken, their data charge is steep – would be OK if more granular eg 10p for 10 MB or 5p for 5.
Some older phones have poor control over data so could wipe out the credit v easily – one Alcatel flip phone I have seems to randomly go to a (predefined) site, so not one I use much – looking for voice and text only SIM deal to limit charges!
P Gabb said:
Nice article as a low user and wish to not to have a contract I picked up a Pay as you Go card for 02 and expected to just top it up when required. £10 would last me months.
Instead of this I now found out it in order to keep the rollover I need to pay monthly. I wish to change this to Traditional Pay As You Go with 02 but on there online site this is not offered..
Having my new card for a just few weeks I soon found out I could not text or make a phone call after, I took advantage of the free wifi in my local & used the web. Does 02 charge you using the free wifi? I not texted & just made 1 phone call. Still, I had to top up.
I would use data for use of Facebook, Twitter using free wifi at home or in pubs etc than for phone calls do you know of a Pay as You Go
Do you know if a traditional Pay As You Go which would offer a larger data useage then text messages.?
Ken replied:
Hi there,
If you don’t want to top-up your phone every month, you can switch to O2’s Classic Pay As You Go tariff. Here, you’ll pay just 3p/minute, 2p/text and 1p/MB. You can either order a new SIM card from O2 or you can text CLASSIC to 21300 on your existing O2 SIM card. With Classic Pay As You Go, you’ll just need to use your phone for a chargeable activity at least once every 6 months.
Hope this helps,
Ken
todd said:
Hey great article! Any chance you can recommend a similar carrier that meets these requirements for the US?
Ken replied:
Hi Todd,
Thanks, and that’s a really good idea! Unfortunately, I don’t know very much about US cell phone carriers, being based in the UK myself! Perhaps someone else though might have a few recommendations?
Ken