If you’re a light mobile user, it’s best to choose a low-cost Pay As You Go plan with no monthly subscription or credit expiry.
If you only use your mobile phone from time to time (e.g. during trips away from home or as a backup for emergencies), it’s normally best to choose a fairly cheap Pay As You Go SIM card with no regular monthly charges.
When choosing your Pay As You Go SIM card, it’s important to look at a number of factors such as the minimum usage or minimum top-up requirement, the coverage available on the SIM card and how you’re able to top up the SIM card.
In this article, we’ll discuss our top things to look out for when choosing a Pay As You Go SIM card if you’re a light mobile 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 is because you’ll need to pay a fixed amount every month, regardless of whether you actually use your SIM card that month.
Because of the regular monthly charge, Pay Monthly SIM cards and Pay As You Go bundles should normally be excluded from your search unless your typical mobile phone bill will exceed £5/month.
Instead, you’ll be better off choosing a “traditional Pay As You Go plan” where there are no regular monthly charges on your SIM. Instead, you’ll only pay for what you actually use (so you’ll pay nothing in the months where you don’t actually use your phone).
Credit That Doesn’t Expire
When it comes to topping up your SIM card, it’s important to choose a mobile network where your credit doesn’t expire. It’s also worth having a look 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 it’ll normally be possible to top-up from as little as £5 each time. Other mobile networks require a minimum top-up of £10. You should ideally also look for a range of available top-up methods, both in-store and online if possible. The ability to top-up your account automatically when the balance drops below a certain amount can also be useful.
Typically, on the larger Pay As You Go networks, your credit won’t expire providing your SIM card remains active. However, on some smaller mobile networks, top-ups are sold with only 90 days of validity. On these networks, if you don’t use your credit within 90 days of topping up, it will expire and be removed from your account.
Minimum Usage Requirements
The minimum usage requirement for keeping your account active is worth investigating very closely before choosing a mobile network.
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 180 days. However, on some smaller mobile networks, this can be as often as every 84 days.
On SIM cards with a very short inactivity period, it’s possible for your SIM card to get inadvertently disconnected (this can happen particularly easily if you only use your mobile phone from time to time). Upon disconnection from the mobile network due to inactivity, you’ll normally lose your phone number and any credit remaining on your account.
Where possible, we’d recommend choosing a mobile network that only requires 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 2G, 3G and 4G coverage is therefore very important.
In the UK, there are only four network coverage providers: EE, O2, Three and Vodafone. All other networks are known as mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) and piggyback on coverage from one of the four providers. This means you’ll get the same coverage as on the underlying network (so for instance, customers on 1pMobile will get coverage from EE and customers on giffgaff will get coverage from O2).
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, but some networks emphasise online-only support (e.g. through an online forum, e-mail or web chat). 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 online-only 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 fairly priced mobile network. However, 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 a few pounds on your phone bill each month, the savings from choosing a slightly cheaper mobile network will be small and measured in pennies.
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 required. This can be useful in situations where you need to use your mobile phone a lot in a short amount of time (for instance, if you wanted to make a long phone call or if you wanted to use data more extensively on 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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1pMobile
You can order a SIM card from 1pMobile with £30 of credit and no need to top-up for one year. After the first year, there’s a minimum required top-up of £10 every 120 days to keep your SIM card active (equivalent to £2.50 per month). While there’s no obligation to actually spend this credit, a non-refundable balance would accumulate over time if your average usage is less than £2.50/month. 1pMobile offers coverage from the EE network. Alongside their traditional Pay As You Go tariff (1p/minute, 1p/text and 1p/MB), data boosts are available from £6/month. It isn’t possible to buy an all-inclusive bundle with minutes and texts on 1pMobile. |
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giffgaff
The minimum top-up on giffgaff is £10. Each time you top-up your account, you’ll get free calls and texts to other giffgaff members for the next 3 months. This means you’ll pay absolutely nothing to call friends and family who are also on giffgaff. If you’re calling customers of a different network, it’s 25p/minute and 10p/text. Accessing mobile data costs 10p/MB with the option of buying a goodybag bundle from £6/month. |
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Vodafone Pay As You Go 1
On the Pay As You Go 1 plan, you’ll pay £1/day for unlimited UK minutes, unlimited UK texts and up to 50MB of mobile data. You’re only charged on the days that you actually use your mobile phone. You can save a lot of money on Pay As You Go 1 by batching up your usage together on one day (e.g. making lots of phone calls together on one day). Vodafone offers 99% population coverage on their 2G, 3G and 4G networks. 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). If you like, you can also buy a one-month Big Value Bundle from £10. |
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Three Data Reward SIM
On the Data Reward SIM card, you can top-up from just £2 each time (less than the £5 minimum top-up that’s required on Three’s normal Pay As You Go service). The downside is you won’t be able to buy one of Three’s 30-day bundles with unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and a data allowance from £10/month. You can buy a Data Reward SIM card for £10. This comes with a 1GB data allowance for your first month, followed by 200MB of free data every month that follows (with no need to top-up your SIM card any further to get this). |
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Three Pay As You Go SIM
On Three, your Pay As You Go credit will never expire providing you keep the SIM card active by using it at least once every 180 days. You can top-up from £5 each time. A key benefit of joining Three’s Pay As You Go service is that you’re able to use your mobile phone abroad in 71 destinations at no extra charge. Three’s Go Roam offer covers most of Europe along with the USA, Australia, Brazil, Singapore and more. |
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, 
Three offers a traditional Pay As You Go plan called the 
Customers joining Three on their regular Pay As You Go service have the option of buying a monthly bundle from £10/month. Without a monthly bundle, you’ll pay 10p/minute, 10p/text and 5p/MB.For information on how other mobile networks compare, please see the following in-depth guides:
- Minimum usage requirements & credit expiry: Find out how often you’ll need to use your SIM card in order to keep it active and to stop it from expiring.
- Topping up your phone: Information on how to top-up your SIM card and how much credit you can add to it.
- Mobile network coverage: Find out how coverage compares across different UK mobile networks, and the coverage provider used by each network.
- Pay As You Go rates: Compare the per-minute, per-text and per-megabyte rates for every Pay As You Go mobile network in the UK.
More Information
For more information about Pay As You Go deals, see our other in-depth guides around this topic. In particular, it’s worth reading our full overview of the best Pay As You Go SIM cards. We’ve also got an in-depth comparison of traditional Pay As You Go deals.
John Michael Oliver said:
Hello,
Three Data Reward SIM. On their website they don’t mention smartphones, only tablets and the like.
If this SIM does work for ‘phones will the £10 top up last more than a month ? Or does it disappear like the free data ?
Thanks,
John
Ken replied:
Hi John,
Thanks for your comment. The Data Reward SIM is technically classified as a mobile broadband SIM card but there’s nothing to stop you from using it in a mobile phone. With regards to the top-up, it won’t expire and will remain on your account as long as you keep it active 🙂
Hope this helps,
Ken
John Michael Oliver replied:
Thanks Ken,
This explains it much more clearly.
Michael Blaxall said:
If your buying a sim card to go into a tracker, then DON’T buy from Giff-Gaff When purchasing my new Mercedes they asked did I want a tracker installed and this would be done at the factory, I said yes, and they asked I purchase a Sim card of my own choice and they would install it for me. I phoned O2 and asked about theirs and also mentioned I was also looking at Giff-Gaff and they told me they operated their system, so phoned them and advised I wanted this to be installed in a tracker and they said no problem, do I want them to send me a Sim Card. I said yes, and asked £5 credit be put on it, and told, £5 may not be enough, if your car gets stolen then this will stop working when the £5 is used up, and to get £10 with an automatic £5 top up, which I agreed to, this was then put in my tracker and no one knew other that the fitter in Germany knew where. All was working as it should then I had an email from Giff-Gaff to say I had not used the card for 3 months and gave 7 days to use it or the card would be cancelled, I phoned and explained it was in a car tracker and would only be used if I reported the car stolen to the Police and told, not our problem, you have 7 days to use it or its cancelled and with it all your credit. I tried various people at Giff-Gaff and non were helpful, and after 7 days they cancelled my card and also my credit, so Giff-Gaff goes at the very bottom of companies I would advise you buy from
Kelly said:
Hi, This is an interesting read. I’m looking for a sim pay as you go for my daughter. Looking at all the all deals the pay as you go has changed! You used to be able to get a sim, top up when needed and everything just carried forward. Now it seems if you don’t use it you lose it. What’s the best way forward for a good deal with a young teenager? I don’t want to pay the earth every month.
Ken replied:
Hi Kelly,
Thanks for your comment. These “traditional” Pay As You Go deals are still available but they tend to be worse value than one-month bundles (especially if you’re using a smartphone). Are you looking for a SIM card that you can use in a smartphone? If so, you should be able to get a SIM card for as little as £5/month with unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and an allowance of data (e.g. on SMARTY or giffgaff).