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 or 270 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 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 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 and ASDA Mobile 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
An important requirement of 1pMobile is their minimum required top-up of at least £10 every 120 days. This equates to around £30 of top-ups per year, or approximately £2.50 per month. While there’s no obligation to actually spend this credit, a non-refundable balance would simply 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 (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 with minutes and texts on 1pMobile. |
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ASDA Mobile
The minimum top-up on ASDA Mobile is just £1 if you’re topping up by phone, or £5 if you’re topping up in store with a voucher. You can optionally decide to set up automatic top-ups for when your Pay As You Go balance drops below a certain amount. When using a SIM card from ASDA Mobile, you’ll get 99% population coverage from EE, including on 2G, 3G and 4G. You’ll pay 8p/minute, 4p/text and 5p/MB. Alternatively, bundles are available to buy from £5/month. Your top-ups on ASDA Mobile will never expire providing your SIM card remains active. |
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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 5p/MB with the option of buying a goodybag bundle from £6/month. |
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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. |
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Vodafone Pay As You Go 1
On the Pay As You Go 1 plan, you’ll pay 20p/minute, 20p/text and 20p per 5MB of data. The maximum daily charge is capped at £1 per day which gives you unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and up to 500MB of data. What this means is you can save money by batching up lots of your usage 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). Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to buy a one-month bundle unless you switch to Vodafone’s Big Value Bundles tariff. |
ASDA Mobile offers a Pay As You Go service with coverage from EE. Using 
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.
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, 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.
Jack said:
Just want to say thank you for producing this very helpful resource!!!
Charles said:
If getting a Three Data Reward SIM to use in a phone, can an existing mobile phone number be ported to it? Since the Data SIM ostensibly isn’t intended for voice use (only data) I’m not sure if Three will allow this!?
Thanks.
Charles
Ken replied:
Hi Charles,
Thanks for your comment. I believe it should still be possible to transfer your phone number to one of these SIM cards.
Ken
Charles replied:
Dear Ken,
thanks for your prompt reply: you’re providing a great service here! I’m pleasantly surprised to learn that it might actually be possible to port an existing mobile number to a Three Data Reward SIM! If attempting this, would the procedure be something like:
– order a Three SIM;
– when it arrives, put it in the phone (I’ll be using an iPhone so it should work) and activate it;
– then get in touch with Three customer support and give them the PAC code from my existing provider, plus the phone number I want to port and the phone number of the Three SIM card??
Thanks again,
Charles
Ken replied:
Hi Charles,
Exactly right – that should be how it works. To be 100% honest with you, I haven’t actually tried it myself on a Data Reward SIM but I know they definitely give you the option to do this on their Pay Monthly mobile broadband plans. Therefore, I see no reason why it shouldn’t work with Data Reward (which is technically a Pay As You Go mobile broadband plan) – I believe number portability is still a consumer right, regardless of whether it’s technically a voice or mobile broadband SIM.
Ken
Christine Mitchell said:
My husband needs a PAYG phone purely for emergencies when he is out walking in the Highlands. We both have a mobile PAYG with EE but they keep disconnecting his number as he rarely uses it. Can you recommend a network which will not disconnect his number please.
Ken replied:
Hi Christine,
Thanks for your comment. Unfortunately, all UK mobile networks have a requirement for you to use the handset periodically for a chargeable activity (e.g. for an outgoing phone call). The best option for you might be to get a SIM card from ASDA Mobile which also uses the EE network. They’ll only require you to use your phone for a chargeable call or text at least once every 270 days (but you should ideally try to use it every 180 days if you’re able to do this).
Ken
Eliana replied:
The £10 ultd mins, texts and 10gb data from 3 has been removed in the last week or so I think. Now it seems they’re doing the same deal but with 5gb or data so another network might be more advantageous
Eliana replied:
Hi Christine, but I have a 3 sim that I’ve had between one and two years and haven’t topped it up in about six or seven months and it’s still active. I did used to top up every two months or so when I first had it. Even though I’ve not topped up I did get calls to the number so not sure if that’s made a difference in why it’s not been disconnected but I’m using it just as a normal sim at the moment without fear of it being disconnected. I didn’t even know they did that to be honest as I’ve never had a problem but things may have changed with the type of sims these companies put out now so may not be relevant for you but hope it helps in some way