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.
Clare said:
Virgin payg offer top ups that give you texts/mins/data (deoendenton at least ten pound top up and you get to keep all credit after the full month has passed. For example say on the 29th of the month you top up with £10 or £15 your credit starts on the 1st of the following month. You get so many texts and calls. And data if enough credit. As soon as you pass the last day of the month this reverts to normal call charges/text charges. This is great if you don’t like to be tied to a contract but like to keep credit. And essentially get a free month of no charges. This was handy when I moved as I was using to ring estate agent/removal men/energy companies etc. Handy as a second phone for use occasionally but as stated if you know you going to be using heavier some weeks. Also moving had a delay on my Internet with data allowance I could use this free data kindly given.
Online this doesn’t seem to be available but the supermarkets or pound shops have these sims for a pound or less.
Ken replied:
Hi Clare,
Thanks for your comment. Yes, I think they used to have a tariff called ‘Big Data & Texts’. Like you said, it’s unfortunately no longer available to new customers. However, anyone who’s already on it is able to stay on that plan. Saying that, one downside of the plan in my opinion, is the high Pay As You Go charges (35p/minute, 12p/text and £2/day for 200MB data). This means it’s very easy to use up £10 of credit in less than a week!
Ken
Mike said:
I love the clarity of this site, keep up the good work.
I am a very occasional mobile user, with a traditional T-mobile PAYG credit of around £5, that has lasted for months, so at least EE have not expired it, but they will lose this customer when the credit is finally used-up.
If a customer exceeds the no-use period is the mobile at least able to make calls to emergency services?
Ken replied:
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your comment. In the UK, you can make a phone call to the emergency services (999 or 112) without an active SIM card in your mobile phone. Therefore, it will still be possible to do this.
Hope this helps!
Ken
Stuart said:
I am looking for a suitable PAYG SIM to use on a vehicle tracker. It must have some data allowance (obviously) but also needs to be capable of sending/receiving text (SMS) messages as this is one of the ways of checking the tracker.
The tracker is permanently powered and on the network but would only be actively transmitting/receiving data when contacted via an app.
Thanks.
Ken replied:
Hi Stuart,
Thanks for your comment. I think most of the SIM cards listed on this page should probably be fine. However, it’s worth thinking about how much data it’s likely to use and how many SMS messages it’s likely to send. In addition, if the tracker operates on 2G rather than 3G or 4G, it won’t be possible to use Three or any other network that uses coverage from Three. The level of coverage in places where you’ll go is also worth considering (e.g. if you tend to drive a lot in rural places then something like EE could be more suitable due to the greater rural coverage).
Hope this helps,
Ken