I think you should look into pre-paid SIM cards. I use Vodafone. Just pay upfront and use it whenever. Only drawback is if you are inactive for a year, you'll lose the credit. But they warn you about it and you can save the credit by just making a call or send a text. Works fine for me.
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2026
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Seems like they only offer limited-time 'travel' plans in the US. You could renew them ... but the longest one is only 30 days, so that's basically just a monthly payment with extra steps.
Ah that's a bummer. I'm in Europe, so no idea if pre-paid is offered at all in the US... Hope you find something useful.
so no idea if pre-paid is offered at all in the US
It's seeming like it isn't...
And worse/more annoyingly, the searches are filled with 'The top pre-paid plans! Starting at $10/month!' Apparently, in the US now, "pre-paid" means you still have a monthly fee, you just have to pay it in advance now.
Here is a plan for 5$ per month for 300 minutes from tello.
Edit: To clarify, I don't believe a true prepaid minutes only plan exists in the U.S. This was the most basic/cheapest plan I was able to find.
Your best bet might be something like tracfone that you top up with cards you can get pretty much everywhere
No idea what the cost on them is these days and I haven't looked into any of their fine print in probably 20 years, but I'm pretty sure they offer a one year plan
Tracfone has apparently been bought out by Verizon and only exists as a subsidiary of Verizon now ... and at least for right now, Tracfone's entire website is down, replaced with 'maintenance pages'.
What you're asking for has never existed in the US as far as I can tell. There have been some prepaid plans with rollover, so every payment you make gets added to a credit balance that you draw against by making calls, but you have to keep adding money every month or every 3 months or else you lose it all.
Simply having a phone number costs money (like a domain name), so any plan that allows you to receive calls is going to have recurring charges. If you don't need a phone number and have internet access, you could use something like linphone and a SIP plan. Those are around $.01/minute with no recurring charges depending on where you enroll. You usually have to make a minimum payment in advance, like $20, which gets drawn down as you use it.
I've heard Google Voice assigns you a phone number at no charge, but you have to figure that if you aren't the customer, you're the product. Otherwise, phone numbers at least at retail in the US are around $1 a month depending. You can get them from the same places that have SIP plans. I'm on vitelity.net which is more like $1.50/month but it's been ok for me. Twilio seems to have pivoted towards enterprise. voip.ms is another well known one.
The shitty burner phones they sell at Walmart or Dollar General, often called "drug phones" are pay by the minute, no contract needed things.
I've never heard of one of those with no recurring charges (typically you get a service plan that expires after 1 year), but yes, that type of phone is super cheap. Like here's two flip phones each with 1 year of service, $70 for both:
I think there's a way to do two sim activations on one phone, so you get two years of service. r/nocontract on spezzit would have more info about this.
QVC used to have tons of cheap Android phones (search "tracfone") with similar deals but they're all OOS now, I guess due to AI semiconductor shortages. No idea about Walmart. I haven't looked at ebay recently.
Here's a bunch of other links: https://old.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/1setzil/low_data_phone_plan/of1yxnz/
I think Helium Zero is long gone, and has to have been a privacy invasion scam or something. But other stuff starts at $2.40/month which most people can manage. Redpocket is fairly decent these days and they have a $30/year plan on ebay.
Here's some others: https://prepaidcompare.net/ But remember that "free" never really is.
Added: I can reasonably recommend this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/136840233242?
It's $30/year for unlimited voice and data plus 200MB/month of data, which is comfortably enough to check email and Lemmy now and then, though not enough for video watching or heavy web surfing. I'm on a $10/month T-mobile plan from them and it's mostly been ok.
Hmm, another idea might be a data-only plan plus your google voice number and a VOIP client. That's going to be pretty annoying though.
Added: I can reasonably recommend this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/136840233242?
It’s $30/year for unlimited voice and data plus 200MB/month of data, which is comfortably enough to check email and Lemmy now and then, though not enough for video watching or heavy web surfing. I’m on a $10/month T-mobile plan from them and it’s mostly been ok.
Strange... Why are $2.50/mo plans available on ebay, but not through Red Pocket's website? The lowest shown on their website is ~$10/mo.
IDK but they've done that for a very long time. I remember wondering if ebay had some exclusive deal with them for annual plans. For a while, the website only had monthly plans. Or maybe, they are adding some friction in the hopes of getting some less careful shoppers to pay more.
Hmm... Last time I checked, though, they'll still withdraw from your balance every month whether you use it or not, though ... so it still amounts to a monthly payment.
It depends on the plan you get. Either you get pre-paid minutes (which can be bought with cash, which is another reason they are commonly used by drug dealers) or you pay month-to-month.
Check out jmp.chat
Not exactly pay as you go, but crazy cheap and all pre-paid time is always there, never expires.
I have one in the UK, not sure if they call it PAYG over there but may be worth searching for that.
I've searched for 'pay as you go', but the results are full of companies that charge monthly fees, just charged in advance, without a contract.
That's exactly what prepay is.
No contract, no account, no bill in the mail.
You buy a month of use and it stops working when the time is up.
Nobody charges per minute because the analogue networks have been shut down. All network traffic: calls, text, Internet, it's ALL data now.
Probably. The cost of serving a minute of phone call or an SMS text has gone down to the point where a lot of plans don't really meter it. Plus, there is a cost to managing an account and it likely isn't worth servicing a phone that's only paying $1 a month.
What company is this from, and does this include voice/text, or is voice/text an additional monthly fee?
Jmp.chat
Available in the US and Canada.. Costs around $6 a month and you get 120 minutes per month. No data
Can pay with crypto