Providers present prices differently: a promo price for some months, a different price after, fees on a separate line, data in GB or “unlimited”. Before anything is compared, each offer is stored in the same fields:

• Prices in whole cents, in US dollars (USD). Nothing is converted.
• The promo price and how many months it lasts, then the standard price.
• Contract length in months, or rolling.
• Activation, installation and equipment fees, and any guaranteed credits.
• Data in GB or unlimited, download and upload speed in Mbps, minutes and texts.
• The region the offer is listed for, plus any eligibility rules.

Collected offers with a missing or invalid price, or a data allowance that makes no sense, are rejected before they reach our database.

We compare plans by what you would actually pay, spread evenly across the contract. We add up the intro payments, the standard payments, any mandatory one-off fees, take off credits that are guaranteed, and divide by the number of months.

(intro price × intro months + standard price × remaining months + mandatory fees − guaranteed credits) ÷ months in the term

Here is that formula run on a real offer from our data.

Activation, installation and equipment fees are counted when they are mandatory. They are charged once, so we add them to the total and they are spread across every month of the term. Optional extras are not counted.

Credits only reduce the total when they are guaranteed. A credit that depends on something you might not do is not subtracted.

When a plan has no fixed term, or we do not know the contract length, we use a 24-month window so it can be compared with fixed-term plans. Any result built on that assumption is labelled as an estimate.

If the data is missing or invalid, for example an intro price with no intro length, we do not guess. The plan shows as incomplete and gets no price.

Mid-contract price rises are not included unless they are known and stored in our data. They are not stored today, so every result carries a note saying so. Check the provider’s terms for annual changes before you switch.

Eligibility is a hard filter: plans that are not listed for your region are left out, not pushed down. The filters you can set are minimum data, maximum contract length, minimum minutes, minimum speed and a streaming bundle, depending on the category. Plans that fail one are left out too.

What remains is ordered by one thing: real monthly cost, lowest first. Plans with equal cost keep a stable order. If a plan has a condition we cannot check yet, such as new customers only, it stays in the list with a note that eligibility is not confirmed.

The lowest result is labelled as the lowest monthly cost in the list. It is not a claim that it is the best plan for you, or the cheapest in the market.

Comparing plans on this site is free.

If an offer carries a sponsored placement, we may be paid when you switch through that link. It is labelled Sponsored, in text, wherever it appears, before the plan name. How we make moneysays whether any are live.

Sponsorship never changes the calculation or the order. A sponsored plan appears where its real monthly cost puts it.

A sponsored link goes through our tracked redirect before it reaches the provider. It records the plan’s ID, the country, the time of the click, any campaign tags in the link and, when you clicked from a search, the region you searched. It does not record your ZIP code or name.

Prices come from the providers’ own published information. We refresh them about once a week, and every offer shows a Last checked date, so you can see how fresh it is.

Next to the date you will see one plain status. Verified means we read the price from the provider’s published information and it is recent. Check with provider means we read a price but have not been able to confirm it, so check it before you buy. Out of date means we could not refresh it recently and it may have changed.

ZIP code matching tells us which area you are in. It does not tell us whether a provider can serve your address, so where we are unsure we say “We can’t confirm service at your address”. The provider confirms availability when you order.

US: real prices for 313 home internet plans in 16 states, plus 28 mobile and 2 home phone plans, in the areas where each provider sells.

Where we have nothing reliable to show, we say so instead of showing a number we can’t stand behind.

• The final price. The provider’s checkout is the final authority.
• Whether a plan is available at your address.
• Taxes, optional extras and price changes announced after the Last checked date.
• How good a provider’s service or coverage is. We do not rate providers.

Questions? See the FAQ or the short guide to real monthly cost.