Virgin Mobile offers a strong slate of features at one of the best values among prepaid carriers. If you’re willing to buy a new phone, and you double-check that Virgin’s sometimes lackluster coverage and data speeds work for you, the carrier can be a good choice.
AT A Glance
- Plans start at $20 a month.
- Strengths: Good features at great value.
- Weaknesses: Operates on Sprint’s sometimes lackluster network; can't bring your own phone.
Virgin Mobile cell phone plans
Virgin Mobile offers its bread-and-butter Unlimited plans and a non-smartphone option with the payLo plans.
- Unlimited (500 megabytes): $30.
- Unlimited (4 gigabytes): $40.
- Unlimited (6GB): $50.
- payLo ($1.50/MB): $20.
- payLo (30MB): $30.
- payLo (50MB): $40.
The Unlimited plans offer three tiers of high-speed data (500MB, 4GB and 6GB), all with unlimited talk and text. After using up your data allotment, Virgin drops you down to 2G speeds for the rest of the service period. You can also stream unlimited music from Pandora, iHeartRadio, Slacker Radio, 8tracks and Milk Music without digging into your data.
» MORE: How much data do you really need?
If you’re not on the smartphone bandwagon, Virgin’s payLo plans offer minutes and calls with a little data for basic web access on your non-smartphone. You get 400 minutes for $20 a month, on top of which you pay 15 cents per text message and $1.50 per megabyte of data. For $30 a month, you get 1,500 minutes and texts, plus 30MB of data. Pay $40 a month, and you’ll get unlimited talk and text, plus 50MB of data.
Virgin Mobile’s network
Virgin is wholly owned by Sprint and operates on its network. Both the latest RootMetrics report and PCMag’s Fastest Mobile Networks 2015 found Sprint’s network to be improving — especially in urban areas — though it’s still behind both Verizon and AT&T in speed and coverage. Of course, what matters is whether you get service, not how well a network performs overall. Talking to friends and family who use Sprint in your area is usually the easiest way to discover whether it’ll work for you.
Sprint is pretty strict about what kinds of devices are allowed on its network, and Virgin cheekily follows suit, stating in its FAQ: “At this time, you cannot use a mobile phone from another wireless carrier, or any unlocked device. But it’s the perfect excuse to get a new phone.” That upfront cost is something to keep in mind when weighing your options.
Where to buy Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile phones are available from Best Buy, RadioShack, Target, Wal-Mart and many independent mobile phone stores. They’re also available online.
Current Virgin Mobile deals
As of May 2016, Virgin is offering discounts on about a dozen smartphones, including the iPhone 5S and the Galaxy S5.
How Virgin Mobile compares on price
Virgin Mobile is about as inexpensive as it gets, especially considering what you get for your money. It has the lowest dollar-per-gigabyte cost in two data categories out of all the service providers we looked at for our comparison of prepaid cell phone plans.
How Virgin Mobile compares on features
Virgin’s Unlimited plans include unlimited music streaming from the likes of Pandora and iHeartRadio, along with a few others. For an extra monthly fee, it also offers mobile hotspot and unlimited worldwide texting, among other international options.
Click the image for a more in-depth prepaid comparison.
Autopay discount: Not offered.
Family plans: Virgin seems to be in the process of phasing out its family plans, which were previously under the Data Done Right umbrella.
Unlimited 2G: Allowed after going over your monthly high-speed data allotment.
Unlimited music streaming: The Unlimited plans include unlimited music streaming from Pandora, iHeartRadio, Slacker Radio, 8tracks and Milk Music.
International calls and texts: For an extra $5 a month, you get unlimited calls to mobile phones and landlines in Canada, unlimited calls to landlines in Mexico and unlimited worldwide SMS texting. (Countries you can text to are listed here. Some allow multimedia texting as well.)
For an extra $10 a month, you get all that plus 1,000 minutes to call mobile phones in Mexico, unlimited calling to more than 70 countries and discounts on Virgin’s usual international rates in more than 200 countries.
Mobile hot spot: Available a la carte at $5 for 1GB of data per month or $10 for 2GB of data per month. Alternatively, you can pay $3 for 500MB of data, good for one day only.
Is Virgin Mobile right for you?
If cost is your overriding factor, prepaid mobile doesn’t get much cheaper than Virgin. Plus you get all sorts of neat features. You’ll have to buy a new phone, though, and possibly deal with spotty coverage and slower data speeds. But if Sprint has a strong network presence in your area, Virgin is worth strongly considering.
Stephen Layton is a staff writer at NerdWallet, a personal finance website. Email: slayton@nerdwallet.com.
This article was updated May 28, 2016. It was originally published May 3, 2016.
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