What does this mobile contract really cost?
Work out the full cost of a mobile contract including upfront payments, scheduled price rises and out-of-bundle spending, and compare two properly.
A monthly charge and a term are enough to start. Everything else sharpens the total.
Not enough to say anything yet
Low — this is a starting point, not a finding. More information would change it.
Nothing has been entered that can be turned into an answer. Every tool here works from figures you supply, and none of them will guess on your behalf.
What to try, all free
Look up what you actually used
Both Android and iOS keep a running total of mobile data, and your network shows the last few months in its app. That record beats every estimate on this page — use this tool to sanity-check it, not to replace it.
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Worked out by mobile rules 1.0.0. Nothing you entered leaves your browser.
The monthly price is not the price
It is an instalment. The price is what you hand over across the whole term, and the difference between the two is made of things that are each disclosed somewhere and never added up: the payment due on the day you sign, the increase that starts in month thirteen, the £4 a month of calls outside the bundle, and the cashback that only pays if you remember to claim it in a particular month.
Two contracts advertised at the same monthly price can differ by hundreds of pounds across two years. Two contracts where one is advertised as cheaper per month can be the wrong way round entirely.
Why there is no price-rise rule built in
Because any rule stated here would be wrong for somebody on the day it was written. UK networks have used inflation plus a fixed margin, and more recently flat pounds-per-year increases stated in cash terms; the regulatory position on how these must be disclosed has moved; and the terms differ between contracts sold by the same network in the same month.
A page that hardcoded “your bill rises by CPI plus 3.9% each April” would look authoritative and mislead a good share of its readers. So the increase is read off the contract in front of you. If your contract has one and you leave it blank, this tool says explicitly that the real total is higher than the figure it has shown you.
Cashback, counted carefully
Only enter cashback you are certain of. Redemption cashback — the kind requiring a claim in a specific month with a specific bill attached, often several times across a term — is not the same as money off, because a substantial share of it is never claimed. Treating it as certain makes the contract with the most conditions look like the cheapest one.
Cost per gigabyte, where it means anything
Dividing the effective monthly cost by the included data is useful for comparing two capped plans of different sizes. It means nothing on an unlimited plan, so this tool does not show it there rather than printing a number that divides by a made-up figure.
It is also worth remembering that cost per gigabyte only matters for gigabytes you actually use. Paying less per gigabyte for an allowance three times bigger than you need is a worse deal, not a better one — the data calculator is the place to check that first.
When you are comparing a phone as well
This page compares plans. If one of the options includes a handset and the other does not, they are not comparable here at any price, because one of them contains several hundred pounds of phone. Use the SIM-only versus contract comparison, which costs the handset and the plan together over the same period.