Tello Mobile Plan Review (2026): Low Cost, Reliable Service

Insanely low cost. Transparent pricing and plans. Many customizable plan options. Comparable data speeds and reception.

In low-reception areas, data speeds falter worse. Data speeds might get squelched during high congestion. Not as good for frequent international travelers.

I know that I am paying too much for my phone plan. I have known this for years. Like about two-thirds of America, I use a postpaid unlimited phone plan from one of the big three cell phone carriers. In my case, it's T-Mobile, which has the best 5G coverage and speeds, according to analysis from OpenSignal and Ookla, not to mention a whole bunch of perks I forget to use, like free AAA membership. Some part of me just wants “the best” phone service.

And so here I am, paying $75 a month as a baseline cost on a grandfathered unlimited plan—and that's before I factor in loss insurance or phone payments. But I have long known that I could get access to those same T-Mobile cell phone towers, and ostensibly the same 5G service, for a fraction of the price by using any number of prepaid mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) phone plans that use T-Mobile's network.

Am I just a sucker, I wondered? With my budget cinching tighter each month, I decided to test this hypothesis—the one about me being a sucker. So I tried a budget phone plan from Tello Mobile. Tello is a no-frills, no-commitment phone carrier that ranks among the lowest-cost unlimited phone plans in the US. Tello rents bandwidth on T-Mobile's network and costs as little as $10 a month for a plan with starkly limited cell data but unlimited texts and calls.

My assumption was that Tello's service would be notably worse than T-Mobile's, or that its limitations would be more … limiting. But a couple of weeks later, I have not found this to be the case. After roaming the earth (OK, mostly just Oregon) while running data-speed tests on both T-Mobile and Tello, I can attest that Tello's reception was reliable and that the data speeds were comparable (though not quite equal) to T-Mobile’s.

The reason, most likely, is that T-Mobile’s vast investment in 5G service has left lots of bandwidth to spare—removing the technical limitations that previously made budget prepaid phone plans a much dodgier choice. With Tello, I still risk that my data might be deprioritized during moments of extreme congestion, though I didn’t witness this even when sidling up to a sports stadium. There also are no discount phone upgrades, no protection plans, no free international roaming, and no particular perks.

But for a low-data user like me—I use 12 gigs a month and am almost always tethered to Wi-Fi—Tello costs less than half as much as the comparable T-Mobile plan.

The $25 Phone Plan

The process of signing up for the Tello prepaid plan turns out to be a complete nothingburger, as long as I've got a compatible unlocked phone. I was done in five minutes. I selected the $25-a-month unlimited plan online ($27 with fees), scanned a QR code using my phone's camera to get an eSIM, and promptly received a new working phone number. I did not switch my existing number to Tello for this test, but this option is available.

The $25-a-month plan I selected is Tello's top-tier plan, with 50 gigs of high-speed data and unlimited horrible-speed data. A 10-GB hot spot is also included, which turned out to be pretty fast when I tested it: about 4G data speeds. There are no family plans or discounts, but for a solo phone user, Tello is about as cheap as it gets, especially if you use very little cellular data.

Below the top tier, Tello allows you to build any number of plans with unlimited talk and text but absolutely rigid data caps. Above your allotted maximum, the data simply stops flowing. For $10 you get a mere 2 gigs of data per month. For $15 you get 10 gigs. And $20 gets you 20. Plans that limit call times offer nominal discounts.

That's it. That's the end of what Tello offers. You get a certain amount of cellular data and probably unlimited talk and text. Easy hookup. No commitment. Heck, you can't even prepay Tello's plan beyond one month in advance (I tried). You just pay each month. International roaming costs extra at a rate of 5 cents a minute, or a penny a text.

Tello sells compatible new and refurbished phones for as low as $109. These phones are guaranteed compatible with Tello's network, with one-year installment plans available through the Affirm pay-as-you-go service.

But you don't have to buy phones from Tello if you don't want to, and the phone prices aren't particularly good or bad on their site. You can instead use an existing unlocked phone (check compatibility here), or pick off a good deal on a major brand among WIRED’s favorite cheap phones.

Most newer, brand-name phones compatible with VoLTE (voice over LTE) work with Tello, but be sure to check whether your model is compatible with the channels Tello uses. Overseas phones, older phones, and phones bought on other budget carriers might not be compatible.

What Are Data Speeds and Service Like With Tello?

The $60 question is, of course, whether Tello's download speeds and service can compare to T-Mobile's. T-Mobile understandably prioritizes data for its own customers on its cell towers. Other carriers that use T-Mobile's data network, whether Mint Mobile or Tello Mobile, have to stand in line during times of peak congestion.

I spent a couple of weeks roaming the city with two phones: an older iPhone 13 hooked up to T-Mobile and a 2025 Motorola Razr signed up for Tello. Given the newer phone's superior modem, I figured this gave Tello every possible chance to perform as well as T-Mobile's network.

Everywhere I went, I ran a speed test on both phones simultaneously: at home, up in the shoddy-reception West Hills, near Portland's northern swamplands, near the stadium during a sold-out Portland Fire WNBA game. Surprisingly, I didn't notice my Tello data getting throttled near the stadium, though I can't guarantee I was on the same tower as the people inside.

But Tello's latency was significantly higher in general—not enough to affect a game of Royal Match, but maybe you have higher demands. The download speeds were also lower for Tello in any given location, but not by a whole lot.

At home, my cellular 5G data speeds tend to run at about 800 to 900 megabits a second on T-Mobile. With the Tello phone, it was around 30 percent slower. But both these speeds are well into 5G territory. They're also a full order of magnitude faster than you'd ever need for 4K video. I had no problem streaming my usual dose of Josh Johnson comedy, if that's what you're wondering.

Curiously, upload speed was actually faster with the Motorola Razr using Tello than with the old iPhone using T-Mobile. After consulting with my colleague Julian Chokkattu, who has covered phone advances for years, I'm likely to chalk this up to improved modem performance by the newer Motorola, not a secret backdoor to faster uploads by Tello.

It's only in areas with degraded or 4G reception that I started to see real lapses in Tello's performance. In the outskirts of Portland near its forested northwestern ridge, Tello got fewer bars than T-Mobile—and the data arrived at speeds slow enough to bother me. A couple of speed tests timed out. Uploads also began to crawl in low reception areas as compared to my T-Mobile phones, sometimes dipping down into only a quarter of the speed of T-Mobile's network.

Which is to say: Most of the time, Tello worked just as well as T-Mobile. Except for the stray moments when it didn't. The moments when Tello's performance is noticeably worse are usually the moments at which you're demanding the most from your phone: clinging to a stray bar of reception, or streaming a video while riding a train.

When Would I Want Tello Instead of T-Mobile?

Whether the trade-off is worth it will depend on what type of phone user you are. Family discounts are better with the big providers. Frequent international travelers should also probably stick with the big boys. International roaming will cost you with Tello, as will texts to and from most countries outside Latin America and Europe. Travel is also when you're most likely to use up lots of data outside Wi-Fi networks.

The other big financial differentiator is how often you upgrade your phone. With Tello, you're on your own when it comes to procuring a device, while T-Mobile and other postpaid plans keep you hooked to their high-priced plans by offering you the latest and greatest gee-whiz phones at steep discounts.

If I'm buying a new iPhone 17 directly from Apple, I can expect a two-year payment plan with payments of $33 a month. If I opt for a locked-in iPhone 17 on T-Mobile, it'll cost me a mere $4 a month for the same two years. A new iPhone 17e will cost me nothing except a two-year commitment. In the immortal words of every cheapskate, that's how they get you.

But it's also how they make it pencil. If you're the sort to upgrade your phone annually or biennially, the cost advantages of Tello evaporate, especially when you add in the various incidental perks loaded into T-Mobile plans, whether free AAA or Netflix memberships, or international roaming.

But if you're like me, and you hang on to your old iPhone 13 for more than a half-decade because it's not broken? And you don't use much data to begin with, because you always hunt out a Wi-Fi signal anyway? In that case, you might save yourself hundreds a year by swapping to Tello. You'll also gain a lot of flexibility to switch plans. At the lowest end of the spectrum—a TCL flip phone and the lowest 2-GB data plan—one could conceivably buy a phone and a prepaid plan for a total of less than $25 a month.

Before trying out Tello, I assumed this lowered cost would be bought off by a lot of inconvenience. Now, I am less sure this is true. Gas prices are insulting. Housing costs are worse. I never know what beef is going to cost this week, nor what fresh trade beef I'll wake up to. I still haven't gotten over the current price of toilet paper. Maybe the cost of my cell phone service is the one thing I can control.

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