T-Mobile's newest wireless plan reshuffle brings both good news and bad news to anyone looking for the best cell phone plans.
On the positive side of things, the newly launched Experience plans boost some of the perks you get with your unlimited data while also locking in your monthly rate for the next five years. But the reshuffle also gives you fewer options at T-Mobile, and it eliminates what I considered to be the best family cell phone plan you could get at any U.S. phone carrier.
The new T-Mobile plans launched today (April 23) are Experience More and Experience Beyond. They start at $85/month and $100/month, respectively, when you apply an auto-pay discount. They also replace the Go5G Next and Go5G Plus plans that T-Mobile has offered in recent years; the standard Go5G plan is also a goner. (More on why that's a bummer below.)
Experience More and Experience Beyond: What you get
The Experience More plan offers unlimited talk, text and data, and comes with free subscriptions to Netflix's standard tier along with Apple TV Plus. You now get 60GB of hotspot data — the old Go5G Plus plan offered 50GB — and you can use your data when you travel to other countries. (Trips to Canada and Mexico come with 15GB of high-speed data, with 5GB available in 215-plus other countries; after you use those amounts, speeds slow to 256kbps.)
The Experience More plan also adds something missing from Go5G Next — satellite coverage, which is set to launch in July. It's free through the end of 2025, but after that, Experience More subscribers will need to pay $15/month to keep satellite service.
The pricier Experience Beyond plan includes free satellite connectivity beyond the end of the year. It also promises 250GB of hotspot data, along with the same streaming benefits of the Experience More plan. In addition, Experience Beyond customers get a Hulu with Ads subscription.
Experience Beyond also comes with double the data for trips to Canada and Mexico (30GB) and triple the data for the rest of the world (15GB). Like Experience More customers, the Experience Beyond plan features full-flight Wi-Fi and texting on flights where connectivity is available.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Experience More | Experience Beyond |
Monthly cost, 1 line | $85 | $100 |
Monthly cost, 4 lines | $170 (3rd line waived) | $215 (3rd line waived) |
Talk, text and data | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Hotspot data | 60GB high-speed | 250GB high-speed |
Travel in Mexico and Canada | Unlimited talk and text, 15GB of high-speed data | Unlimited talk and text, 30GB of high-speed data |
Travel in 215+ countries | 5GB of high-speed data | 15GB of high-speed data |
Streaming services | Free Netflix Standard, Apple TV Plus | Free Netflix Standard, Apple TV Plus, Hulu with Ads |
Satellite connectivity | Free for 2025; $15/month afterward | Free |
Device upgrades | Every two years | Every year |
Both plans allow you to upgrade your phone — with Experience More, you can upgrade every two years, while Experience Beyond promises annual upgrades.
The big lure may be the five-year price lock, which T-Mobile is positioning as a hedge against rising costs in everyone's daily lives. However, there's a big caveat to that guarantee — the price lock only covers your monthly rate, while taxes and fees on the plans can still go up. Previously, T-Mobile baked the cost of taxes and fees into its rates.
Why the end of Go5G matters
We've been concentrating on single lines of data, but you can get multiple lines of the two Experience plans, with T-Mobile increasing the discounts as you add more lines.
Two lines of Experience More would cost $140 each month or $70/line. A family of four would normally pay $220/month, which works out to $55/line, but with T-Mobile waiving the cost of a third line at the moment, that total works out to $170, or $42.50 per line.
Experience Beyond costs $170/month for two lines; four lines of data cost a total of $215/month, with the cost of the third line waived.
That pricing is comparable to what you'd pay at AT&T and Verizon. AT&T's middle-of-the-pack Unlimited Extra plan costs just under $164/month for four lines, while four lines of Verizon's Unlimited Plus plan work out to $180/month total.
The real problem is that T-Mobile used to offer a cheaper option for unlimited data with its Go5G plan. A single line of Go5G would have cost you $75/month, but four lines of data cost just $155 with T-Mobile's third-line-free promotion. Even if you had to pay for the third line, you'd still be paying $180/month — just about what Experience More costs with a discount in place.
It's true that Experience More offers better perks than Go5G did, including more hotspot data and travel benefits. But families on a Go5G plan did get the cost of their Netflix subscription covered, along with 5GB of high-speed data when traveling in 11 countries. While some families will appreciate the better perks of the Experience More plan, others may have wanted the option of a cheaper plan.
T-Mobile does offer cheaper unlimited data plans in the form of its Essentials plan, which starts at $60/month for just one line and goes up to $105 for four lines. But perks on the Essentials plan are minimal — high-speed data is capped at 50GB, your hotspot data speeds are capped at 3G speeds, and the only place you can use data when traveling outside the U.S. is in Canada and Mexico. And even then, Essentials slows down your speeds to a crawl.
Metro by T-Mobile updates
T-Mobile isn't just tweaking its own plans. It has also made changes to the options at its Metro by T-Mobile prepaid business. Starting tomorrow (April 24), the discount carrier is introducing four new plans with five-year price guarantees of their own.
The Metro Starter plan promises four lines of data for a total of $100/month once an autopay discount kicks in, while the Metro Starter Plus plan includes unlimited data for $40/month.
A new Metro Flex Unlimited plan includes annual device upgrades plus unlimited data, with families of four paying a total of $120/month after an autopay discount. The Metro Flex Unlimited Plus plan promises a $10 discount off the current $70/month Metro Flex Plus option while retaining that plan's best perk — an Amazon Prime subscription.
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