To find the best AT&T phone plan, you need to identify what it is you're looking for from your wireless coverage. Do you need a lot of data or a low monthly bill? Do you want a plan the covers every member of your family? Are you happy to pay upfront if it significantly lowers your monthly cost?
The good news is that AT&T offers enough plans to meet all of those needs. The challenge is identifying which plan fits in with what you're looking for. The good news is that I can help with that.
I'm regularly looking for the best cell phone plan, which means knowing what each phone carrier charges — and that includes AT&T. In addition to a trio of unlimited plans, I've found that the carrier offers a lower-cost, no-frills plan that's actually one of the best unlimited data plans you can find. AT&T's prepaid offerings are usually pretty good as well, especially if you're willing to pay for a year of coverage upfront.
Even better, AT&T routinely offers great deals on phones, whether you're an existing customer or planning on switching service, and we've got a range of AT&T Mobility promo codes to make those prices even better. So you've got plenty of incentive to find an appealing phone plan with the carrier.
We've looked at every option available through AT&T — both postpaid and prepaid — to find the best AT&T phone plans for both individuals and families. Whether it's unlimited data or a lower-cost plan, we can point you in the right direction.
The quick list
AT&T's best plan
AT&T's best rate on unlimited data is a $50.99 monthly plan with few perks. But it does let you access AT&T's extensive network for less. And you can now add it for multiple lines, though you don't get big discounts as you add lines.
Best value
Pay for a full year of service upfront with AT&T's prepaid plan, and you can get unlimited data at a low monthly rate, with a generous 16GB cap before your speeds are slowed down.
Best family plan
Families will get the best mix of price and data with Unlimited Extra EL, though you can mix and match any of AT&T's unlimited offerings for each line of data on your plan. Get per-line discounts as you add more lines.
Best plan for travel
If you spend a lot of time in Latin America, get Unlimited Premium PL. For $85.99/month, you can access talk, text and data in 20 countries at no extra charge. There's no cap on data, so AT&T never slows your speeds on this plan
Best tiered data plan
AT&T focuses on unlimited data plans, but if you don't need all that data at your disposal, you can pay less each month. This $40 plan gives you a still generous 15GB chunk of data, with unused data rolling over to the next month.
Best plan for seniors
If you're 55 years or older, you can get two lines of unlimited data at a discounted rate through AT&T. You will need to live in Florida to take advantage of this offer, however.
My name is Philip Michaels, and I'm the managing editor for mobile devices at Tom's Guide. My focus includes our smartphone coverage as well as keeping track of what U.S. phone carriers charge for their monthly service. I've been doing that for nearly 10 years at Tom's Guide, so I'm quite familiar with AT&T's different offerings. I've also covered the launch and growth of AT&T's 5G network. And I can also tell you all about the smaller carriers that use AT&T's network to provide lower-cost coverage.
The best AT&T phone plan overall
Best AT&T phone plan value
Best AT&T family plan
Best AT&T phone plan for travelers
Best AT&T phone plan with tiered data
Best AT&T phone plan for seniors
Other AT&T plans
Unlike the extensive options among T-Mobile phone plans and Verizon phone plans, our top picks for AT&T cover most of the different plans at that carrier. However, there are a few remaining plans you should know about as well.
The Unlimited Extra and Unlimited Premium options make up two-thirds of AT&T's three main unlimited offerings. The third option is the cheapest of the trio — Unlimited Starter costs $65.99 for just one line. It offers just 5GB of hotspot data and AT&T can slow your data at any time. Unless you need hotspot data or want the ability to add extra lines, Value Plus will cost you even less.
AT&T splits its prepaid options into unlimited data, tiered data (labeled Value Plans) or multi-month plans. The tiered options include a 5GB plan for $30/month if you find the 15GB option we highlighted above to be too pricey. Under multi-month plans, you can get a three-month 8GB plan at $33/month. (That's $99 up front.)
As for the unlimited prepaid plans, a $40 monthly option caps your speeds at 3 Mbps for the first 30GB of data; after that, your speeds are cut in half for the rest of the billing cycle. (Still, the 30GB cap is nearly double the cap of the $25/monthly unlimited plan you can get by paying for a year in advance.) Among the prepaid unlimited options, we'd steer you toward the $50 plan which includes 5GB of hotspot data and only slows your speeds when there's heavy traffic. A $55 Unlimited Max option increases hotspot data to 25GB and adds cloud storage to the mix.
Note that those these three unlimited plans reflect autopay discounts off their normal rate.
Low-cost AT&T alternatives
If you like AT&T's network, but don't care for AT&T's prices, there's more than one way to enjoy the carrier's extensive coverage. Mobile virtual network operators, or MVNOs, use AT&T's towers to provide their own service, usually at a lower rate than what AT&T charges. The trade-off is that AT&T gives priority to its own traffic so you may see slower data speeds.
The best-known AT&T MVNO is Cricket Wireless, which AT&T owns and operates. Cricket has a $40 monthly data plan that delivers 10GB of data. That's less than AT&T's best tiered data plan, but Cricket does offer an autopay discount to lower its cost to $35. An unlimited data plan at Cricket costs $65/month for one line but includes perks like the ad-supported tier of the Max streaming service — something you don't even get at AT&T.
Other AT&T MVNOs include the senior-friendly Consumer Cellular and Red Pocket Mobile.
Is AT&T a good carrier?
In our guide to the best phone carriers, AT&T ranks behind Verizon and T-Mobile among the major carriers, as T-Mobile offers better perks and Verizon offers an extensive network. That said, AT&T has a strong reputation for its own coverage, as Rootmetrics says AT&T's network was the most reliable during the first half of this year. Overall, the mobile testing firm rates AT&T as the second-best network behind Verizon.
That puts AT&T in an awkward spot. It's not quite as large a network as Verizon, lacking that carrier's extensive coverage. Its plans aren't as affordable as what T-Mobile charges.
While some of AT&T's plans can be quite expensive, it offers ways around this, most noticeably through family plan discounts and savings for nurses, teachers, first responders, military and more; you can also save with some schools, organizations and employers.
