AT&T vs AT&T Prepaid: What Option Should You Go With?

AT&T is one of the “big three” in wireless, along with Verizon and T-Mobile, and anyone with a cell phone probably knows these names. AT&T has been in the game since October 13th, 1983, when they launched the first commercial cellular telephone service in Chicago. Little did we know back then how much things would grow and evolve, no longer do we have big brick phones or keyboards with buttons you have to press multiple times to send one simple text. Instead we have touch-screen phones and lighting fast thumbs, and as that technology has grown, so has AT&T. They currently have millions of customers and are looked to from many as a good option for wireless.

But therein lies the question, a question that many have different opinions on: postpaid or prepaid? Or more specifically for today: AT&T vs AT&T prepaid. There’s a lot of pros and cons to each option and since you’re going to be sticking under the AT&T umbrella and just want to compare their postpaid and prepaid options we’ve got you covered. Let’s discuss the ins and outs of AT&T and AT&T prepaid:

• Quick Overview: Postpaid & Prepaid
• What the Coverage Looks Like from Both Plans
• How the Plans Compare: From Price to Features
• The Verdict

Quick Overview: Postpaid & Prepaid

To go over the coverage, pricing, and features of AT&T’s postpaid and prepaid plans, the first thing we need to talk about is what postpaid and prepaid mean and compare the two so you can see their advantages and disadvantages. 

Let’s first start with postpaid:

• If you’re a fan of all the bells and whistles of a cell phone plan including but not limited to calls, texts, data, subscription service deals, international and hotspot benefits then postpaid might be your guy. With a postpaid plan every month you will pay a monthly bill and if you have an “unlimited” phone plan- which most phone plans seem to be as of recent, then you’ll end up paying the same flare rate each month. 

Those who are on a limited postpaid plan might get charged more if they go over their monthly threshold of data, calls, and/or texts for that billing cycle. For those always on your phone, (don’t be afraid to say it, we are one of those people), a postpaid plan may be more alluring as they tend to be more reliable because you don’t need to worry about adding minutes or data packs as you go on with your day-to-day. 

Next up, prepaid:

• While a postpaid plan may come with a contract, prepaid plans normally come with zero contract. In fact, instead of paying for your service on the same date every month, you will pay for your service in advance before use. Prepaid is also known as “pay as you go” – you pay for what you need and not a penny more. However when you miss a payment, your phone service will turn off, so that can be a downside, though if you aren’t a frequent phone user and don’t need your phone for a month this might be a good deal! You aren’t locked into a contract so you can save money by pausing the pan until you need to again.

There’s a lot of flexibility when it comes to prepaid phone plans and if you’re someone who doesn’t use their phone a lot or would often find themselves way under their current data allotment then a prepaid plan might be a great way to save money. Of course you won’t get all the “bells and whistles” of a postpaid plan, but you’ll still get a good spread of basic options perfect for a light phone user. Plus if you end up needing a bit more minutes, texts, or data, a lot of carriers will have “add-ons” which are packages you can buy for the month to add those extra minutes, texts, and gigabytes you need. 

So to quickly recap before we move onto our next section: postpaid plans are great for heavy phone users and prepaid plans are great for a lighter phone user. That’s good to note as we next talk about the coverage AT&T offers from their postpaid and prepaid plans.

What the Coverage Looks Like from Both Plans

Since we are comparing two AT&T services you’ll be happy to note that you will have the exact same coverage for both regular AT&T postpaid plans and prepaid plans with one exception. Their ‘Unlimited $40/mo’ prepaid plan does not offer 5G access, meaning for this one specific plan you will only be able to connect to their 4G LTE coverage. Other than that each postpaid and prepaid AT&T plan has the same levels of coverage no matter the pricing or type of plan you choose. 

As for the levels of coverage you can expect from AT&T? Well, overall they are normally stuck in the middle between their two competitors Verizon and T-Mobile. Verizon is noted to have the best 4G LTE coverage while T-Mobile has the best in 5G but AT&T’s coverage doesn’t slip too far from the two. In fact if you’re looking for a perfect balance between the two companies then AT&T is a pretty safe bet.

As you can see from this screenshot of their coverage map, AT&T offers a wide range of signals to not just the United States but also parts of Mexico, Canada, and Puerto Rico. 

How the Plans Compare: From Price to Features

Now that we have coverage information, the time has come to compare all the postpaid and prepaid plans based on all the goodies you know and love like price points, data limits, bonus benefits, and more. Since we’ve been starting with postpaid in our comparison so far, let's continue the trend and talk about AT&T's postpaid wireless plans first.

As per their website, AT&T seems to have a total of five postpaid plans, with four of them having unlimited data while one is for limited data. We’ll go over the “most popular” plans out of the bunch first and then discuss the other two postpaid plans:

• Now it’s good to note that all of these prices are if you sign up for AutoPay, if you aren’t on AutoPay you will end up paying more than what we listed. This is in small text on their website so it’s easy to miss so we thought we’d let you know here in case of any miscommunication. The other note is that taxes and fees still apply so these aren’t the finalized prices for their postpaid plans.

The one stand-out to AT&T’s postpaid plans is the price decreases when you add more than one line, for instance for the AT&T Unlimited Premium® PL if you add 4 lines the price goes from $85.99/mo. per line to $50.99/mo. Prices will typically decrease anywhere from $10 to $15 per line for each plan, not just the Unlimited Premium® PL.

Overall AT&T’s postpaid plans look pretty similar in terms of our “bells and whistles” counter, though their data speeds slowing down after a certain amount of usage does change between plans. So if you’re a super-duper heavy data user the Unlimited Premium® PL plan might be the move- (the Unlimited Extra® EL has an impressive 75GB threshold which is still great for the heavy data user). The other “unlimited plans” data threshold is a bit tricky to discern but there’s a consensus that it’s 60GB. 

AT&T’s Prepaid Plans:

AT&T has six prepaid plans and all but one, like we said before, have access to their 5G service. Just like their postpaid plans we will go over their most popular options first and then talk about the others:

AT&T’s prepaid plans are pretty straightforward in terms of how much data you’ll get per month, the few perks, and the prices. The prices don’t change when you add another line, that all stays the same and again, pesky taxes and fees apply, but as you can tell from the price glimpse they are indeed a good chunk of change saved.

The Verdict

Although they are noticeably less expensive, AT&T’s prepaid plans don’t offer the insanely high data threshold the postpaid ones do, but if you aren’t a heavy data user then we’d definitely recommend going for prepaid for a few extra bucks saved off the monthly bill. 

The differences between postpaid and prepaid plans aren’t truly noticeable, if you hop from one plan to another you can make up for a missing item like for example their “Unlimited talk, text and data in and between the U.S., Canada and Mexico” perk is in most of their plans, but not all, so if that’s something you really need you can easily switch for only a few dollars more.

If you want to compare and contrast AT&T to over 1,200 other phone plans so you know you’re getting the service that’s right for you, then make sure to check out the REALLY compare page which allows you to look at pricing, coverage, what phone plans are available, current deals and steals, and how you can make the most of your potential phone bill.