Top pick
If more data is more important to you than coverage in non-metropolitan areas, the Go5G plan offers a great price for unlimited data on a strong network. Plus, T-Mobile has the best 5G service and international plans.
If data is your priority—meaning, you want a fast network connection that you can use to download and upload in volume—consider the T-Mobile Go5G plan. This unlimited-data offering doesn’t get top billing on T-Mobile’s site; you have to click or tap the “See More Plans” button on the carrier’s plans page. But it represents a better value proposition for most people’s needs than AT&T’s or Verizon’s comparable plan, and the carrier’s rollout of 5G has made an already good network considerably better in a steadily expanding share of the country.
Go5G is the best unlimited-data plan based on price alone. Go5G costs $75 a month for unlimited on-phone data. That includes 100 GB of priority-data usage, after which T-Mobile might slow your connection to ease network congestion. That’s more than the 75 GB allotment on AT&T’s comparable plan, which costs $10 more; meanwhile, Verizon’s closest equivalent includes unlimited priority data but costs $10 more. At both competitors, those rates don’t include the taxes and fees that T-Mobile folds into its advertised rate. (Two lines of Go5G cost $65 each, and four run $35 each.) You can use only 15 GB of that data for mobile-hotspot sharing, which is less than what the competition offers on slightly more expensive plans, but it’s also far more than enough for the occasional use that we assume in our for-most-people scenario.
T-Mobile offers two cheaper options. We previously recommended T-Mobile’s Magenta plan, which is $5 less than Go5G and offers 100 GB of priority data and a 5 GB hotspot quota. That plan is still available, but T-Mobile now requires you to call or use its site’s chat function to order it. That usually happens when a plan is about to be discontinued, so we don’t recommend it.
Meanwhile, if you’re 55 or older (select “Age 55+” underneath “Phone & discount plans”), T-Mobile has discounts that make this carrier an even better choice. They trim the cost of Go5G to $60 for one line and $45 each for two lines, and $55 each for three or four lines. If you’re about to hit the double-nickel milestone, make a note to yourself to switch to this plan, because in our experience we’ve found that T-Mobile may not advise you that you’re eligible.
T-Mobile has the best 5G coverage. All the data allotment in the world is unhelpful if the connection is too slow to use, but T-Mobile’s network has jumped ahead of the pack, in part because of its 5G frequencies. T-Mobile’s mid-band spectrum offering provides impressively fast 5G with better coverage than the almost-as-speedy C-band and much faster but far shorter-range millimeter-wave of AT&T and Verizon. This mid-band 5G, which T-Mobile markets as Ultra Capacity 5G, is much speedier than the low-band 5G that fills out its network and constitutes the most widely available form of 5G among its competitors.
The difference has become increasingly obvious in third-party tests, as well as in our own evaluations of Wi-Fi hotspots from the big three carriers.
Opensignal’s crowdsourced 5G-specific tests from July 2024 showed a significant advantage for T-Mobile (outlined in the table below), more than 50% above Verizon’s and AT&T’s download averages. In addition, T-Mobile’s 5G was available almost 68% of the time, compared with just under 12% for AT&T and almost 8% for Verizon. Ookla’s Speedtest showed comparable leads in Q4 2023 for T-Mobile in median download speeds (188.96 megabits per second versus 91.62 Mbps on Verizon and 90.82 Mbps on AT&T) and 5G-only median download speeds (238.87 Mbps, with Verizon at 196.43 Mbps and AT&T at 125.73 Mbps).
PCMag gave T-Mobile its first-ever fastest mobile network ranking in 2021. The carrier maintained its position as the best mobile network in 2022, the last year the publication did its drive testing. And RootMetrics’s latest drive-testing-based State of the Mobile Union report, for the first half of 2024, found T-Mobile to have the fastest median download speeds: 307.6 Mbps, double Verizon’s 152.2 Mbps and AT&T’s 140.7 Mbps. But RootMetrics gave top overall honors to Verizon for offering more consistent service outside urban areas, with AT&T not far behind.
| Average 5G download | 5G availability | |
| T-Mobile | 226.7 Mbps | 67.9% |
| Verizon | 150.5 Mbps | 7.7% |
| AT&T | 142.1 Mbps | 11.8% |
Opensignal’s July 2024 report showed that, on the median, T-Mobile’s 5G network was faster and more available to its customers than those of the other two national carriers. Source: Opensignal
AT&T and Verizon each launched faster 5G service on C-band frequencies in January 2022 and have since taken this midband coverage nationwide past relatively small launch areas (just eight for AT&T [PDF] and 46 mostly urban markets for Verizon), but T-Mobile’s advantage has persisted.
Go5G offers the best bonuses for frequent travelers. Go5G includes international roaming—5 GB of full-speed roaming in the 11 European countries in which T-Mobile’s corporate parent Deutsche Telekom offers service, 128 kbps elsewhere. The latter speed looks painfully slow, but I’ve found it to be more than adequate for email and basic browsing. You also get free texting, 25¢-per-minute calling, and the ability to use your phone in Canada or Mexico with no roaming charges for up to 10 GB a month, even on 5G. And it includes an hour of free in-flight Wi-Fi—and full-flight connectivity four times a year—on your phone on Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines.
T-Mobile also offers higher-end unlimited options, but Go5G is best for most people. Go5G Plus costs $90 for a single line, $75 each for two lines, or $55 each for four lines, and it ups the hotspot allocation to 50 GB, provides 5 GB of international roaming a month in more than 200 countries, and covers full-flight Wi-Fi for free on every flight on partner airlines. This plan also throws in Apple TV+ and Netflix’s standard with-ads service. People who travel frequently and were already set on watching those streaming services might find that Go5G Plus offers some net savings in their combined wireless and entertainment budget, but otherwise it looks like T-Mobile’s least relevant plan besides the new, $100 Go5G Next, which offers a new phone every year for compulsive upgraders.
T-Mobile’s discount for those 55 and older drops the cost of all those plans: On a single line, Go5G Plus costs $75 and Go5G Next costs $85, with multiple-line scenarios offering comparable savings.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
T-Mobile’s rural coverage lags behind that of AT&T and Verizon. Coverage from those carriers remains more comprehensive than T-Mobile’s—as I saw on rural roads in the Southeast and Northwest while doing drive testing for PCMag—but thanks to the past few years of improvement in T-Mobile’s network, you’d have to get into fairly remote areas to notice that difference. Before choosing a plan, determine whether your likely travel patterns are more apt to make T-Mobile’s rural limitations an ongoing problem.
International roaming is complicated if you haven’t paid off your phone. Although T-Mobile’s international roaming costs much less than AT&T’s and Verizon’s international options, you may have to pay those charges if you buy your phone from T-Mobile on an installment-payment plan, as this carrier keeps such handsets locked until you pay off your balance—or conclude the term on a free-upgrade deal.
T-Mobile has a history of data breaches, with its largest in August 2022. That breach affected some 40 million customers—I was among them. I thought about dropping T-Mobile, but the telecom industry’s general indifference to the concept of data minimization left me with little reason to think I’d fare much better in the long run elsewhere. That history makes T-Mobile’s recent move to limit its autopay discount to payments made from a bank account or debit card look even more distasteful, although its enforcement of this policy seems to be uneven so far.
T-Mobile management does not seem immune to wireless-industry jerk behavior. Since 2013, T-Mobile has led with an “Un-Carrier” brand based on dumping dumb wireless-industry habits. But T-Mobile has scored enough own goals—for example, a plan to move people on some older plans to more expensive options that the carrier said it had abandoned before jacking up rates on many older plans by $5 a month and informing customers via text messages—to remind subscribers that they need to watch their monthly statements and other customer notices as much as they would with any other carrier.
