Compare the best NBN 25 plans in Australia

Real talk: NBN 12 may be the slowest speed tier available but you shouldn’t get it. Not really. Think of NBN 12 as only for super-basic one-person internet. For every other home, NBN 25 should be considered the minimum because, for not a whole lot more money each month, you get a whole lot more value. Let’s have a look at the best NBN 25 plans and which homes should consider them.

Before we get into that, here’s a daily updating list of the most popular NBN 25 plans from our comparison engine.

The list above is the most popular NBN 25 plans, but there are a few other key reasons to consider NBN 25 plans. For starters, NBN 25 plans can offer download speeds more than twice as fast as NBN 12 (25 Mbps vs 12 Mbps) and up to five times faster than NBN 12 upload speeds (5Mbps vs 1Mbps). Note that most NBN providers we track in our comparison engine offer max-speed 25Mbps for NBN 25 plans, except for Superloop (22Mbps), Mate (24Mbps) and Moose NBN (24Mbps).

Below is a look at some of the fastest NBN 25 plans in our database.

There’s not a lot of difference between monthly prices for NBN 12 plans and NBN 25 plans. In our comparison engine, NBN 12 plans range from around $60 per month to $65 a month. For the NBN 25 plans we track, monthly prices start at around $60 and go up to $80 a month. While that’s a higher cap, it’s an identical entry price point to NBN 12 for those after a cheap NBN 25 plan.

The daily updating list below shows the cheapest NBN 25 plans in our comparison engine.

One of the reasons NBN 25 plans are so competitively priced is it’s where more NBN providers are competing. NBN 12 plans are offered by fewer providers these days; we only track a handful in our database. Conversely, we track more than 20 NBN 25 plans in our comparison engine. More plans equate to better inclusions and other perks, like a tendency for discounted initial promotional pricing.

NBN 25 is fast enough for most online activities. According to NBN Co, NBN 25 (or Home Basic II) is built for a home with one or two people and the following online tasks:

• Web browsing
• Social media
• Sending and receiving emails
• Streaming music
• SD video streaming

Those recommended online activities are actually quite conservative. NBN 25 with 25Mbps max download speeds could be used for more. As long as the 25Mbps bandwidth isn’t being used for internet intensive tasks like file downloading, NBN 25 can comfortably handle a single 4K stream or up to four HD video streams on Stan, Netflix, Disney Plus or Prime Video.

NBN 25 can also manage Zoom and other video calls, plus it’ll comfortably tackle online gaming with one disclaimer: expect to wait longer to download games and updates vs faster NBN connections.

The main difference between NBN speed tiers is in that description: speed. More specifically, paying for faster NBN speed tiers tends to boost download speed and may lead to faster upload speeds. Here’s a look at the main NBN speed tiers:

• NBN 12: max 12Mbps download, 1Mbps upload
• NBN 25: max 25Mbps download, 5Mbps upload
• NBN 50: max 50Mbps download, 20Mbps upload
• NBN 100: max 100Mbps download, 40Mbps upload (20Mbps is more common)
• NBN 250: max 250Mbps download, 25Mbps upload
• NBN 1000: max 1000Mbps download, 50Mbps upload

Compared to NBN 25, NBN 50 offers download speeds up to twice as fast and upload speeds up to four times faster. NBN 100 has up to four times the download speed of NBN 25 and upload speeds up to eight times faster. Note that NBN 250 and NBN 1000 plans are only available to Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) homes. In practical terms, the main difference between NBN 25 and any faster NBN plan is how long it takes to download and upload files.

The table below shows how long it’d take to download and upload a 10GB file with max download/upload speeds on the main NBN speed tiers.