Compare prepaid plans and recharges on the Optus network

The lines between prepaid mobile and postpaid mobile plans used to be quite clear, with postpaid typically offering better value with the possibility of going over budget, while prepaid plans kept your finances straight all month long, but often with lower levels of inclusions, especially for data.

That’s not entirely the case any more, and it’s worth considering your options across the board, though the maxim around why you might want a prepaid plan remains: They’re very good if you want an absolute control over your mobile phone plan spend, because you pay upfront and that’s pretty much all you have to pay unless you want to bolt on very specific extras like international calls or global roaming.

If you’re keen on a prepaid plan on the Optus network, you have plenty of choices, which can be confusing, but does mean that there’s also typically a prepaid Optus network plan for just about everyone. We’ll start by looking at what Optus offers in a prepaid sense under its own branding.

Optus brands its prepaid plans under the “Flex Plus” banner, all of which offer unlimited standard national calls and texts along with a data inclusion and expiry periods that can range from just 7 days all the way up to 365 days. 

The key detail to consider here really is how much data you’re going to use. If that answer is “very little to never” on, say, a feature phone, then the lowest tier plan would make sense, but for most smartphone users this is key. One benefit with a prepaid plan here is that it’s very easy to shift around prepaid recharge tiers, so if you’re not using up your full allowance each recharge period, maybe look to shift down a tier and save a few bucks – or bounce up if you’re running out of that sweet, sweet data before recharge time hits.

For all but the entry level 7 day tier and the higher two tiers, Optus’ Flex Plus plans operate on a 28 day recharge cycle. Why 28 days? Because unlike a monthly/30 day cycle, it means in a full year you’ll have to do 13 recharges, not 12. Optus isn’t alone in this move, but it’s worth keeping in mind when comparing mobile phone plan value.

Strictly speaking, Optus doesn’t have a separate line of long expiry prepaid plans; it’s just that the top two tiers of the Flex Plus pricing prepaid plan family include a plan with 186 days (6 months) and 365 days (1 year) expiry period. 

These can be great if you want a set-and-forget kind of prepaid experience, but it’s well worth considering data value in two distinct ways. Firstly, these plans come with high data quotas, but that’s data that’s meant to last you the entire 6 or 12 month period of the recharge. Burn through all your data in the first month of a yearly plan, and you’ve got 11 months of disappointment ahead of you – or you’ll have to open your wallet up again. If you know how much data you use and can break it into suitable chunks of usage over that period it’s fine, but be careful.

The other factor here is that while you get a large lump of data in that quota, if you split it out over either six or twelve months, it’s not always great value or a large amount in itself. The standard 180GB of data that Optus offers on its 365 day Flex Plus plan (often boosted by special deals) only equates to 15GB per month.

MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) use an existing mobile phone network with their own branding, often competing most strongly on price rather than add-on features. Optus’ network has the largest share of MVNOs compared to rivals TPG/Vodafone and Telstra, so it’s not surprising that there’s plenty of competition in the Optus MVNO prepaid space. 

If you’re looking for an Optus MVNO, you’ve got plenty of choices to pick from, including:

• Amaysim (owned by Optus) Aussie Broadband
• Catch Connect
• Circles.Life
• Coles Mobile
• Dodo Mobile
• iPrimus 
• Moose Mobile 
• Southern Phone
• Spintel

One important note to make here is that just because an MVNO is on the Optus Network doesn’t mean that they automatically offer prepaid plans. 

We’ve made it easy for you to compare, however. Here’s a selection of Optus MVNO prepaid plans to compare:

Optus’ Flex Plus plans can be decent value, especially if they’re running a promotion on them, but they’re not your only choice. Here’s a range of prepaid Optus MVNO plans with at least 5GB of included value – what you get on Optus’ baseline Flex Plus plans – to compare:

Typically you get more data on a prepaid plan the more you spend, but that brings you into the territory of Optus’ long expiry variants of its Flex Plus plans. For our money, there’s better data value at the top end of its 28 day Flex Plus plans, where (at the time of writing) 80GB of data could be yours for $55 regularly – and only $22 for the first 28 day recharge cycle:

The entry level Flex Plus plan might appear cheaper on first glance, but the catch there is that it comes with just a 7 day expiry period. That means that a 28 day set of 4 recharges would run you typically $48, which means that it’s actually more expensive over time than either the standard $35 or $45 tiers. That puts the $35 recharge – often discounted – as the particular sweet spot for Optus prepaid budget value right now:

The comparison between Optus’ Prepaid and Postpaid plans can be complex depending on your needs, but let’s start by having a look at the lowest cost standard plan – we’ll again omit that 7 day Flex Plus plan – and what you get versus what you pay.

The Flex Plus plan is cheaper – you could step up to the $45 Flex Plus plan and still save a few bucks – but it’s worth considering both data inclusions and recharges into your calculations. The Small Choice Plus plan has 50GB as a standard inclusion each and every 30 days, where the Flex Plus plan offers 40GB for the first 3 recharges only, after which it drops down to a much less exciting 20GB. 

There’s also the difference in recharge cycles to consider. 28 days versus 30 days might not seem like a lot, but over the course of a year it equates to one extra recharge cycle for the prepaid plan tier. Optus offers a range of entertainment extras and bonuses for its Choice Plus postpaid plans as well, if that’s important to you.