Singaporeans have never had more choice when it comes to picking their telco service provider. Back in the days, telcos like Starhub, M1 and Singtel were the only providers offering phone plans that required you sign on for a minimum of two years.

These days however, new players like Circles.Life, My Republic and Zero have entered the market to give consumers more options and flexibility when it comes to their telco plans.

Instead of bundling a phone and a data contract together, these telcos offer phone lines without contracts and with customisable functions. Seeing the popularity of such plans, older telcos too are beginning to offer such plans. If you’re looking to re-contract or are planning to switch telcos, we’ve broken down the best plans according to the different tiers:

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Value plans (~$20/month)

	Circles.Life	M1	Singtel	StarHub	Zero1
Plan	Flexi Plan	mySIM³ 20	GOMO	S$25 SIM Only	1GB to Unlimited
Monthly Data	1GB	3GB (+12GB bonus data for 12 months)	20GB	5GB (+10GB bonus data for 12 months)	1GB
Talk Time	30 mins	100 mins	200 mins	100 mins	200 mins
SMS	10	100	200	0	200
Monthly Add-ons	1GB data (S$8) 2GB data (S$12) 30 mins  + 10 SMS (S$5) 200 mins + unlimited incoming call (S$10)	200 mins (S$5) 800 mins (S$10) Unlimited mins (S$15) Caller ID (S$5.35)	10GB data, 100 mins, 100SMS (S$10)	1GB data (S$3)  10GB data (S$10) 50GB worry-free data (S$20) Unlimited weekend data (S$6) Unlimited data for selected chat, social and video apps (from S$6). Full details here. 300 / 800 / Unlimited talk time mins (S$6 / S$10 /  S$18) 500 SMS (S$3)	None
Notes	No free incoming calls SMS charged at 5 cents Free Caller ID	Unlimited weekend local data Unlimited free calls to three M1 numbers	Free Caller ID No excess data charges No roaming data option	Unlimited weekend local data for 12 months Free Caller ID Free International Roaming SMS charged at 5.35 cents	One time registration fee of S$10.70 No excess data charges Free Caller ID
Price	S$0/month	S$20/month	S$20/month	S$25/month	S$9.90/month

 

The cheapest deal here is obviously Circles.Life’s S$0 Flexi Plan. However, unless you’re a very low usage customer, you will probably have to top up for some additional services, and the add-on options are actually quite expensive. Additionally, it’s worth noting that incoming calls are not free on Circles.Life, so if people call you frequently (which includes anyone you don’t know, like telemarketers), you’ll quickly burn through your 30 mins of bundled talk time. Topping up for additional talk time is also quite expensive, at S$5 for just 30 mins more.

The overall best deal? Singtel’s new GOMO plan (GOMO stands for Get Out More Often), which gives you a massive 20GB data, and the most amount of talk time and SMSes for just S$20/month.

Basic Plans (~$30/month)

 

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The overall best deal here is once again Singtel’s new GOMO plan, which gives you a massive 20GB data, and a generous 200 minutes of talk time and 200 SMSes for just S$20/month. If 20GB data isn’t enough, you can top up an extra $10 for another 10GB data, 100 minutes talktime, and 100 SMSes.

If you want the most data, the best deal is M1’s mySIM³ 20 plan with a 25GB data add-on. This gives you a whopping 40GB all for just S$25/month.

Mid-Range Plans (~$50/month)

 

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Once again, the best deal is Singtel’s new GOMO plan, which has a base price of S$20 and gives you 20GB data, 200 minutes, and 200 SMSes. But if you buy two S$10 add-ons, you get 40GB data, 400 minutes, and 400 SMSes, all for just S$40/month.

Alternatively, if you value data over minutes, you can consider StarHub’s S$25 SIM Only plan and add its S$20/month 50GB with worry-free data add-on. For this combo, you get 63GB data (3GB + 50GB + 10GB bonus) for S$45/month, though just 100 call minutes. StarHub’s 50GB worry-free data add-on lets you continue to use data for free even if you’ve burst your cap.

M1’s mySIM³ 40 with a 25GB data add-on package (S$5) also offers good value with 50GB total data for S$45/month and includes 100 SMS but only 100 minutes talk time.

High-End Plans

The cheapest and best value deal in the high-end tier is Zero Mobile’s Zero X plan. For significantly less than all of the other plans, you get ‘unlimited data’, unlimited talk time, and unlimted SMS. The only two drawbacks are that Zero Mobile doesn’t offer any international roaming data add-ons and the managed data network speeds start after 45GB of data consumption.

For a more all-rounded plan with more data and from an established telco provider, StarHub’s new S$80 SIM Only plan has a lot going for it, even if you need to consider adding on extra talk time and SMS.

Note: Both Singtel and M1 offer other SIM-only plans with more generous data packages, however, they require a 12-month minimum contract period, and considering the current market climate, we do not recommend signing up for a contract right now. As such, we have not included them in this article. If you’re interested in seeing them for yourself, check out Singtel here and M1 here.

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Text: James Lu & Vijay Anand, Hardware Zone
Photos: Unsplash