Prepaid carriers like Mint Mobile have embraced multi-month discounts over the past few years, which offer lower per-month prices if you pay for several months at once. Cricket Wireless, the prepaid network owned and operated by AT&T, is now joining the party with its own multi-month unlimited plans.
Cricket Wireless is introducing three multi-month unlimited plans, which can save you up to $300 per year compared to the company's existing $55/mo unlimited plan. You can either pay for three months for $120 ($45 in savings), six months for $210 ($120 in savings), or 12 months for $360 ($300 in savings). If you go with that last option, your effective monthly cost drops to just $30 for unlimited talk, text, and data. The multi-month plans also include calling and texting within Mexico and Canada.
The new multi-month options make Cricket much more competitive with Visible (owned by Verizon), Mint Mobile, and other prepaid networks on a per-month basis. For example, Mint Mobile currently offers 5GB of data per month for $25/mo if you pay for three months at once ($150 in total), but that drops to $15/mo if you pay for an entire year at once. Most other prepaid networks, like Visible, Google Fi, and Total by Verizon (formerly Total Wireless) don't have any multi-month discounts. Cricket uses AT&T's network, which might be a better or worse option than competitors using T-Mobile or Verizon's network, depending on where you live and how congested the local network can get.
However, as with all new phone plans, there are some catches. The multi-month discounts are only available to single-line customers. If you have your whole family or friend group on a shared plan, you're still stuck with the meager multi-line discounts, or you need to move each person to their own individual plan. Cricket also confirmed to How-To Geek that tethering data and access to Max (formerly HBO Max) are not included, which are both available in the carrier's $60/mo unlimited plan.
You can sign up for the new plans from Cricket's website. The regular per-month plans will continue to be available as well.
Source: Cricket Wireless