Tello Pricing 2026: Every Plan and the One That Is Dominated

Tello’s pricing page looks simple and is not. There are four named plans, a configurator that lets you build your own combination, and a set of prices that cross over each other in a way that makes one option pointless. I priced products for a living for fifteen years before I started writing about them, and this is the kind of price grid that rewards about ten minutes of arithmetic.

Here is the whole thing, verified against the rendered price elements on Tello’s own plan pages on 16 September 2026. Then the arithmetic, then everything the monthly number does not include, then the one plan nobody should buy.

Disclosure. The Tello links here are affiliate links and we get paid if you sign up through them, up to $10 per signup. Google Fi and Quo are also monetised on this site, so those are not neutral comparisons either. Mint Mobile, US Mobile, Ultra Mobile, NumberBarn, Tracfone and Google Voice pay us nothing, and two of them are cheaper than Tello’s entry price. That is in here too.

The four named plans

Every Tello plan includes unlimited talk and text inside the US. The only variable on the named plans is how much data comes with it.

Plan	Data	Talk and text	Price per month
Starter	2 GB	Unlimited	$10
Everyday	10 GB	Unlimited	$15
Power	20 GB	Unlimited	$20
Max	Unlimited, with 50 GB at full speed and reduced speed after that, plus a 10 GB hotspot allowance	Unlimited	$25

The jumps are clean. Five dollars buys you the next tier up every time. From 2 GB to 10 GB is $5, which adds eight gigabytes. From 10 GB to 20 GB is another $5. From 20 GB to unlimited is the last $5, and unlimited here means 50 GB before your speed is reduced, which Tello states in its Terms.

Hotspot is included on all the data plans, and the Max plan gets a dedicated 10 GB of high speed hotspot on top. Unused high speed data rolls over, which is rendered on the plan builder page and is worth something if your usage is lumpy.

The configurator, where the interesting prices live

Underneath the named plans, Tello lets you build a combination. Data options are no data, 2 GB, 10 GB, 20 GB or unlimited. Talk options are no minutes, 300 minutes or unlimited. And in Tello’s own words, unlimited text is included with every plan, which is the single most important sentence on the page if you are buying a line to receive verification codes.

These are the three combinations I verified in a browser, reading the rendered price element rather than the page title, because the two do not always agree on sites like this.

Combination	Price per month
300 minutes, unlimited text, no data	$5
Unlimited minutes, unlimited text, no data	$8
2 GB, 300 minutes, unlimited text	$8

One thing not to assume. Twenty GB combinations other than the $20 Power plan are not published anywhere I could reach, so if you are hoping to pair 20 GB with 300 minutes for less than $20, there is no published price for it. I am not going to estimate one.

The arithmetic, and the plan nobody should buy

Put the three configurator prices next to the $10 Starter plan and something obvious falls out.

Eight dollars buys you unlimited minutes with no data. Eight dollars also buys you 2 GB with 300 minutes. Same price, completely different products, which is fine so far. Now add the named plan: $10 buys 2 GB plus unlimited talk and unlimited text.

So for two dollars more than the unlimited minutes no data option, the Starter plan gives you everything that option gives you plus 2 GB of data. There is no dimension on which the $8 unlimited minutes no data combination wins. It is strictly worse than a plan that costs two dollars more. In pricing terms that is a dominated option, and a dominated option should never be bought.

I do not think Tello did this on purpose to trap anyone. It is what happens when a configurator’s price rules and a marketing team’s named plans are set separately and nobody runs the cross check. But it is live on the page, and somebody reading the configurator top to bottom without looking at the named plans will pick it.

The $8 combination with 2 GB and 300 minutes is a different story. It is not dominated, because it is genuinely cheaper than anything that gives you data with unlimited talk. If your minutes usage is low and your data usage is low, it is the right box. Whether 300 minutes is enough depends on how many supplier calls you take, and I would think about that honestly rather than optimistically.

The real ladder for a line whose job is holding a number

Most readers here are not buying a Tello line as their main phone. They are buying it to keep a working US number alive while they live somewhere else, so that suppliers can reach them and so that banks and payment processors can text them a code. For that job the ladder has three rungs and only three.

Rung	Price per month	What you get	Where it breaks
Bare hold	$5	300 minutes, unlimited text, no data	Any message containing a link becomes an MMS and MMS needs data, so it will not arrive
Honest floor	$8	2 GB, 300 minutes, unlimited text	300 minutes is tight if you take a lot of supplier calls
Sensible	$10	2 GB, unlimited talk, unlimited text	Nothing, at this price, for this job

The reason the $5 rung has an asterisk on it is worth spelling out because it is the thing that decides which rung you pick. Tello’s own no data builder page warns that data is required to send or receive an MMS, and that any text message including a file, such as a picture, video, emoji or a website link, turns into an MMS and requires data. Tello separately publishes that while standard texts work over Wi-Fi, picture messages do not.

So a verification message with a link in it has two reasons not to reach a $5 no data line that is sitting on Wi-Fi in another country. If the only thing you need is for the number to exist, $5 is fine. If account access depends on it, pay for data. The full working is in our Tello review, which goes through the activation gate and the Terms problem as well.

What the monthly number does not include

Taxes are extra. Tello says government taxes vary by location, which is standard for a US carrier and means the number on the plan page is not the number on your card. How much extra depends on the billing address you give them, and there is no published table.

On fees, the Broadband Facts label on Tello’s plan page is unusually clear. One time purchase fees are listed as none. Early termination is $0. Additional data charges are $0. Cost recovery is listed as up to thirty cents. There is no contract, and Tello lets you upgrade or downgrade whenever you want at no charge, which matters more than it sounds because it means you can sit on $25 while you are home and drop to $5 the week you fly out.

No annual or multi month prepay discount is published. Plans renew automatically every 30 days. So the yearly cost of a Tello line is simply twelve times the monthly price, with no loyalty rate and no pay in advance saving to chase. That is a genuinely unusual position in this market and it cuts both ways.

Plan	Per month	Twelve months, before tax
Bare hold, no data	$5	$60
2 GB with 300 minutes	$8	$96
Starter, 2 GB	$10	$120
Everyday, 10 GB	$15	$180
Power, 20 GB	$20	$240
Max, unlimited	$25	$300

The setup fee contradiction

Here is the first thing in Tello’s pricing I cannot reconcile, and I am going to report both halves rather than pick one.

The Broadband Facts label says one time purchase fees are none. Tello’s help centre, on the page about ordering a SIM or eSIM for a new line, says a new line setup may incur a one time setup fee depending on your plan.

Those two statements are both on tello.com and they do not agree. One of them is stale, or the label is describing something narrower than the help page, or the fee applies to a plan combination that is not described anywhere. I do not know which and Tello does not say. If you are budgeting to the dollar, ask before you order.

What Tello does not publish at all

This section is short and it is the most useful part of the post, because the gaps are where people get surprised.

SIM cost is not published. eSIM cost is not published. Shipping is not published. All three sit behind checkout, which means you cannot compare Tello’s true first month cost against a rival’s without starting an order. The only published statement in that area is that generating a replacement eSIM, or moving your line to a new device, is completely free of charge.

Port in fee is not published either. Tello does publish the sequence, which matters: your service has to be fully active before you can port a number in, and then you use the Number Transfer form. If you are bringing a number across, read the ordering in our step by step sequence for keeping a US number while living abroad, because doing it in the wrong order is how people end up with two lines and one number.

Refunds run on a hundred percent money back guarantee, with one published limitation: payments older than five months from the date of request are not eligible. No free trial is published.

And there is no formal pause or suspend feature. Downgrading to the $5 plan is the published way to hold a line cheaply, which is effectively the same thing at a small cost.

Introductory rates, which is the caveat on every number above

Tello’s pages flag the plan prices as introductory rates for new customers. That phrase is doing real work and I am not going to let it slide past.

What it does not tell you is what the non introductory rate is, or when the introductory period ends, or whether it ends at all. Tello does not publish a renewal price ladder the way some rivals do. So the honest reading is that $5 to $25 per month is what you will be charged when you sign up, and Tello has reserved the right to charge something else later without telling you in advance what that something is.

Compare that to how Mint Mobile handles it. Mint publishes both numbers: its twelve month 6 GB plan is $15 as an introductory price and $15 on renewal, which is the only tier in Mint’s grid with no step up, while its unlimited plan is $15 introductory and $30 on renewal. You can see the cliff before you walk off it. Tello gives you a better entry price and less visibility. The head to head is in our comparison of Tello and Mint Mobile on the cost of holding a US number.

Pay As You Go, and the price of not having a plan

Tello also sells credit with no monthly plan attached. Domestic Pay As You Go rates are one cent per minute for calls, one cent per SMS and two cents per MB of data. Published top up denominations are $20, $30, $40 and $50, and data will not work unless your balance is above $0.50.

This looks cheap and for a dormant number it is a trap. Tello’s wording is that if you do not have a monthly plan, your credit expires 90 days after you buy it, and if it expires your service is disconnected and your phone number is deleted permanently. With an active plan, credit does not expire at all. So $5 per month is not just the cheapest plan, it is the thing that stops the 90 day clock existing.

There is a second contradiction here. One Tello help page says a minimum $5 Pay As You Go credit is required to turn international roaming on, but no $5 top up denomination is offered on the purchase page. Both statements are Tello’s. I cannot resolve it and I am not going to pretend the $20 minimum is a rule when Tello’s own help centre says $5.

The roaming price that is cheaper than the domestic one

This is small and strange and I am reproducing it exactly as published because it is checkable.

Tello’s international roaming page lists data at one cent per MB, charged from your Pay As You Go balance, alongside five cents per minute for voice and one cent per SMS outside Europe. Tello’s domestic Pay As You Go page lists data at two cents per MB.

So on Tello’s published rates, data while roaming abroad is half the price of data at home. That is almost certainly an artefact of two pages being updated at different times rather than a deliberate policy, and I would not build a monthly budget on it lasting. But it is what both pages say today, and if you are running a dormant line on credit it is worth knowing which direction the error points.

On the same page Tello is running a free roaming in Europe offer, which it describes as a limited offer valid until 30 September 2026. From 1 October 2026 Tello says roaming charges apply exclusively from Pay As You Go balances. I am mentioning it as a dated expiring promotion and nothing more, because a price advantage with a two week life left is not a reason to choose a carrier.

How Tello’s entry price compares at the cheap end

Tello’s $5 is not the lowest number in this market, and pretending otherwise would be the easy thing to do on a page that pays us per signup.

Option	Cheapest published price	Pays us	What you give up at that price
Tello	$5 per month	Yes	No data, so no MMS, so no link bearing texts
Ultra Mobile PayGo	$3 per month	No	Only 100 minutes, 100 texts and 100 MB, no data roaming, and the page never mentions Wi-Fi calling
NumberBarn	$2.99 per month to park	No	Wireline numbers, a $5 port in fee per number, and a published list of companies whose codes do not arrive
Mint Mobile	$15 introductory and $15 on renewal for 6 GB on the twelve month term	No	Three times Tello’s entry price, but no published limit on extended use outside the US
Google Fi	$20 per month plus $10 per GB on Flexible, or $35 standard on Essentials	Yes	Several times the price, and terms written for US residents making short trips

Ultra Mobile’s PayGo plan at $3 per month genuinely undercuts Tello for somebody who only wants a number to exist, and Ultra pays us nothing. What it does not do is publish data roaming or say anything about Wi-Fi calling on that plan page, which is exactly the capability that makes Tello useful abroad. That is the trade, and it is a real one rather than a technicality.

NumberBarn parking at $2.99 is cheaper still, and cheaper again because it is a different product: it parks a number rather than giving you a working line. There is a $5 port in fee per number, waived on the annual Park plan. The reason it is not a drop in replacement is spelled out in our piece on which US numbers actually receive verification codes.

If none of those five is the shape you need, the list sorted by job rather than by price is in our roundup of Tello alternatives organised by what the number has to do. The wider comparison against the incumbent answer on this site is in our head to head on Tello and Google Fi.

Which plan I would actually buy

If the line is your main phone and you are in the US most of the year, the $15 Everyday plan with 10 GB is the value sweet spot in this grid. Eight extra gigabytes for $5 is the jump most people actually need, and at 10 GB you are unlikely to think about data again.

If the line exists to hold a US number and receive codes while you live somewhere else, buy the $10 Starter plan. Two gigabytes is plenty for MMS and the odd map lookup when you are home, unlimited talk covers supplier calls over Wi-Fi calling, and it costs two dollars more than an $8 option that gives you less.

If you are certain you will never need a text with a link in it, the $5 no data plan is the cheapest working line Tello sells, and it is a legitimate choice. Just make that decision deliberately rather than because $5 was the first number you saw.

I would not buy the $8 unlimited minutes no data combination under any circumstances, for the reason set out above. And I would not buy the $25 Max plan for a line that mostly sits dormant abroad, because unlimited data on a phone you are not using is $300 a year of nothing. If you want the ranking across all the carriers rather than inside Tello’s grid, that is in our ranking of plans for keeping a US phone number while living abroad.

Running the business behind the store

Ten dollars a month is not a business decision, it is a rounding error. The business decision is what the number is attached to. If you are still choosing a category, start with our list of high ticket niches worth building a store around.

If the model is new to you, read our explanation of what high ticket dropshipping is and how the margins work before you spend anything on infrastructure at all.

The phone number only matters because of supplier approval, so the piece that pays for itself is our complete step by step guide to finding high ticket dropshipping suppliers. Picking up the verification call is part of that process.

Suppliers will also ask for an entity. Our guide to business formation for high ticket dropshipping explains what they check and why.

On the stack, the storefront goes on Shopify, because that is what a supplier’s reviewer expects to see when they look you up. The paperwork side is the other half of looking real.

For filings and registered agent work, Bizee is the straightforward option. General liability cover from Hiscox rounds it out, and some suppliers want a certificate before they approve an account.

If you would rather skip the assembly entirely, we run a done for you high ticket dropshipping build and launch service.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest Tello plan?

Five dollars per month, for 300 minutes and unlimited text with no data. Tello’s own copy says plans start as low as $5 per month but never more than $25 per month. That $5 tier will hold a number and receive plain text messages, but not anything that becomes an MMS.

Which Tello plan is a waste of money?

The $8 configurator combination of unlimited minutes with no data. The $10 Starter plan gives you the same unlimited talk and text plus 2 GB of data for two dollars more, so the $8 version is strictly worse than something cheap sitting right next to it on the same site.

Are Tello’s prices the final price?

No. Taxes are extra and Tello says government taxes vary by location, so the amount on your card depends on the billing address you give them. Cost recovery of up to thirty cents also applies. There is no published tax table, so the only way to see your real total is to reach checkout.

Is there a discount for paying annually?

None is published. Plans renew automatically every 30 days and there is no multi month prepay rate on Tello’s pages, so a year is simply twelve times the monthly price. Twelve months of Starter is $120 before tax.

How much does a Tello SIM or eSIM cost?

Not published. SIM cost, eSIM cost and shipping all sit behind checkout, and so does any port in fee. The one published figure in that area is that generating a replacement eSIM or moving your line to a new device is free of charge.

Will there be a setup fee?

Tello contradicts itself. The Broadband Facts label on its plan page lists one time purchase fees as none, while its help centre says a new line setup may incur a one time setup fee depending on your plan. Both statements are on Tello’s own site and neither is dated, so ask support before you order if it matters to your budget.

Does Tello get more expensive after the first term?

Unknown, and that is the honest answer. Tello flags its plan prices as introductory rates for new customers but does not publish what the non introductory rate is or when it starts. That is less visibility than Mint Mobile gives you, and it is the main thing I would want in writing before treating $5 per month as a long term budget line.

Can I switch plans without a penalty?

Yes. There is no contract, early termination is listed at $0, and upgrades and downgrades are free and available at any time. That is what makes dropping to the $5 hold plan while you are out of the country a practical move rather than a theoretical one.

Related Articles

Our full Tello review, including the in US activation gate and the Terms contradiction

Best plans for keeping a US phone number while living abroad, ranked on what you can verify

Our complete guide to business phone plans for small businesses in 2026

How to get a business phone number that suppliers will accept on a dealer application

Our complete moving abroad checklist for 2026