AT&T Prepaid ‘Great Deal / Best Value’ Plan Now Offers 100GB for $55/month on Hotspots, Tablets & Routers

AT&T Prepaid quietly upgraded one of their new prepaid data plan offering over the weekend, changing the Great Deal plan to include 100GB of data each month for $55. This data-level and price match the T-Mobile 100GB plan rolled out in December 2020, although that is a postpaid option while this new plan from AT&T is prepaid.

This AT&T plan is available only in AT&T stores, and 5G service is included with a compatible 5G device.

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New Plan Line-Up

The AT&T Prepaid Plans data only plans were last upgraded in early February 2021, and included four data level points. The only plan to change is the Great Deal plan, increasing the data cap from 25GB to 100GB, and the pricing from $50 to $55/month. 'The Most Data' plan that offered 40GB for $75/month has been removed from the lineup. 

The new prepaid data plan lineup are (note: plan name changes have occurred in June 2021 - the rest of this article will continue to refer to the plans by the original names at time of publishing):

• Best Value (now 'Built in Savings') Plan - Prepay $300 for a year, and get 20GB of data per month
• Essential Data Plan - 15GB for $35/month
• Great Deal (now 'Best Value') Plan - 100GB for $55/month

Pricing Update:

When AT&T rolled this plan out over the weekend and when we went to press on Monday morning, their webpage clearly showed $50/month for this plan:

However, when our team went to activate our plan on Monday morning we were charged $55 and there was no autopay discount offered. And then we noticed later in the day they updated the page to reflect $55/month:

 

Our only guess is their web designer only updated the data cap on the site, and forgot to update the pricing?

Plan Details

The data plans all include 5G access, as long as you are in an area where 5G is available, and are using a 5G-compatible device. But they all also work on LTE AT&T compatible devices, and include LTE coverage access. 

The plans all include Stream Saver, which is a feature that reduces video streaming quality to 480p in order to save data. This feature can be turned off, allowing for HD/1080p streaming when you want it. 

The prepaid data plans do not include any usage in Canada, Mexico, or other international locations. International data add-ons are available for some session-based plans (at an extra cost).

If you use up all of your data during the month, AT&T does offer Data Add-Ons. We have confirmed with AT&T that the cost is $10 for 5GB of extra data, and you can manually add these on as needed from your AT&T login. Use caution adding on data, as your data usage will first pull from your add-on data and then your plan data. 

On the yearly Best Value Plan, any unused data will carry over for one month. But on Essential and Great Deal, there is not data roll-over - any data you don't use in a billing month is lost. 

Taxes and fees are extra on all of these prepaid plans, and there may be activation fees involved. And while the plan is displayed on their website, you can only obtain it at AT&T stores - it's not available for activation online. 

Eligible Devices

AT&T's information on these plans states that they can be used with either a hotspot or a tablet. We were curious if they could be used with a router as well, so one of our team members took a Pepwave router to an AT&T store to test it out back in February, and these prepaid data plans did show up as an option for him in the store. We have had multiple reports since of successful activations on routers. 

We are hoping that AT&T Prepaid continues to support use in routers, unlike their prepaid subsidiary Cricket Wireless who discontinued use in routers earlier this year - restricting use just to AT&T mobile hotspot devices. 

Summary - Top Pick Data Plan

The 100GB AT&T prepaid data-only plan is a huge upgrade from AT&T's previous top prepaid option, which only included 25GB of data for $50 - and is better than any other hotspot plan option we've seen on AT&T's network in a long while. 

So it's nice to see that AT&T is finally catching up with the competition, including AT&T's prepaid subsidiary Cricket and T-Mobile, which both offer 100GB data-only plans.

With hopefully continuing to provide service for hotspots and routers, this plan opens up truly usable amounts of data for RVers and boaters traveling and needing home level internet access on the road. When paired with other high cap plans on the market, it's now possible to create a mobile internet arsenal providing hundreds of gigabytes of data for an affordable price point, without having to resort to involving risky 3rd Party Resellers, or smudging terms of service on plans not meant for hotspot or router use. 

We are declaring the Great Deal plan as a new Top Pick data plan. We are also watching to see if Cricket Wireless will make similar pricing adjustments to their 100GB plan, which is currently still showing priced at $90/month. Update: Cricket Wireless has now dropped their price to $55 as well, and existing customers are getting automatic price adjustments for their next billing cycle.  

You can find all our current Top Pick Plans for all carriers here:

Guide to Current Top Pick Plans

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