If you’re thinking about signing up for Visible’s unlimited plan, you may be wondering how much you can really save compared to Verizon.
In this article, I’ll crunch the numbers to help you make the best decision for your money.
Visible vs. Verizon: Phone and Plan Price Comparison
One of the reasons why people choose to stay with major carriers like Verizon is because of the limited-time phone deals that they offer.
Although prepaid carriers like Visible offer phone deals, you likely won’t get a free Apple iPhone or Samsung Galaxy device.
Why not? With Visible and other low-cost providers, the opportunity to save money is generally with a cheaper plan and not the device that you purchase.
Here’s an example to show you the two-year cost with Visible compared to Verizon.
Phone Deals
For this comparison, we’ll use the Apple iPhone SE (64GB) for our device. At the time of this writing, Visible and Verizon both offered deals on this phone.
- Visible: $384 before $150 prepaid Mastercard virtual account offer
- Verizon: $0, promo credit applied over 24 months
This free iPhone SE deal from Verizon is exactly what tempts people to switch to the service.
I’m not going to get into all of the terms and conditions, but the way this deal works is that you get a $16.66 promotional credit on your bill every month for two full years.
So if you leave Verizon or stop meeting other eligibility requirements, you won’t get the promo credit anymore.
To be fair, Visible’s $150 Mastercard offer also has some fine print. You must make two service payments before Visible sends you a link to your virtual gift card.
If you subtract the $150 Mastercard from the phone price, Visible’s iPhone SE sets you back $234.
Ask yourself: Is it worth it to switch to Verizon for a $234 savings on an iPhone SE? If you’re not sure, keep reading for my comparison of the plan prices.
Plan Comparison
Visible is actually owned by Verizon and uses its top-rated network. It offers a simple prepaid unlimited plan for $40 a month, including taxes and fees.
There’s a way to pay as low as $25 a month with Party Pay, but I’ll use Visible’s regular price for this article.
Meanwhile, Verizon has four postpaid unlimited plans. The Play More Unlimited plan qualifies for the free iPhone SE, so that’s what I’ll use for this comparison.
For a single line, Play More Unlimited is $80 per month with auto pay. Taxes and fees are extra.
Taxes and fees vary by location. Using Verizon’s own Tax and Surcharge Estimator, I entered my address and learned that taxes and fees would increase my bill from $80 to $100 a month.
Look at it this way:
- Verizon’s unlimited plan will cost $60 more than Visible every single month.
- After just four months, I would save $240 on the Visible plan.
- That’s $6 more than the $234 I would save with Verizon’s free iPhone SE deal.
Keep in mind that Verizon’s credits for the iPhone SE are spread over 24 months. So if you stay with Verizon for those two years, the difference in the plan costs becomes even greater.
At today’s rates, Verizon’s plan costs $1,440 more than Visible for two years of service.
| Visible | Verizon | |
| Monthly price | $40 | $100* |
| 12 months | $480 | $1,200* |
| 24 months | $960 | $2,400* |
The Bottom Line
Let’s put it all together. With Verizon, you can potentially save $234 on an iPhone SE compared to Visible’s deal. But Visible’s plan over 24 months is $1,440 cheaper than Verizon.
- Visible plan savings over 24 months: $1,440
- Verizon phone deal savings: $234
In the end, you can get an iPhone SE with Visible and two years of service for $1,206 less than Verizon.
Although Visible is owned by Verizon and runs on its network, there are differences between these two unlimited plans. You’ll want to compare the features side-by-side to see if Visible is worth the savings.
But this comparison shows that you can get the same phone and the same network for a much cheaper price!
Free Cell Phone Protection
You don’t have to pay for cell phone insurance from Verizon, Visible or any other provider. Instead, save up to $15/month by using a credit card that offers mobile phone protection as a free benefit. I’ve researched the best credit cards with free cell phone protection.
More Content From Michael Saves:
- Visible Customer Review: 9 Things to Know Before You Sign Up
- Yahoo Mobile vs. Visible: Which Verizon Alternative Is Best?
- Xfinity Mobile Review: 9 Things to Know Before You Sign Up
I have used, and loved, visible wireless for around 2 years now. I didn’t come from Verizon, but straight talk (where their support staff’s talk is so straight that it’s easy to see they practice a company is always right attitude that’s usually rude and blaming you for everything and because of that ,visible is a much better service… unlike straight talk, your data NEVER slows down, unless too many Verizon or other customers are in my area, in which case I only get internet at night, when people are sleeping, and to be honest deer season is literally the only time I’ve noticed that my signal is consistently unusable, in a manner that “feels deliberate” or like something might be wrong with the tower. I generally have 2 bars throughout the year where I live, so believe me when I say that I know what slow and fast is, compared to straight talk. The visible support staff are dead helpful, even though I brought my own phone which was a Google pixel 3a, (I’m on the pixel 4a now) and when I did look for a backup phone on their online store, for just in case I needed one, there were many options from cheap to expensive, and even the super cheap budget device I eventually chose, was good enough quality to be a good backup phone for if I needed to return my (unlocked carrier model) pixel device to Google for fixing. Also, the data usage cap on straight talk Vs. visible… Umm, awkward… capped at 25 Gb or something like that, for the equivalent 40-45$ plan, whereas, when I talked to a visible representative about caps and data usage audits, and I was told specifically to use as much data as I wanted or needed to use without worrying about caps or snooping into what I’m using data for. Same goes for hotspot, I just use it an unlimited amount, without fear of slowdowns,whereas straight talk, well, 2Gb or something like that, maximum, at one point, if it was available at all. I’ve personally used over 100Gb of data in a month, a few times, although, I must say that I usually keep it below 85Gb, for hotspot and cellular internet combined, and no one has ever said anything to me about it, whereas straight talk will just turn off the data signal, or should I say make it so slow it’s practically the same thing, once you reach your cap…