Methodology

Advertised price ("From")

The From column is simply the cheapest price on a provider's own price list — the lowest $/GB across every tier it publishes, whatever volume that tier requires. It's a raw fact from the current price list, not adjusted for anything: it doesn't account for minimum deposits, minimum purchase volumes, or traffic that expires before you can use it, and it isn't necessarily the price you'd actually pay — see Gap below for how far off it typically is from a realistic purchase.

Headline price

We also compute one reference price per provider at a fixed 50 GB/month volume, using the same tier-selection rule as the effective price calculation below — whichever plan actually applies at that volume. This lets every provider be compared at the same volume, rather than at whatever volume its own cheapest or largest plan happens to sit at. A provider's own "from $X" usually refers to one specific plan, not necessarily this reference volume — see From above for that raw number instead. The same tier-selection rule, applied to each of the four reference volumes, is what the Advertised column in a provider's own price breakdown shows.

Effective price

The effective price answers a different question: if you needed a steady amount of traffic every month, what would this provider actually cost per gigabyte? We compute it at four reference volumes — 5, 50, 500 and 1000 GB/month — assuming even usage with no idle months and no bursts. Starting from the plan that applies at that volume, we add the cost of any minimum purchase requirement above what you asked for, or of a minimum deposit if that's larger, and we account for unused traffic expiring before you can use it up. The result is divided back into the gigabytes you'd actually get to use before it expires, giving a $/GB figure that's directly comparable between providers at the same volume.

Gap

Gap is how many times higher the effective price at a given volume is than the cheapest price on that provider's own price list (the From price above). A gap of ×1 means what you'd actually pay matches the cheapest advertised rate; a large gap flags a big difference between the marketing price and what a typical buyer at that volume ends up paying.

Partial data (*)

A price marked with an asterisk means we don't yet have a confirmed minimum deposit and/or traffic expiry policy for that provider. In that case, the effective price shown is a best case: it assumes there's no deposit and traffic never expires. Once we confirm those facts, the number may move — usually upward, since the assumption used until then is the most generous one possible.

Freshness

Every price carries the date it was last confirmed. If a provider's price hasn't been re-verified in the last 72 hours, we show that date in amber rather than hide it or remove the row — a stale price is still the best information we have, it's just aging.

VAT

We never add VAT to the effective price. VAT rates depend on the buyer's own status and country, not on the provider, so there's no single rate that would apply to every visitor equally. We collect prices as seen from the US; where a provider's listed price already includes VAT from that vantage point, we note that as a fact on their page.

Partnership & affiliate links

This site doesn't currently show any purchase or affiliate links — there is no "Buy" button anywhere on it. If that ever changes, a commercial partnership with a provider will never affect whether that provider appears in the index, its position in any list, or the price shown for it: partnership status is not a signal of quality or price and won't be treated as one. See the disclosure on the About page for more.

Open data

The headline price for each provider — its price at the 50 GB/month reference volume — is published as open data under a CC BY 4.0 license, alongside the date it was last confirmed and a link back to its source. The current snapshot is available as JSON at /api/v1/current.json, and a public repository (linked in the footer) keeps the full history of past snapshots if you want to see how headline prices moved over time. Effective price and gap aren't part of this snapshot — those are computed for display on this site only.

Changelog

• v1 — Sep 21, 2026

  Initial published formula: tariff price, overpay from a minimum plan or deposit, and unused traffic expiring before it can be used — computed at four reference monthly volumes (5, 50, 500 and 1000 GB) under steady usage.