ALDI Mobile vs Coles Mobile: Which Supermarket Offers the Best Plans?

Coles Mobile might face stiff competition from its arch-nemesis Woolworths Mobile, but how does ALDI rate when it comes to its mobile plans?

If you’re looking to shop around with supermarket-affiliated mobile providers, here’s what you need to know about the thriftiest of the three.

Are ALDI’s mobile plans any good?

While it doesn’t offer any SIM-only plans, Aussies looking to sign up for a prepaid mobile plan through ALDImobile get a lot more options than they would elsewhere.

At the time of writing, ALDImobile offers eight prepaid mobile plans. These range in price from $15 per month to $120 per month. Three of these are also family plans, which are designed to be shared between up to four people. You can find the full list in the widget below.

Each ALDImobile plan also comes with unlimited local calls and text, unlimited data rollover (if you recharge with the same plan or one with a higher value within 24 hours of your current plan expiring) and coverage via the Telstra 3G and 4G wholesale network.

ALDImobile prepaid plans priced at $25 per month and above also come with unlimited calls and texts to 20 international countries, and the $55 per month plan also ups the ante with access to the Telstra 5G network.

Unlike Woolworths Mobile or Coles Mobile, ALDImobile does not offer any sort of shopping-related perks or devices on a plan. Instead, the biggest drawcard here is the family plans I mentioned before. These plans offer a shared pool of data that can be accessed by multiple users. However, the account owner can set individual usage limits if one member of the family ends up using more than their fair share.

The ALDImobile $45 family plan caters to two users, the $80 family plan will play nicely with four users and the $110 family plan supports a sizable six users.

How does ALDI Mobile compare to Coles Mobile?

Coles Mobile currently offers two prepaid and two month-to-month SIM-only mobile plans.

While Coles Mobile SIM-only plans customers get the opportunity to save money on their weekly grocery shop, prepaid customers miss out on this particular perk. Each Coles Mobile prepaid plan comes with a 50GB data rollover, local calls and texts plus unlimited calls and texts to 15 international destinations.

At a discounted cost of $10 for the first month, the $20 Coles Mobile prepaid plan is the better option when compared to the cheapest mobile plan that ALDImobile offer.

The main reason for this is that the 15GB of monthly data found here is five times that of the allowance found in the ALDImobile $15 mobile plan. That said, this plan does include fewer international calling options and data rollover capped at 50GB rather than the unlimited rollover that going with ALDI gets you.

Moving upwards in price, Coles Mobiles’ $35 SIM Only plan is another clear upgrade on its ALDImobile prepaid counterpart. It includes more data, data banking, more international destinations and the ability to save on your next grocery run at Coles.

What’s more, this plan is currently discounted until the 2nd of May. If you sign up before then, you’ll get your first month for half the usual price and pay $17 instead of $35.

If you’re looking to spend just $10 more per month then it’s a much closer call. An apples-to-apples comparison of the ALDImobile $45 mobile plan and the Coles Mobile $45 SIM Only plan sees the former come out ahead, thanks to a larger data allowance. Or at least it would, if not for some crafty introductory pricing.

If you have $45 to spend each month on mobile coverage and you’re looking to choose between ALDImobile and Coles Mobile, the latter is currently the better option. You won’t get Telstra coverage and you’ll get slightly less data, but you’ll probably end up saving more than just the cost of your first month.

Over a 24-month period, you’re looking at $68 in dollars saved and that’s before you even think about the cut to the cost of what you spend on groceries. For comparison, here’s a quick round-up of what some of your other options look like when it comes to mobile plans that cost $40 or less.

Fergus Halliday is a journalist at WhistleOut, Australia’s phone and internet comparison website.