You went over your data limit this month and got an unpleasant surprise when your cell phone bill arrived. The total cost of the bill was much higher than you expected! In this article, I’ll teach you about data overage charges and show you how to avoid them.
What Are Data Overage Charges?
Data overage charges are fees you’re billed when you exceed your monthly data limit. Normally, you’ll be able to keep using high-speed data on your cell phone, but you’ll be charged a fee per GB you use.
Do All Cell Phone Plans Have Overages?
No, not every cell phone plan has overages. In fact, most plans these days throttle your data speeds rather than charge overages. Typically, you’ll have to read the fine print to learn whether or not a plan has data overage charges.
Fortunately, we've already done that for you! When you use our cell phone plan comparison tool and find a plan you love, we’ll let you know whether or not that plan has overage charges.
Overage Charges vs. Throttling
Data overage charges and data throttling are different ways that wireless carriers try to curb high-speed data usage. Although both practices are trying to accomplish the same goal, they are a bit different.
While you’ll have to pay data overage charges, you typically don’t have to pay for using data at throttled speeds. However, throttled data is much slower than the speeds you normally get on your data plan. It doesn’t cost your wireless carrier as much on their end.
Check out our other article to learn more about data throttling!
Need Help Saving On Cellular Data?
There a lot of ways to curb your cellular data use. Using Wi-Fi when it's available and cutting down on video streaming can help save data. Check out our other to learn about more ways you can save cellular data!
If you're consistently getting charged overages by your wireless carrier, you may want to consider switching to a cell phone plan with more monthly data. Before you do, it's a good idea to figure out exactly how much data you're using every month. Many wireless carriers have free apps that let you see exactly how much data you've used in a given month.
Once you know how much data you use every month, check out our cell phone comparison tool. Drag the data slider to match your cellular data usage to find a better cell phone plan!
Data Overage Charges: Explained!
You now know everything there is to know about data overage charges and what makes them different from data throttling. We hope you'll share this article if you know anyone who is thinking about switching cell phone plans. Leave a comment below if you have any other questions about data overages!
