Prepaid Australian plans are sold in blocks of credit, not subscriptions. You buy a recharge, the credit lands on the account, and the account drains over the term. The 28 day cycle is the term most plans are built around because it maps onto roughly thirteen billing periods a year.
How many recharges a year actually takes
| Term | Recharges per year |
|---|---|
| 7 days | About 52 |
| 28 days | About 13 |
| 90 days | About 4 |
| 186 days | About 2 |
| 365 days | 1 |
The number that matters is the one on your recharge, not the calendar month. A 28 day plan is not a monthly plan: 13 recharges is 364 days, so the fourteenth falls one day short of a full year. That is why prepaid customers talk about recharging on a cycle rather than by the month.
What happens when the term ends
- The credit you paid for expires with the term whether or not you used it.
- Unused data only carries over if you recharge before expiry and the plan carries a rollover rule.
- Some providers keep the service alive but inactive; others close it entirely after a further period.
The failure mode to plan around
The most common way a prepaid plan causes trouble is not the price, it is the lapse. Miss one cycle on a plan with no rollover and you lose that cycle of data outright, plus whatever you paid for it. If you cannot reliably recharge every four weeks, the honest answer is a longer term or an auto recharge, not a cheaper 28 day plan.
What we could not verify. Where a provider has not published a figure we mark it unknown rather than estimate it. Re-read the provider page linked below on the day you decide.