Every plan on Mint Mobile’s plans page says $15 a month right now. Scroll to the bottom of the same page and there is a standardized label under each plan, and on the 3-month 23GB plan that label says the regular monthly price is $45 (checked July 31, 2026). The $15 is on the poster. The $45 is in the small print, in a box the carrier is required to publish.
That box is the most useful thing on any US phone plan page, and almost nobody scrolls to it. This post reads those labels for three MVNOs, adds up what each plan costs over two years, and ends with which one I pick. Everything here is US pricing, because the label itself is a US rule.
What is an MVNO, and whose network do you get?
An MVNO sells you service on somebody else’s towers. It buys wholesale access from Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile and resells it under its own name, which is why the coverage question mostly answers itself. If two MVNOs ride the same network, you get the same bars in the same places.
What differs is billing, support and how long your price lasts. That last one is the whole post.
The carriers here list their networks differently. Visible names Verizon 5G and 4G LTE on the plan itself. US Mobile says all networks are eligible and lets you pick. Mint’s page advertises coverage on “the Nation’s Largest 5G Network” without naming the operator, so I am not naming it either.
Where does the real price hide?
In the Broadband Facts label, in a field called Regular Monthly Price. The FCC requires every provider of a mobile broadband plan to publish one of these for each plan it sells, and its own page says the labels are “modeled after the FDA nutrition labels” and must disclose prices, introductory rates, data allowances and speeds. Four of its lines settle the question this post is about:
| Label field | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Monthly Price | What you pay right now |
| This Monthly Price is / is not an introductory rate | Whether the number above expires |
| Length of Intro Period | How many months you keep it |
| Regular Monthly Price | What you pay after that |
It is the same four lines on every carrier, in the same order, which is what makes it worth reading. Marketing copy varies. This box does not.
It may not stay this way. The FCC’s page notes that at its July 2026 open meeting the Commission approved an order that will “modify the Broadband Label rules to make labels easier to read and understand, while reducing compliance burdens on providers.” I have not read the order, so I do not know whether the intro-rate fields survive it. As of July 31, 2026 they were on every label I opened.
What Mint’s $15 becomes
Between $20 and $45, depending on which term you bought. I read all eleven labels on Mint’s plans page on July 31, 2026. Every one of them said $15.00 and every one of them said “This Monthly Price is an introductory rate.”
| Term | Data | Intro | Regular price after |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 months | 6GB | $15 | $25 |
| 3 months | 17GB | $15 | $35 |
| 3 months | 23GB | $15 | $45 |
| 3 months | Unlimited | $15 | $40 |
| 6 months | Unlimited | $15 | $35 |
| 12 months | 17GB | $15 | $20 |
| 12 months | Unlimited | $15 | $30 |
The pattern is that the longer term you commit to up front, the gentler the landing. Twelve months of unlimited renews at $30. Three months of unlimited renews at $40.
One row reads like a typo and might be one. On the 3-month plans, 23GB renews at $45 while unlimited renews at $40, so the capped plan costs more than the uncapped one. I read it twice on the live page. I have no explanation and would not build a decision on it.
Mint’s own copy is straight about the structure, incidentally. The fine print at the top of the page says the offer is “for initial plan term only; then full-price plan options available.” Nobody is hiding this. It is just printed below the number that gets remembered.
Which carriers skip intro pricing?
Visible does, and its label says so in the same field. Where Mint’s label reads “is an introductory rate,” Visible’s reads “This Monthly Price is not an introductory rate.” Its three plans were $25, $35 and $45, and those are the numbers that keep going.
US Mobile sits between the two. Its page listed Unlimited Starter at $22.50 and Unlimited Premium at $32.50, with promotional rates of $16.60 and $24.90, and the terms next to them said “for the first year” and “Auto-renews at full price.” That is the same shape as Mint’s deal with a longer runway.
So the three carriers are not really competing on price. They are competing on how long a price lasts, and the label is where you find out which game each one is playing.
What does it cost over two years?
Mint’s twelve-month unlimited plan works out cheaper than Visible, by about $2.50 a month. Twelve months at $15 plus twelve at $30 is $540 over two years, or $22.50 a month. Visible at a flat $25 is $600 over the same stretch. Neither figure includes taxes and fees, which Mint adds on top and Visible says it includes.
That $60 gap is real but it is smaller than the plans page suggests, and it comes with a condition. Mint’s twelve-month price requires $180 up front, twice. Visible bills you $25 and you are done thinking about it.
I ran into the same shape when I measured five GIF sites. The number on the button and the number you end up with were not the same number, and the difference only showed up after actually downloading the file.
So which plan do you pick?
Pick by how you behave, not by the headline. There are three honest answers here and they map to three kinds of people.
| If you | Pick | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Forget about your phone bill once it is set | Visible at $25 | The label says the price does not expire |
| Will pay a year up front to save | Mint 12-month unlimited | $22.50 a month over two years, but $180 twice |
| Use little data and watch your accounts | Mint 12-month 17GB | Renews at $20, the lowest regular price of the eleven |
I take Visible. Not because it is cheapest, because it is not, but because the $60 I would save with Mint is payment for remembering a renewal date twice a year, and I would forget. A plan that quietly renews at the price you already agreed to is worth more than two and a half dollars a month to me.
The counterargument is fair: if you actually track this stuff, Mint at twelve months wins and it is not close on the short terms either. Just make the choice knowing which of those two people you are.
What the label does not tell you
Three things, and they are the three that decide whether you stay.
Deprioritization is the first. MVNO traffic can drop behind the host network’s own customers when a tower is busy, and the label’s typical-speed range does not separate a quiet Tuesday from a stadium. Visible’s own plan page prices video quality into the tiers, capping the base plan at 480p and charging more for 1080p and 4K, which is the same idea stated as a product feature.
Support is the second. These are online-first carriers. Mint’s label lists a phone number, but the default path for all three is chat and help pages, and there is no store to walk into.
The third is what the price does not include. Mint’s labels add government fees and a recovery fee on top of the monthly number. Visible states that taxes and fees are already in its price. Two plans that look $0 apart on the label are not necessarily $0 apart on the card. I ran into a version of this when I compared blogging platforms: the cheapest row and the row you actually want are rarely the same row.
The short version
Scroll past the price to the Broadband Facts label and read four lines. If it says the rate is introductory, find the length of the intro period and the regular price, multiply both out, and compare that total against a carrier whose label says its price is not introductory. That is the whole method, and it takes about a minute per plan.
Two disclosures. I have not been a customer of any of these three carriers, so nothing here is a review of what happens after you port your number, and there are no referral links in this post. And these numbers age fast. Every figure above is what the live pages said on July 31, 2026, and intro offers change month to month. Open the label yourself before you buy.