These are the best NBN plans and deals available in August

Whether you want to save money with NBN Standard or need a little extra speed with NBN Fast, there are more providers today offering the maximum potential download speeds than ever before. Depending on your desired speed, NBN plans can cost you less than $50 per month, or more than $150 per month. So it's important to know what you're buying into.

Every month, our seasoned team of editors and plan experts dig through the mountain of Australian internet plans in our comparison engine to find the very best in a number of categories.  Below you'll find a short list of our top picks.

If you're looking for a new NBN plan, there are the major and minor factors you'll want to consider before you make the decision to sign up.

• Download speeds: The faster the download speed, the speedier your connection. Unless you live alone or in a home with a couple of people who don’t really use the internet all that much, it’s best to start with NBN 50 and work up. These plans aren’t much more expensive than NBN 12 and NBN 25 plans, but they are a lot faster.
• Upload speeds: Upload speeds tend to be a secondary consideration, but for those interested in faster upload speeds, consider an NBN 100/40 plan from select providers. Alternatively, if your home is eligible, weigh up an NBN 1000 plan for upload speeds up to 50Mbps.
• Promo pricing: Most NBN providers offer a discounted rate for new customers. This can make it easier to justify trying out a faster speed tier than the one you need before committing to a higher rate.
• Regular pricing: If you're looking to stick with a provider for the long run, be sure to factor in more than just the honeymoon. An otherwise-good discount might not be worth the short-term savings once you're paying a lot more for every month.
• Provider speeds: While most providers offer internet plans at similar speed tiers, the quality of service they offer can vary significantly during peak hours. In addition to an NBN providers’ respective self-reported typical evening download speeds, be sure to see what the ACCC has to say before you sign up.
• Sign-up costs: The last thing you should consider when looking at Australia internet plans is whether a provider has any additional fees associated with signing up. Plans from providers like Telstra and Optus include a modem (albeit with potential hardware exit fees) while other NBN providers will give you the option of purchasing equipment as needed or bringing your own.

For most Aussies though, the "best NBN provider" will vary from person to person and depend on the kind of internet plan you’re looking for and what your needs are. Providers like Spintel, Tangerine and Superloop offer competitive pricing and great speeds. Meanwhile, household names like Telstra and Optus cost more but include NBN modems with 4G backup.

Thanks to the ACCC, there's no shortage of analysis out there about which NBN providers offer the best service. Looking at the data that pits providers against each other helps paint a picture of which one is best when it comes to average download speeds and upload speeds, fewest daily outages, as well as fastest webpage loading times and lowest latency.

Right now, Exetel is our current pick for the best NBN provider. This provider maintained a commanding lead for the ACCC’s April 2023 results.

Impressively, Exetel took out the top spot for fastest average download speeds (busy hours and busiest hour) and upload speeds as well as fewest daily outages, with silver medals for webpage loading times and latency.

NBN 50 is the most popular speed tier and the one we recommend most homes start with for comparisons, and you can expect to pay around $70 per month for a competitively priced plan. If that price isn't right for you, there are plenty of options both above and below it.

Without considering promotional pricing, Australian internet plan prices from our comparison engine start at around $35 per month for a bare-bolts satellite NBN 12 plan then go to around a $135 monthly fee for ultrafast NBN 1000 internet plans.

Here's how much you should expect to pay for each NBN speed tier in terms of standard pricing.

• Satellite NBN - Prices starting from $34.95
• NBN 12 - Prices start from $59.99
• NBN 25 - Prices start from $49.99
• NBN 50 - Prices starting from $64.99
• NBN 100 - Prices start from $79.99
• NBN 250 - Prices starting from $99.99
• NBN 1000 - Prices starting from $135.99

The cheapest NBN providers are consistently Dodo, Spintel and Tangerine. That will change from time to time, as deals and plan pricings change but more often than not, these three providers tend to have the cheapest fixed-line NBN plans available. 

Depending on where you live, satellite NBN might be even cheaper than that. Many satellite NBN providers tend to offer low-data Basic I plans between $30 and $40. That said, price isn't everything when it comes Australian internet plans.

If you can get a fixed-line NBN plan instead, we'd recommend doing so. These plans typically start around $40 to $45 per month but are capable of much faster speeds and don't come with data caps that satellite NBN typically has.