With Ting you have to buy the phone outright. Mine cost about $300. Then I had to buy a signal booster for another $200. So although my cell phone bills come to $25 a month which includes the tax, it will probably take me at least 2 years before I see a savings. If you are a light cell phone user and you don't mind holding on to your cell phone for a long time, then Ting maybe for you. I work from home, so I'm on my network when I surf the Internet. This saves on data usage. I also noticed that the phone I bought which is an HTC m8, was much less expensive through Ting then it would have been through a major carrier.