How we compare mobile, internet and TV plans
The rules behind our rankings of plans from GO, Melita and Epic: where the prices come from, how we work out what a plan really costs, and what we leave out.
Where the prices come from
About once a week our price bot reads the plans each operator publishes on its own website. It identifies itself, follows each site's robots.txt, waits between requests and never fills in forms, logs in or uses an operator's online shop.
- GO: the plan cards on its mobile, top-up, home internet and GO TV pages.
- Melita: the price list on its postpaid page, and the tariff pages Melita publishes for each plan, which state the monthly fee and, for most plans, the contract length. Its Flexi bundle is priced only in an online configurator that we don't use, so we show it without a price.
- Epic: the plan cards on its bill-pay, top-up, home fibre and TV pages, and the contract summary of each plan (the one-page summary EU law requires), which gives the monthly fee, one-off fees and contract length.
Prices include VAT, as the operators show them. Each plan's details say when we read its price.
Effective monthly cost
Plans are ranked by what they cost on average each month over their minimum term:
(introductory months × introductory price + remaining months × regular price + one-off fees) ÷ months in the term
For example, GO Freedom Data costs €5.99 a month for the first 6 months, then €20.99, on a 24-month contract: (6 × €5.99 + 18 × €20.99) ÷ 24 = €17.24 a month.
- Prepaid packs that renew every 28 days renew 13.04 times a year, so a 28-day price counts × 30.44 ÷ 28 per month.
- Plans without a minimum term (prepaid, month to month, or where the operator doesn't state one) are averaged over a year, so a one-off fee or a free first month isn't counted as if you left after a month.
- With conditions: some prices depend on something else, such as also having the operator's home internet or a GO Home Pack. We show the operator's price with the condition met next to the standalone price, and rank by the standalone price.
- One-off fees are activation, installation and SIM charges the operator publishes for that plan. Where none are published we add nothing and mark the cost with *.
What we leave out
- Direct-debit discounts: every operator takes a little off for paying by direct debit, whichever plan you pick. Plan details give the amount.
- Add-ons, handsets and devices, paper-bill charges, and calls or roaming outside the plan's allowances.
- Business, youth and senior plans, and GO's Home Pack bundles, which GO prices only after a postcode check.
- Offers whose terms aren't published next to the price.
Unknown means unknown
If an operator doesn't publish something on the pages we read, we say "not stated" or "not published" rather than guess. If an operator's own pages give different prices for the same plan, we use the plan's contract summary where the operator publishes one; otherwise we show no price until they agree. A plan without a price is listed last and never called the cheapest.
Independence
No operator pays us for placement, and we don't use affiliate links: every plan is ordered by its cost alone, and links go straight to the operator's own page. The site shows Google ads, which have no say in the order. maltacompare is an independent price comparison site, run by an individual; read who runs it and how to reach us.
Found a wrong price?
Email [email protected] with the plan and what the operator's page says. Each plan's details also have a "Report a wrong price" link that names the plan for you. We check every report against the operator's website.
The rules for comparison tools
EU law (the European Electronic Communications Code, Article 103) and Malta's Legal Notice 379 of 2021 (regulation 88) ask comparison tools to be independent of the operators, to treat them equally, to explain their criteria, to say when their information was last updated and how complete it is, and to let people report mistakes. This page is how we do that. Malta's regulator, the MCA, runs its own comparison at telecosts.com; ours is not certified by the MCA.