I did the math when I got an iPhone 5c. It was $5 a month cheaper to go with Virgin Mobile over 2 years vs Verizon with their cheapest $45 plan. Virgin gave me less minutes but more data vs Verizon,$30 for 300min and 2.5gb vs $45 for unlimited minutes but 200mb data. Phone price was around $430 on Virgin(on sale) and $99 on Verizon for 2 year contract.

My brother uses T-Mobile's $30 pre-paid plan with only 100min and 5gb data. I'm tempted to switch, I needed IOS for an app, but the app just went android so I switched back and got a Galaxy S3 that was on sale, but I'd rather have the extra minutes vs data. A lot of other cheapskates use Page Plus and Tracfone just started a BYOB plan but the phones are limited to old CDMA android ones. I'll stick with Virgin for another year or so.