Uncapped Fibre from R279

There are 688 uncapped plans in the table above, spread across 45 fibre networks. They are not interchangeable: the cheapest way onto FibreSuburb Networks is R279 a month, while the same question on Cybersmart starts at R879. Which networks reach your address is usually decided for you, so the useful comparison is within a network rather than across the whole list.

The last column is the best rand-per-Mbps available anywhere on that network, at any speed — not the unit price of the cheapest line beside it. The two are rarely close, and the gap is the argument against buying on headline price. The entry tier in this segment is R279 for 5 Mbps on FibreSuburb Networks, which is R55.80 per Mbps; the best unit price in the whole segment is R0.70 per Mbps. Paying a little more for a much faster line is usually the better deal; paying the minimum almost never is.

No promotional rate applies to this line, so the advertised price is what you pay from day one — there is no step-up a few months in. Neither total includes installation or a router, because no per-package once-off figure is published for this line — most lines in this segment bundle both, and the deal cards above list what each one includes. Cancellation terms are the other cost that does not appear in a monthly price: no fixed term is not the same as no cancellation fee, and several ISPs here claw back a waived install if you leave inside six or twelve months.

Looking wider than this segment? Compare every fibre deal we track puts the full catalogue in one sortable table, and the cheapest fibre deals ranks the whole market on price and rand-per-Mbps rather than within one network.

Three words get used as if they mean the same thing, and they do not. A package can be uncapped and still be slowed down. Knowing which promise you are actually buying is the difference between a line that behaves the way you expected and a monthly argument with support.

Every line in the table on this page is uncapped, unshaped, unthrottled and billed monthly, because the page filters to exactly that. Prepaid passes are deliberately excluded: a pass buys a window rather than a month, so listing one beside monthly rates would compare two different things and make the pass look like the cheapest deal on the page when it is not.

The honest caveat is contention. None of these words promise you the full line speed at 20:00 on a Sunday. What they promise is that nothing in your contract is deliberately slowing you down. Congestion on the network operator’s side is a separate problem, and it is the one worth asking neighbours about before you sign.

Uncapped plans are easy to compare on price and hard to compare on value, because a cheaper line is often a much slower one. Rand per megabit settles it: it divides the monthly price by the download speed, so a R399 20 Mbps line and a R799 100 Mbps line become directly comparable. Lower is better, and the spread across the 688 uncapped plans we track is wider than most readers expect.

Read it alongside the next section rather than on its own. These bars use the advertised rate, so a line sitting on a deep promotion looks better here than it will in month seven. The reverts-to table below is the corrective.

About 33% of the uncapped lines listed above are promotional rates rather than standing ones. The headline price is real, but it is not what you pay indefinitely - and the gap between the promo and the rate it reverts to is frequently larger than the gap between two ISPs you were agonising over.

We do publish the two-year total, and the block above this section works it out: for 226 of the 229 promotional uncapped lines on this page, the operator states how many months the promo runs, so the step-up can be billed at the month it actually happens rather than assumed. Those totals also carry the once-off installation or activation charge where the operator publishes one, because year one is the year you pay it.

The 3 remaining lines are the honest exception, and they are left out rather than estimated. Their operators publish a discount without committing to its length — Vox’s own terms say “90 or 120 days, depending on line speed” — and picking an end of that range would invent the number the whole exercise is meant to establish. For those, ask how many months the promo runs before you sign, and budget on the reverts-to column in the meantime.

The practical rule: compare the reverts-to column, not the promo column, if you intend to stay longer than a year. On a month-to-month contract you can leave when the rate jumps, which is exactly why month-to-month fibre deals are worth preferring where the price is close.

An uncapped line is the right default for most South African households, but it is not the right answer for everyone, and there is no version of this page that earns anything by pretending otherwise.

• You use very little data and the line is idle most of the month. A single person who browses and streams one show an evening is buying insurance against a cap they would never have hit. A cheaper entry-level line at a lower speed is the better trade - start at 10 Mbps or 20 Mbps rather than paying for headroom.
• You do not have a debit order or want no contract at all. Prepaid fibre products exist for exactly this and they are not listed here, because they are not monthly products. That is a real gap in this page, not an argument against them.
• Your household is small and your router is old. Buying a faster uncapped line changes nothing if the bottleneck is the hardware in your lounge. Test on a cable first; replacing the router is usually the cheaper fix.
• You need a service-level agreement or a static IP. Every package on this page is residential. Uncapped is not the same as guaranteed, and none of these carry a repair-time commitment. If your income depends on the line, price a business product instead.
• Fibre has not reached your street. No amount of comparing helps until a network is live at your address. Start with the fibre coverage map, then come back and filter this table to the network that actually reaches you.