Cheapest WhatsApp bundles in South Africa

South Africa’s four major mobile networks offer affordable WhatsApp-specific data bundles, but only one allows customers to use these bundles for voice and video calls — Telkom.

WhatsApp is the world’s most popular third-party chat app, with the latest estimates putting its monthly active users somewhere between two and three billion.

The app enjoys widespread adoption in South Africa thanks to being significantly cheaper for texting than SMSes.

MyBroadband recently calculated the effective cost of the data consumed by a text message on WhatsApp with the same character length as an SMS and found the latter was around 400,000% cheaper on major mobile networks.

The price gap becomes even greater when the data consumed is from discounted WhatsApp bundles.

MyBroadband compared the prices of WhatsApp-specific bundles from Vodacom, MTN, Telkom and Cell C to see which had the best rates.

Before considering the best prices, we reviewed the terms and conditions of these bundles and noticed a big caveat with Vodacom, MTN, and Cell C’s WhatsApp-only bundles — they cannot be used for WhatsApp voice or video calls.

Only data consumed for sending texts, voice notes, and other non-real-time multimedia like photos and videos will be deducted from the WhatsApp-only allocations on these networks.

WhatsApp voice and video call data will be deducted from a user’s standard bundles or airtime at out-of-bundle rates.

Telkom is the only major operator without this condition, which means its customers can make voice and video calls at dirt-cheap WhatsApp rates.

MyBroadband’s tests of voice call data consumption on WhatsApp found it was generally over 95% cheaper on regular data bundles than when using conventional voice minutes.

Therefore, the ability to make calls on Telkom’s bundles is a big advantage.

In addition, Telkom offers WhatsApp bundles with unlimited data valid for a day, week, or month at highly attractive prices.

Working out the best offers

Telkom’s advantages aside, comparing the bundle prices directly is tricky due to varying allocations and validity periods across the four networks.

We calculated a price per MB to determine the best-value bundle for the three most common validity periods — daily, weekly, and monthly.

In terms of daily bundles, Vodacom’s 50MB product was the most expensive per MB, but its 250MB bundle was the most affordable, on par with Cell C.

MTN had the most affordable daily bundle based on actual price, charging R2.00 for 50MB of WhatsApp data on its cheapest bundles.

Telkom’s capped bundles had prices per MB falling between the cheapest and most expensive daily bundles.

For the same R15 price as buying three of the cheapest daily bundles from Cell C, which provide a total of 750MB of data, users could get an unlimited daily Telkom bundle.

Exceeding 750MB of data usage on WhatsApp in a day would require much heavier than normal usage, however.

When it came to weekly products, MTN had the best-value bundle with a 1GB allocation for R20, working out to R0.02 per MB.

Vodacom had the most expensive bundle in terms of per-MB pricing with its 300MB weekly bundle for R13.

Telkom’s unlimited weekly WhatsApp bundle was priced at R35, R5 more than it would have cost to buy 1.05GB of WhatsApp data with its two other capped bundles.

For monthly bundles, MTN’s R99 offer for 5GB WhatsApp data was the most cost-effective capped bundle at R0.02 per MB.

The MTN 2GB WhatsApp bundle for R50 had the second cheapest per-MB price of R0.03, narrowly beating Telkom’s 1.5GB bundle for R40.

However, Telkom’s unlimited monthly WhatsApp bundle for R100 cost just R1 more than MTN’s best 5GB bundle, undoubtedly offering better value.

The table below compares the prices of WhatsApp bundles from major network operators in South Africa.