Eir prepay vs Eir bill pay

Verdict: bill pay for twelve months, prepay after that, GoMo instead of either

This page is only about eir’s own two ways of paying. For the wider plan-type argument see bill pay vs prepay in Ireland. For eir against its own budget brand see Eir vs GoMo. Prices are eir.ie, August 2026, and the plan data comes from our catalogue in the Eir Mobile review.

What eir prepay actually sells in 2026

Eir prepay is one SIM (eir calls the tariff “Simplicity”) and a menu of offers you opt into by texting a code to 50104 before you top up. Forget the text and your top-up is spent at standard rates. There are three offers on the shop page in August 2026.

Things the plan card does not spell out:

• 28 days is not a month. Thirteen cycles fit in a year. €20 every 28 days is €260 a year, or about €21.67 per calendar month. Every prepay page on this site counts 13, and so should you.
• Unlimited means unlimited on this plan. Eir says it is not enforcing a data fair-use cap for customers who joined prepay Simplicity since 22 October 2024. It does reserve the right to slow streaming for heavy users when the cell is busy. Calls and texts cap at 3,000 each per 28 days.
• The €10 offer is a calls-only voucher that lasts 14 days. It exists for the second phone in a drawer and the parent who wants a contact number on a child’s handset. It is not a cheap data plan.
• Switchers get €20 credit when they port a number to eir prepay, which is one free cycle. Eir has also run “one month free with eir prepay” promotions through 2026; check the offer terms page for the current one.
• Inactivity kills the SIM. Eir’s prepay terms require a purchased top-up of at least €5 every 150 days or the service is suspended, and remaining credit is removed 240 days after the last purchased top-up. Schedule the top-up in the eir app or by calling 1740 if you are the type to forget.

What eir bill-pay SIM-only sells in 2026

Two SIM-only plans, both on a 30-day rolling contract, both with a 12-month intro price. The plan names are Connect and Complete. Eir also sells 24-month handset plans (Essential, Connect Plus 5G, Complete) at €39.99 to €69.99 standard; those are phone finance and are not the subject here.

• The contract is 30 days, the price is 12 months. You can leave any time with 30 days’ notice. The cheap price simply expires at month 12 and you keep paying €29.99 until you do something about it. There is no cliff on a bill pay handset plan to stop you; the cliff is that you are now on a rolling plan at the full price.
• A €9.99 once-off SIM activation fee is charged on the first bill of a SIM-only plan. Our catalogue carries it on Connect and Complete, so every bill-pay year-one figure on this page includes it.
• Roaming caps are bigger on bill pay than prepay. Our catalogue carries 65 GB EU roaming on Connect and 75 GB EU roaming, 200 international minutes and texts on Complete, matching the plan cards on the shop page in August 2026; prepay is 45 GB. Read the number on your own order summary. Either way it is well above GoMo’s 23 GB.
• Direct debit is compulsory. Eir’s pricing treats the standard charge as the plan price minus a direct-debit discount, so paying any other way costs more.

What each option costs over two years

Year one is 13 prepay cycles against 12 bill-pay months plus the SIM fee. Year two is 13 more cycles against 12 months at the thereafter price. The April increase is left out of the bill-pay rows; add €2.50 a month from April 2027 on top.

Read across the Connect and prepay rows. Connect is €70 cheaper in year one and €100 dearer in year two. The crossover lands around month 21. If you are the sort who re-contracts every August to reset the intro, Connect keeps winning. Eir will usually let an existing customer take the current SIM-only offer again, but it is a phone call, not an automatic reset, and the April increase is calculated on the €29.99 standard price regardless of what discount you are on.

The Complete row is only worth reading if you make international calls. 200 minutes for a €10.00 premium over Connect in year one, or €5.00 after that. Prepay gives you 120 international minutes for a €10 premium per cycle. Check the destination list before you pay either, and compare with the country bundles in best mobile for international calls.

Does the eir April price rise hit prepay?

No, and that is the strongest argument for eir prepay over eir bill pay. Eir’s annual price change page says it applies to customers contracting for fixed voice, broadband, TV and mobile bill pay, including handset, SIM-only and mobile broadband. Prepay is not in the sentence. A prepay price can still move, because eir can re-price the €20 offer whenever it likes, but it cannot move under a clause you already agreed to.

What bill-pay customers got in April 2026: the formula was CPI plus 3%. January 2026 CPI was 2.8%, so the ceiling was 5.8% of the standard price before discounts. The published table shows SIM-only rising €1.70 on the €29.99 standard Connect price, Essential €2.30 on €39.99, Connect Plus 5G €3.45 on €59.99 and Complete €3.50 on €69.99 (those last three are handset plans). Anyone who joined or re-contracted from 1 March 2026 skipped the April 2026 rise and gets the April 2027 one instead.

What changes from 2027: the SIM-only plan cards on eir.ie now say “From April 2027, the monthly price of your plan will increase by €2.50 each April.” That is a flat euro amount replacing the percentage, and it is specific to mobile SIM-only; eir’s fibre broadband plans carry a different flat figure. On €29.99 that is 8.3%, worse than the CPI formula produced this year. It also lands on the standard price, so a broadband customer paying €19.99 still pays the full €2.50. Our price for life page covers which SIMs have no such clause at all.

The €10 eir broadband discount is a bill-pay thing

Eir advertises a €10 monthly discount on every eir mobile plan for eir broadband customers. The SIM-only shop page shows it already applied: Connect at €9.99 for 12 months then €19.99, Complete at €14.99 then €24.99. At €19.99 thereafter, Connect is finally cheaper than eir prepay in year two as well as year one, and €7 a month above GoMo for a bigger roaming cap and a shop to walk into.

Read the intro carefully: the bundle price in months 1 to 12 is €9.99, which is €5 under the €14.99 non-bundle intro, not €10. The full €10 only shows from month 13, when €29.99 becomes €19.99. The discount works because the mobile line sits on the same bill as the broadband, with the mobile priced at its standalone rate and the bundle discount knocked off. Prepay has no bill, so there is nothing to knock €10 off. If you have eir fibre and want eir mobile, the answer is bill pay and it is not close. If you leave eir broadband, the €10 goes with it and Connect snaps back to €29.99; your mobile contract is still 30 days, so you can leave that too.

eSIM, credit check and hotspot by payment type

• eSIM. Bill pay and SIM-only customers can order an eSIM and activate it in the eir app by EID carrier activation or QR code, and run it alongside a physical SIM on a dual-SIM phone. Eir’s eSIM support lives under bill pay and we found no prepay eSIM order path on eir.ie in August 2026. Our catalogue records eir as eSIM-capable on that basis; treat eSIM as bill-pay-only until eir says otherwise. eSIM in Ireland lists who sells it on every network.
• Credit check. Bill pay is a direct-debit account, so eir runs the usual identity and credit-style checks when you sign up, and it can ask for a deposit or refuse. Prepay is a SIM you buy and top up; there is no check because there is nothing to owe. If you have been refused bill pay elsewhere, eir prepay and GoMo (which is card-billed monthly but has no intro to claw back) are the routes onto Eir radio.
• Hotspot. Eir does not advertise a separate tethering cap on either the prepay Simplicity offers or the SIM-only plans; your phone’s hotspot draws from the same unlimited allowance. The fair-use clause on prepay says eir may slow streaming for a minority of heavy users when the network is under load. If you plan to run a laptop off the phone all day, the 5G mobile broadband products are the honest eir answer.
• Cooling off. Both are 14 days for distance sales. On prepay the credit is spent once used; on bill pay you are billed for what you used inside the window.
• Coverage. Identical. 99% 5G population coverage is eir’s claim for the network, and Opensignal’s January 2026 Ireland report is the award eir cites for 5G availability. Prepay and bill pay use the same masts, the same 5G and the same 3G switch-off, which eir is completing in 2026; a 3G-only handset on a €10 prepay voucher will stop working. See best mobile for rural Ireland if the house is the problem.
• Customer service. Same call centre either way. ComReg publishes complaint counts per operator each quarter in its Consumer Care statistics, and eir’s record on that table is why we score eir 7 for service; ComReg went as far as a dedicated eir consumer-care page in 2020. Prepay customers lean on the app and 1740; bill pay customers get a bill to dispute and the ComReg complaints process if eir misses its 10-working-day resolution target.

Moving between eir prepay and eir bill pay

Prepay to bill pay. Order the SIM-only plan and tell eir you are an existing prepay customer who wants to keep the number. This is a migration inside eir rather than a ComReg port, so there is no UAN and no other-network involvement. Remaining prepay credit does not transfer to the bill; spend it first. You will get a new SIM or an eSIM and the €9.99 activation fee applies.

Bill pay to prepay. Possible, but eir treats it as a cancellation of the bill-pay service and a new prepay activation on the same number, done through customer care rather than the app. Give the 30 days’ notice the rolling contract requires, clear the final bill, and expect the roaming and international allowances to change to the prepay versions. Most people who get this far are better off porting to GoMo instead; the how to switch page covers the port.

Prepay to GoMo. A normal port. Text the port request through the GoMo app, keep the number, and the eir prepay SIM dies when the port completes. Any credit left on it is forfeit, so time the port to the end of a cycle.

Who should pick which

• Light user, few calls, rarely abroad. Neither. The €20 prepay voucher and the Connect plan both price you for unlimited 5G you will not use. GoMo at €12.99 is the cheapest unlimited SIM on the masts; if you want a cheaper voucher, the best prepay page lists them. The €10 calls-only voucher suits a child’s phone or a landline replacement, nothing else.
• Heavy data user, stays on the plan. Prepay over 24 months; Connect over 12. The difference is €70 in Connect’s favour in year one and €100 in prepay’s favour in year two. If you are disciplined enough to re-contract or leave at month 12, Connect. If not, prepay, and set the 28-day top-up to auto in the app.
• Eir broadband household. Bill pay, every time. €9.99 then €19.99 beats the voucher in both years and beats GoMo on roaming.
• Frequent EU traveller. Either eir option. 45 GB on prepay, or 65 GB on Connect, is two to three times GoMo’s 23 GB, and on a 28-day voucher you can buy the €20 plan just for the trip. Our EU roaming guide explains how the fair-use cap is calculated.
• International caller. Prepay €30 for 120 minutes or Complete for 200 minutes and texts. Work out the cost per minute you actually use before either; a Lycamobile bundle is often cheaper for one country, and Lycamobile now rides the same Eir radio.
• Can’t or won’t pass a credit check. Prepay. No direct debit, no check, no bill.
• Wants eSIM on Eir radio. Bill pay, or GoMo. Not prepay.

The GoMo question

Every eir prepay vs bill pay comparison ends at the same place. GoMo is eir’s own budget brand on the same radio, and in August 2026 its plan is €12.99 a month for unlimited 5G with 23 GB EU roaming, rolling monthly, eSIM available, sold and supported only through the app, with a €12.99 activation fee up front. That is €7.01 a cycle less than eir prepay for the same masts, with no 28-day arithmetic, and it is €17 a month less than Connect after the intro. GoMo’s pitch is that the price is for life; we treat that as a promise rather than a statute, and the price for life page explains why, but there is no April clause on it today.

What eir keeps over GoMo is the stuff GoMo deliberately does not do: shops, a phone number to ring, handset finance, the broadband bundle, international minutes on the plan, a bigger roaming cap, and a prepay voucher you can stop dead. If one of those is the reason you are on eir, the choice between eir prepay and eir bill pay above still stands. If none of them is, the right answer to “eir prepay or eir bill pay” is GoMo, and the Eir vs GoMo page is the comparison you want. For the Three-radio version of the same trick, Eir vs Three puts 48 in the GoMo seat.

About the author

Róisín Kelly

Mobile Networks Analyst

Róisín Kelly leads matched.ie’s mobile coverage and plan comparisons. She has driven over 15,000 km testing 4G and 5G signals across Ireland for Three, Vodafone, eir and Virgin Mobile.

7 years mapping real-world mobile performanceCertified Mobile Network Engineer (Ericsson & Nokia)Focus on rural coverage, data speeds and international roamingRegularly updates matched.ie’s mobile coverage heatmaps