Free Flex: really more interesting than the competition's offers?

Transparency and discounts

What difference is Free making compared to its competitors? Transparency. Phone and plan costs are separate; the latter remains non-binding and does not see its price changed, whether you take a smartphone or not. In the end, after the 24 monthly payments and the two additional investments, Free is committed to ensuring that your phone does not cost you more than its market price at the time of purchase.

The other selling point of the Iliad operator is therefore the price of the smartphone, which is supposedly not artificially inflated by an overpriced package as is often the case with approaches more traditional subsidies. Approaches that Free has also castigated for years, even attacking its competitors in court.

But is Free Flex really cheaper than competing plans? As good lovers of price tables and comparisons, you can imagine that we went to check.

Methodology

We have chosen three rather very fashionable smartphone models, for three price levels: the iPhone 12 64 GB, displayed at €749 at several e-tailers, the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, which can be found at just under €580, and the Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G, sold for €358. On the package side, we took the offer from each operator closest to Free's basic package, namely a 5G package including 150 GB of monthly data, sold at €19.99 per month. Each time, we calculated the total amount paid over 24 months for the plan + the smartphone, including any price increases after one year.

A little clarification is in order. For Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom, we based ourselves on the rates applied in the subsidized offers exclusively. As for the low-cost operators, Sosh, RED and B&You, this model generally does not exist. Sosh and B&You, however, offer a payment spread over 24 instalments, an approach quite similar to Free Flex. At RED, only four-time payment free of charge is available.