I promised the forum post on FreedomPop long ago, and I kept dragging it out for ages. Sorry for taking so long—I finally typed it up so everyone can check it out. If there are gaps, just fill them in yourself.

【9/8 Update】The good 1c+2G deal is back (it had been raised to $20 for a while). If you still want more data, feel free to leave your email in the comments; after adding each other as friends, you can get up to 50MB. Also, because Freedom Pop changes plans frequently and adds new traps, everyone should read the latest comments. If you have questions, feel free to comment and discuss. We’ll try our best to help.

【11/2 Update】Some DP users reported that when downgrading the plan, it downgrades to “Basic 200 Semi-Annual.” Unconfirmed analysis suggests this plan is basically the same as “Basic LTE 200”~ So if what you see after downgrading is different from the screenshot in this post, don’t panic. Just follow the required sequence to downgrade the plan and then downgrade the service. Except for that $5 fee, there should be no other charges. I hope more people can provide DP confirmations for this.

There are also some people saying customer support is hard to reach. Here is a way that is relatively easier to get through to support: call 888-743-8107 and press 4 (billing). That should quickly connect you with a real person.

One more rough, not-quite-final tip~ If you have a BofA or Citi card, please use a virtual account with a set limit when buying FreedomPop. For example, set it to $6. That way, aside from the $1 purchase and the $5 needed when downgrading, you only leave $0.01 for them to take. Or keep only a one-digit balance on a Visa gift card. If that happens, it’s a clean bad-deal situation—no big deal, just discard the card and spend another $1 to buy one. That is still easier than arguing after they have already deducted money.

【10/2 Update】Recently, some DP users reported that when downgrading to the free plan, Freedom Pop may still charge $5 first and only then allow the downgrade. Well, they already licked enough sheep, so a bite or two is not surprising. Good news: that $5 becomes a credit on your account, and when you later disable the “Automatic Top Up” feature, you won’t need to pay another $5~ So for users planning to disable “Automatic Top Up,” there is basically no major change.

Of course, if you tell me, “I don’t want to pay even one more cent—what should I do?” I’ll give you a trick...

According to a reliable internal report, if you downgrade through FreedomPop’s beta website, it works like before and will not ask you for $5 in the process of downgrading to the free plan~ Beta URL is below:

https://my.freedompop.com

But if you want to disable “Automatic Top Up,” the $5 still can’t be avoided~

No one knows when this loophole will be patched by FreedomPop, so everyone should decide for themselves.

【9/11 Update】Freedom Pop gives you a fixed 50MB bonus each time you add a friend, with a cap of 10 people/500MB. You can post your Freedom Pop account email in the comments so we can add each other. Remove your own email after filling up. Suggested format: xxxx at xxxx.com. If you can’t fill the limit right away, just bookmark this post and check it from time to time~

About FreedomPop

What is FreedomPop? FreedomPop is a virtual operator using AT&T’s network, kind of the same idea as H2O.

Why use FreedomPop? Because you can make it essentially free. If done correctly, you can get 200 minutes, 500 texts, and 700MB of LTE data for free each month.

Besides free usage, why use FreedomPop? It can be used for: extra backup phones; multiple phone-number registrations for placing multiple orders on certain websites; testing a boyfriend/girlfriend’s loyalty, etc.

What kind of phone can use FreedomPop? It requires a GSM-capable unlocked phone. In my testing, AT&T locked phones also work with FreedomPop.

Can you really get FreedomPop for free? No. At minimum, you have to spend $0.99 to buy a SIM card. There is also a $5 charge. You can pay it or not, but I personally suggest spending a little for peace of mind. I’ll explain the details later.

Why write this long-winded post if it is “free”? Because if you skip the details, FreedomPop has all kinds of traps ready to make you pay.

How to Buy

Step one: buy a SIM card here:

You can usually get it for $0.99 + free shipping. If you see a $4.99 price, you can still buy it and then buy again after some time. Basically, with the $0.99 promotion, people can get it several times in a month—four, five, six, or eight times. It has been as low as $0.01.

One important note: every SIM card you buy comes with a paid plan, free for 30 days, then roughly $28+ per month after that~ So here is the key point of this article: how to downgrade to a free plan after receiving the card. When purchasing a number, you can choose a new number or port in an old one.

FreedomPop has two variants in total: one is FreedomPop Nationwide 4G LTE, and the other is FreedomPop GLOBAL GSM. This article covers the first one. I’ll write about the global one when I get the chance. As the name suggests, FreedomPop Nationwide 4G LTE can be used on LTE networks in the U.S. because it uses AT&T coverage, which is fairly good.

Network Settings

Because it is a virtual operator, a newly inserted card is not plug-and-play. You need to manually set the APN. Tutorial details are here:

If you’re really too lazy to click, here’s a quick summary:

Android/iPhone (shared)：

  • Open Carrier/Network settings
  • Go to Access Point Names
  • Add a new APN
  • In the APN field of the new APN, enter “fp. com. attz,” then in the Name field enter “FreedomPop.” Leave everything else blank.
  • Save and exit, then select this newly created APN named FreedomPop.

iPhone-only

Downgrade to a Free Plan

Generally, after buying a SIM card, FreedomPop asks you to create an account. If you bought the SIM card from the official FreedomPop website, it will be activated before shipping, so you can downgrade it without waiting for the card to arrive, and it won’t cause issues. If you bought it from a third party like Best Buy, make sure you wait until you receive and activate the SIM before downgrading.

In short, FreedomPop plans have two parts: “Plan” and “Service.” You need to downgrade both to the free versions.

How to Downgrade the Plan

  • After signing in to your account, in the top tab you’ll see “My account”; click “Plan.”
  • Right now your plan should show “Premium 2GB LTE Unlimited.” Click “Details and Plan Management.”
  • On the new page, find “To downgrade your plan, click here.” The text is small, so look closely.
  • On the next page you’ll get a warning: “Warning: you are about to downgrade your plan. By downgrading your plan, if you are on a trial, you will lose all additional minutes/messages/data. Any usage incurred above your new plan limits will incur additional charges.” Stay firm and click “Downgrade anyway,” regardless of what message FreedomPop tries to show to make you keep it. Also, in some cases (DP as of 8-23-17), FreedomPop may show a message asking you to add $5-$15 before downgrading. In that case, find “Don’t Top Up” and click it.
  • Your plan downgrade is now complete.

How to Downgrade the Service

  • Same here: after signing in to your account, in the top tab you’ll see “My account”; click “Service.”
  • Your current service should show “FreedomPop Premium Plus.” Click “View Details.”
  • On the new page at the bottom, find “ To deactivate the FreedomPop Premium Plus service, click here.” The text is also small, so look carefully.
  • You’ll see the same retention prompts. Keep pressing through until you see: “YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY DOWNGRADED.”
  • Your service downgrade is now complete.

Confirm the Downgrade

After completing both parts above, check your email for two emails: one confirming the plan downgrade was successful and one confirming the service downgrade was successful. Usually, receiving those two emails means you’ve reached the free plan.

Why “usually”? Read on.

Downgrade Bug

Since March 2017, this bug has happened more than once. You may receive both confirmation emails, think everything is done, and then soon get a $7.99 bill. Whether intentional or not, they still seem to want to get paid.

Here’s how to double-check:

  • First, log in to your account, then type https://www.freedompop.com/acct_overview.htm directly in your browser address bar.
  • Check the red box area in the screenshot. If it matches, your downgrade is confirmed as successful.
  • If the “My service” section below still shows “Premium service,” then congratulations—you may be one of the ones FreedomPop wants to keep on a paid option.
  • This is easy to fix: click “view details” and redo the same downgrade steps as above.
  • After you’ve downgraded this time, enter “https://www.freedompop.com/acct_overview.htm” again to verify. It should now be fine.

At this point, it should be fully downgraded. You can use 200 free minutes, 500 texts, and 200MB per month.

How to Get Another Free 500MB

Don’t worry yet—listen to the full explanation first.

FreedomPop has a friend-invite function. By adding friends by email, each friend you add gives you an extra fixed 50MB, with a cap of 10 people / 500MB. In other words, once you have 10 friends, FreedomPop will automatically add 500MB each month. Combined with the built-in 200MB, that gives you a total of 700MB.

If you add more than 10 friends, the same month you’ll continue to get 50MB for each additional friend as temporary data. Those temporary allowances do not carry over to the next month.

To simplify: if you want to make the most of it, add 10 friends.

For how to find friends, use the comments below to connect.

FreedomPop also has a somewhat bold “ask for data” feature. If you want to use it, please do so at your own discretion and risk.

How to Avoid an Additional Data Charge

Data Trap

Free plans usually have a lot of pitfalls. One of the worst is this: if your data goes under 100MB, FreedomPop will charge you $15 as a Data Overage Charge. There are two ways to avoid this charge.

First:

Monitor your usage. If you’re close to 100MB, turn off data. But FreedomPop’s data usage is not updated in real time and can lag by 1–2 hours, so when you see it near 100MB it may already actually be below 100MB. Android users can set a data limit for this. The downside is that one slip can still get you charged another $15.

Second:

Disable the “Automatic Top Up” feature. Here’s how:

Disable the “Automatic Top Up” feature. Here’s how:

  • On the account home page, click “Billing,” then click “Billing Setting.”
  • In the new view at the bottom, find the “Automatic Top-up” section and click “EDIT.”
  • Then a pop-up appears asking, “Because actual data usage may be delayed by up to 3 hours, to protect ourselves from fraud and leakage, you must have at least $5.00 in credits to turn off Auto-top up.” This is the moment where you decide whether to pay that $5.

I’d rather choose the second method—it saves time and effort, and it’s also like donating $5 to FreedomPop, hoping this little data find lasts a bit longer.

DATA ROLLOVER

FreedomPop currently offers a $3.99 monthly option to roll over unused data, so you can carry up to a maximum of 20GB. As for whether to enroll, that’s up to you. As for me—if I have the money, why not add a few extra FreedomPop lines?

How do I make calls and send texts with FreedomPop?

Wait... why is this the last question?

Because people who are using FreedomPop seem to use it mainly for data; calls and texts are kind of optional.

So I won’t write much more. Because it’s a virtual operator, calls and texts both need to go through the app, and they only work when you have an internet connection.

For the required app, search the Google Play Store or iOS App Store yourself. Keyword: FreedomPop

Follow-up

At this point, I think everything worth saying has probably been covered. If you follow the steps above, you should be able to pull this one off.

Also, you can take a look at the FreedomPop GLOBAL GSM plan yourself: 200MB free data, with coverage across most of Europe. Last year this global SIM card was hard to find anywhere, but now Best Buy sells it for $4.99, and if there’s a promotion, you can get it for $0.99 as well. Downgrades are pretty similar to the options above.

This is the GLOBAL GSM coverage. Don’t trust “coming soon,” because I’ve seen this “coming soon” at least a year ago...

Okay, that should do it. If anything is unclear, please read around on your own; if you have questions, feel free to leave a comment and discuss.

Registration Link

FreedomPop gives you 50MB of fixed data for each friend you add. The old cap was 10 people/500MB but now the cap is 50,000,000. You can leave your FreedomPop account email in the comments and have everyone add each other as friends, then remove your own email after the cap is reached. Suggested email format: xxxx at xxxx.com