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After a bonanza of free line promotions during the pandemic (like this one, and this one), T-Mobile is once again out with the chance for many customers with 2 or more paid lines on postpaid service to add a free line (this latest promo is coded as 2022 BYOD Line P1). In my case, I was able to add my sixth free line — so I now have 4 paid lines and 6 free lines. Since I’m on Magenta Max (which has taxes included in the main plan), the free line doesn’t even add any tax – it’ll literally cost me absolutely nothing more on my monthly bill. T-Mobile now charges a $35 “device connection fee” for adding a line, so I did have to pay for that (and tax on that), so I essentially paid a one-time cost of $37.80 for the SIM card. Even if you don’t think you want another line, it can be worth taking advantage of this if you qualify.
The Deal
- T-Mobile is offering the chance for customers on qualifying plans with 2 or more postpaid lines to add a free line. This is coded as 2022 BYOD Line P1 and it just began today (12/15/22).
- To find out if you qualify to add a free line, chat with T-Mobile via Twitter, Facebook messenger, or perhaps via chat in the T-Mobile app or iMessage. Note that response times tend to slow way down during these free line promos, so don’t be surprised if it takes an hour or two to get a message back — you can do this slowly over the course of hours.
- Direct link to a Slickdeals thread with tons of info
Key Terms
- It is likely that only Magenta and Magenta Max plans qualify, though it’s always worth checking to see
- “Free” lines get the same plan / benefits as your paid lines. So, for instance, since I’m on Magenta Max, my free line gets unlimited talk / text / data (with no throttle cap) / 40GB of hotspot per month / 5GB of high-speed data abroad, etc. Your benefits will vary based on your plan.
- Typically, you need to keep all of your current lines open for a year after adding a free line or T-Mobile will charge you for the free line.
Quick Thoughts
First up, I don’t know for sure which plans qualify and which don’t. I’m on Magenta Max (I’m actually on the 9-12 line version of that because of all of the other promo lines on my account) and I was eligible. It sounds like many/most people on Magenta or Magenta Max plans are eligible — military and 55+ plans often aren’t eligible for these free line promos, but it never hurts to ask.
Switching to a plan like Magenta or Magenta Max will likely be unappealing for some, so this deal won’t work out for everyone. Personally, these free line promos have worked out very well for me since I have so few paid lines and I also took advantage of the Insider Hookup deal when we wrote about that last year, which gives me 20% off for life. I get a great deal on service (I pay $128 for what will now be 10 lines on Magenta Max) thanks to constantly jumping on these free line promotions. I’ve been able to add a bunch of family members to my plan and save them all a bundle of money thanks to these promos.
In the past, I wrote about these free add-ons because they were particularly valuable if they could be stacked with other promotions. One way to stack in the past has been to get a free or discounted phone for adding a line (which you could keep or sell as a bonus win for adding a line!). Unfortunately, this add-a-line promotion is not eligible for any of the “add a line, get a free/discounted phone” promos, so you won’t be able to stack a deeply discounted phone that comes with an added line. More on phones in a second…
The other fun stack has been that there is a frequent Costco promotion to get a $300 Costco gift card when you add a line in-warehouse and bring your own device. This latest promotion requires BYOD, so I wonder if it may stack if Costco has or begins an offer like that. The one or two times I added via Costco, I just confirmed with T-Force on Twitter that I was eligible for the free line and then I went into Costco and added the line there. At Costco, they told me I’d be paying for the lines, but I knew from the Slickdeals thread that they would be free. Speaking of the Slickdeals thread, if you have questions, I’d recommend heading over there to ask since there is a much better chance that someone over there knows better than I do.
I should note that even though you can’t get a free phone for adding the line, you can still qualify for a trade-in / upgrade deal. Those of us on Magenta Max get elevated trade-in values. As one example, I could buy a Pixel 4 from Swappa.com for around $125 and trade it in to T-Mobile for a Pixel 7 that would be free after bill credits or get a Pixel 5 for around $150 and trade it in for a free Galaxy S22 (and I certainly may do something like one of those two deals).
In fact, I think it’s worth picking up free lines like this even if you don’t need the line specifically for upgrade opportunities. In our case, we’ll add my wife’s grandmother to the plan on the new free line and it won’t cost us much to get her a nice phone. However, even if I didn’t intend to do that, I’d probably consider adding the line and doing one of those trade-in deals just to sell the phone every year or two. There’s some complexity here, but as an example if I bought a Pixel 4 for $125 and traded it for a Pixel 7 (which would be free after bill credits), I could at least theoretically turn around and sell the Pixel 7 for around $400 and come out with a nice little profit (the reality gets a bit more complex because of the way the bill credits work, but that’s the basic idea).
I also like having the extra lines since my Magenta Max plan comes with 40GB of hotspot per line per month and an additional phone for redeeming for T-Mobile Tuesdays deals. All of those things can be worthwhile even if you don’t have an immediate use for the line.
Finally, these free line promos have made for great holiday presents. We’ve given a few family members free cell phone service for Christmas and it’s nice because it doesn’t cost us more than we were already paying anyway and it saves them a bundle year after year.
One thing to be aware of is that these free line promotions usually stipulate that if you cancel any of your lines within 12 months, you’ll lose the free line (i.e. I can’t add this free line today and then cancel one of my four paid lines next month). I didn’t ask this time, but I give the heads up so you can if that makes a difference. The “free” line is actually free “after bill credits” — meaning that they charge you the prevailing rate for your plan and credit you back for it…they’ll just take away the bill credit if you cancel another line within the minimum time frame.
Overall, I find these free line offers to be a great deal. Now that T-Mobile’s Magenta Max comes with 5GB of free high-speed data in most countries around the world and free Wi-Fi on some flights, it’s very convenient for travel. And there are lots of ancillary benefits — like a year of free AAA, free year of Apple TV, free year of Paramount+, T-Mobile Tuesdays offers (got my free selfie light this week), the ability to open a T-Mobile Money account (which earns 4% APY on up to $3K with qualifying monthly activity and 2.5% APY without any qualifications (I believe on up to $100K). Again, those things alone won’t make it worth switching to Magenta or Magenta Max, but they are nice benefits to have, and I’m happy to get one more line on the plan.
Again, if you need more detail, the place to go is the Slickdeals thread. I’m always happy to answer questions, but as you get into the weeds I won’t have the necessary info and that thread and the people who frequent it likely will.
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They were supposed to send me a card but it got lost in the mail and when it finally arrived they told me the promotion expired. So they basically screwed us and sent us a useless card
The BYOD free 3rd line ended on 12/20/2022. 🙁
Been a Magenta Max user for about half a year and got the offer! Added my first free line to the account via chat and will plan to port my sister’s number over (she’s on a different carrier). I asked if the $35 fee could be waived, and they said they had to process the charge but could add back a credit for it. Never hurts to ask!
Hey Nick, I was chatting with a rep from tmo and he said to me that this offer is only for 12 months and I’ll be charged for that free line after the promotion period is over. Could you please confirm whether this promotion is only for a year or it’s free permanently. Thank you
The rep was wrong. It’s permanently free. That rep was just confused about how it works. If you try to cancel any of your lines before 12 months from when you added the free line, they will cancel the free line credit. The policy is to prevent you from adding a free line today and then cancelling a paid line next week (effectively replacing a paid line with the free line). If you try to do that, they’ll start charging you for this line. If you wait until 12 months is up, then you could cancel a paid line if you wanted. But this line will still be free.
Thank you Nick for your help.
Had the grandfathered Military One with several free lines ($140/ 7 lines- not as good as Nicks insider deal but – I am charging three family members $95 for the three lines.
Gotten a ton of great deals on the last with T-mo/Costco – but a lot of the deal want me to upgrade to Magenta Military – but I did get an S22 for my DW before Thanksgiving for $257 ($7.50 for SIM) thats after the $300 BYOD Costco card.
The BYOD or cheap phones for adding a line are about the only promos I can get – I bought a S22 Ultra 512GB through Google Fi after killing my Note10+ in the pool on Cancun. No deals from T-mo without Magenta Max which was an extra $50-60 a month.
But I ported a number (free line) to Google Fi last Spring and got My S22 Ultra 512GB for $599 IIRC.
I had an empty slot (free line # that was ported) my monthly payment didn’t change. So I have churned the free spot for BYOD about 2X year at Costco.
Just called in and picked up my fourth free line, this gets me down to about $25/mo/line plus subsidized Netflix. Can’t forget about free MLB.tv annually. The only issues were 1) had to change to a current plan (Magenta for now) since my old plan was no longer available and 2)$35 + tax for the activation fee. The Magenta cost is essentially the same though the Netflix plan I was on before is now $2 more each month. Still a no-brainer to make the changes for the free line. Once I’m ready for a phone upgrade I’ll look into Magenta Max.
Is there a recommended place to compare my current ATT 5 line plan with Magenta Max to determine if I should switch? Coverage in my area would be the main concern but it seems like T-Mobile is worth a strong look if I’m carrying multiple lines.
I tried to add this to my account, but they said I would need to add two brand new paid lines to get one additional free. Wondering what other luck people I’ve had with this? I was using the chat feature and he did say that the simply add one additional line at no cost ended on the 14th. Anyone else have any better luck?
I’d try again. See the slickdeals thread I linked to, there must be thousands of people that have been successful. I don’t know that your plan qualifies, but it’s worth asking a second time in case you got an agent that just didn’t know what they’re doing.
Should be on the right plan. I have a magenta max with two paid lines. Currently have one line free from I think about two years ago. So yeah I’ll try again. I’ll post if I have success.
OK, I like a deal, but I have to ask: … why?
In our household, there is two of us. We have t-mobile (55+plan). I have an internet provider and I use about 200GB per month.
So, what value is another line (or several)? do I start passing out lines as Christmas gifts to the mailperson and UPS carrier?
I just don’t see this adding value in my case.
First: maybe not benefit.
But to answer your question, a couple of things…
T-Mobile allows you to “upgrade” pretty often. Another commenter here says that you can’t upgrade for 12 months with this promo, so maybe you can’t “upgrade” immediately, but as an example of the concept, I noted in the post that you could buy a used phone for $125-$150 and trade it for a phone that goes for $800 new and sell that phone for maybe $350 or $400 (if you get on it early when a new phone comes out and/or when they run a trade-in promo like that on an iPhone, you can do even better). I could actually alternatively imagine doing this to get a gift to give someone. For instance, I could buy one of those used phones for $125 or $150 and get an $800 phone I could give to my sister as a Christmas gift (if she’s reading this, someone tell her not to get excited because I’m not doing that lol). Again, none of that may be applicable to your life, just giving you a couple of examples of how I might use it.
If, for example, that same sister of mine wanted to have a checking account where she’d earn a base of 2.5% APY and 4% APY on balances up to $4K (which I’ll bet is better than she’s currently getting!), but adding a line, even if she isn’t going to actually use it, I could let her use the # to sign up for a T-Mobile Money account.
Sometimes I’m happy to have an extra phone for T-Mobile Tuesdays offers. They aren’t usually big wins, but when they run a free $3 Dunkin gift card or Panera gift card, I’ll take my extra three bucks (though you would need an actual phone on the line for that, which you certainly may not find value in carrying around 85% of the time for the 15% of the time that it is useful).
Finally, I took the first one of these that they offered not because I needed the line but because at the time I could get a free $300 Costco gift card for adding it at Costco. When they ran a second free line promo very soon thereafter, I was glad to have added the first free line because suddenly I had two lines and we could offer a Christmas gift for my parents that would save them $55 a month — $660 a year — forever. They were perfectly fine with paying $55 a month to H2O, but who wouldn’t happy with not paying for cell service? And they traded in their mid-tier phones for top-tier phones for only the taxes on the new phones. So when they offered a free line again, I snapped it up and waited for another to go with it and we added my in-laws. Then another couple of family members were looking to pay less than they were and so we were able to add them with a BOGO (add one paid line, get one free line). Now we’ve got yet another line. My wife’s grandmother’s line will someday become a line for my first son (he’s almost 5 now, so he doesn’t need it today, but five or six years from now I imagine he’ll be at the point where he needs a line and it will have cost me nothing on a monthly basis to have one waiting for him. I’ll keep my eye out for another free line promo to see if I can get a line for my other son. Maybe I won’t last on T-Mobile that long, but if I do, I’m setting myself up for it to be very easy.
Again, none of that may apply to your situation, but it illustrates some reasons why I find it worthwhile. Previous promos did not require paying the $35 device connection fee, so they were truly and totally free. I was a little annoyed to pay that fee this time, but the truth is that paying $35 one time and then paying nothing more will become a better deal than my grandmother-in-law was getting before in Month #2 and will just continue to save her money forever thereafter.
The thing about these free line promos is that you can’t take a time machine and go back and do it if you later realize it would have been beneficial, so I feel like it’s worth doing just in case it becomes useful in the future. At the same time, I guess the $35 fee that they impose now makes it not a total no-brainer since it does cost you that. I certainly get excited about free service, particularly since my plan includes unlimited 5G with no throttle cap. I can’t imagine what would have to come for me to want to switch to a “new” plan, but I’m sure it won’t be here for years, so this’ll continue to be a great value for the foreseeable future.
I’m a long-time Google Fi customer and fan but Tmobile is really offering a lot lately. FI added Youtube Premium and its overseas service is better but I’m really looking at changing, mostly because the trade-in deals at Google Fi aren’t nearly as good as they used to be.
Just flagging that I tried calling 611 and the agent couldn’t find the promo. Luckily I also tried the chat option within t-mobile app and they found the promo with no issues at all (Magenta Max 2 paid lines 1 line free)
Best deal ever was the deal they did what 2 years ago? where you bring over any device on payment plan at other carrier and T-mobile will pay that off and stack that with port the line over promotion and give you like $200 per line. Oh my… I still had like $400-$500 payments left on 3 iphones at AT&T, T mobile paid them off, gave me like $800 prepaid visa for porting numbers over. I think max was limited to 4 numbers. plus the insider hookup thing, 20% off. My T mobile bill without device payments was like 1/2 of what I used to pay not to mention all payment plans fully paid off. and yes, now I have 4 paid and 3 free added over the years which worked perfect as my kids grew into teens and needed their own phones.
Deal is on now. Ported over 2 voice lines from Verizon last weekend to Magenta Max 55+. $400 trade in for my iPhone 8 Plus when upgrading to the iPhone 14 Pro, and they’re giving me $200 VISA gift card per line for switching. $1,000 phone will cost me $200 after all this and my bill for unlimited data will be $4 more than Verizon where I only had 2GB of data. Win.
As you note, this is a bring your own device promo, and according to reddit, the line may not qualify for upgrade of devices for 12 months. Also, the Costco Wireless company contract ended last week. So there may or may not be someone at Costco to help with devices for a while.
Interesting. Rep told me I’d not be able to get the add a line deals (makes sense since it’s BYOD) but she said I could do an upgrade via trade in on the line. Guess we’ll see!