Are pay-by-the-minute phone plans a thing of the past? (US)

I have one in the UK, not sure if they call it PAYG over there but may be worth searching for that.

I've searched for 'pay as you go', but the results are full of companies that charge monthly fees, just charged in advance, without a contract.

Here is a plan for 5$ per month for 300 minutes from tello.

Edit: To clarify, I don't believe a true prepaid minutes only planning exists in the U.S. This was the most basic/cheapest plan I was able to find.

I think you should look into pre-paid SIM cards. I use Vodafone. Just pay upfront and use it whenever. Only drawback is if you are inactive for a year, you'll lose the credit. But they warn you about it and you can save the credit by just making a call or send a text. Works fine for me.

Seems like they only offer limited-time 'travel' plans in the US. You could renew them ... but the longest one is only 30 days, so that's basically just a monthly payment with extra steps.

Ah that's a bummer. I'm in Europe, so no idea if pre-paid is offered at all in the US... Hope you find something useful.

so no idea if pre-paid is offered at all in the US

It's seeming like it isn't...

And worse/more annoyingly, the searches are filled with 'The top pre-paid plans! Starting at $10/month!' Apparently, in the US now, "pre-paid" means you still have a monthly fee, you just have to pay it in advance now.

Your best bet might be something like tracfone that you top up with cards you can get pretty much everywhere

No idea what the cost on them is these days and I haven't looked into any of their fine print in probably 20 years, but I'm pretty sure they offer a one year plan

Tracfone has apparently been bought out by Verizon and only exists as a subsidiary of Verizon now ... and at least for right now, Tracfone's entire website is down, replaced with 'maintenance pages'.

Check out jmp.chat

Not exactly pay as you go, but crazy cheap and all pre-paid time is always there, never expires.

That's exactly what prepay is.

No contract, no account, no bill in the mail.

You buy a month of use and it stops working when the time is up.

Nobody charges per minute because the analogue networks have been shut down. All network traffic: calls, text, Internet, it's ALL data now.

Probably. The cost of serving a minute of phone call or an SMS text has gone down to the point where a lot of plans don't really meter it. Plus, there is a cost to managing an account and it likely isn't worth servicing a phone that's only paying $1 a month.

What you're asking for has never existed in the US as far as I can tell. There have been some prepaid plans with rollover, so every payment you make gets added to a credit balance that you draw against by making calls, but you have to keep adding money every month or every 3 months or else you lose it all.

Simply having a phone number costs money (like a domain name), so any plan that allows you to receive calls is going to have recurring charges. If you don't need a phone number and have internet access, you could use something like linphone and a SIP plan. Those are around $.01/minute with no recurring charges depending on where you enroll. You usually have to make a minimum payment in advance, like $20, which gets drawn down as you use it.

I've heard Google Voice assigns you a phone number at no charge, but you have to figure that if you aren't the customer, you're the product. Otherwise, phone numbers at least at retail in the US are around $1 a month depending. You can get them from the same places that have SIP plans. I'm on vitelity.net which is more like $1.50/month but it's been ok for me. Twilio seems to have pivoted towards enterprise. voip.ms is another well known one.

The shitty burner phones they sell at Walmart or Dollar General, often called "drug phones" are pay by the minute, no contract needed things.