• British mobile users are more likely to be better off by switching to SIM only tariffs 88% of the time
• Switching to SIM only deals could save Brits a total of £3.4 billion per year
• The average Brit spends £92.06 p.a. more than they need to on their phone contract
• There are more than 1.8 million potential phone contracts available for UK customers

Almost every other week there is a story in the news about confusing utilities pricing, but while we all know how hard it can be to find the best gas and electricity deals, have you ever considered the confounding array of mobile phone contracts available? With more than 1,898,380 potential contracts compared through specialist mobile comparison platform HandsetExpert.com alone, it’s little wonder that recent research by the platform has revealed that British mobile users are more likely to be better off by switching to SIM only tariffs 88% of the time.

Of the 51.3 million adults in the UK, 73% are contracted smartphone users. When you drill that down to the 23.1 million 18-44 year olds in the country, that figure goes up to 91%. It turns out that on average in the UK, buying a contract with a smartphone is £92.06 more expensive than buying them separately, which means that British adults could be wasting a whopping £3.4 billion.

Why do we overspend so much on our phone contracts? The answer is twofold: firstly, there are an inordinate number of contracts to choose from – HandsetExpert.com compares and provides recommendations based on more than 1.8 million of them. Secondly, most shoppers want the easy option. Buying a handset outright and signing up for a SIM only deal is usually the much cheaper choice, but it takes a little more effort and more money upfront than buying a bundle, which can cost as much as an additional £400over a 24-month contract.

The perceived saved effort of bundle deals is just that: perceived. In reality, there are so many contracts available for each phone that once you’ve decided on your make and model you still have a plethora of offers to wade through.

Take the Samsung Galaxy S8 – within one week of its release there were over 7,000 different deals available on the market. If that’s the result of a single week you can imagine the boggling number of offers based around the country’s most popular phones.

• The contracts currently available for the Apple iPhone 7 reflect its popularity: it leads the way with a staggering 142,652 different contract variations available in the UK
• Apple also take the second, third and fourth spots on the contract charts with the iPhone SE generating 121,535, the iPhone 7 Plus generating 85,461 contracts and the iPhone 6 providing the base for 83,865 bundle deals
• In fifth place is the Samsung Galaxy S7, with 71,214 contracts available
• Even the less popular phone models are available with a bewildering number of contract deals; the HTC Desire 626 has 17,220 potential offers available and the Huawei P9 has 12,756 – both more than enough for the casual shopper to get lost in when searching for a new deal.

Dr Shahrum Gilani, who founded HandsetExpert.com, comments: ‘Most of us think that we’re savvy shoppers, but with so many different deals available it’s almost impossible to find the best mobile contract for your needs.

‘It’s so easy to be lured into making an unnecessarily expensive purchase. A relatively small difference in the contract price per month can really add up across a 24-month contract, especially when you consider that most of us use more data when we are connected to Wi-Fi than we do on 3G or 4G.

‘With HandsetExpert.com our aim is to gather as much information together as possible so our users can find the very best deals without spending hours shopping around.’