Daily, weekly, night or social — what each bundle shape restricts
An operator can fence an allowance two ways: by when you use it, and by what you use it on. Every named pack is one of those fences, or both. Knowing which one you are buying is the difference between a bargain and an allowance you cannot spend.
Two fences, and every pack uses one or both
Strip the marketing name off any data pack and what is left is an allowance with a fence around it. There are only two kinds of fence.
A clock fence
The allowance only lives, or only counts, inside a window: a day, a week, a stretch of night hours. When the window shuts, whatever is left stops being usable — the pack has not run out, it has run down the clock.
This is the fence behind daily, weekly and night packs. Short windows are usually cheaper to buy and more expensive per gigabyte, because you are paying for the convenience of not committing.
A traffic fence
The allowance only covers certain destinations — a named set of social apps, one video service, the operator's own pages. Traffic outside the list is not blocked; it simply comes out of the ordinary balance at ordinary rates.
This is the fence behind social and app packs, and it is the one people misjudge most often, because what counts as "inside the app" is the operator's definition rather than the obvious one.
Size and validity — the two numbers everyone compares first — sit underneath both fences and are covered on mobile data bundles, along with how to rank two packs against each other. This page is about what gets fenced off on top of them.
The shapes you will actually see
Names differ by network, but nearly every data pack on sale anywhere is one of these five. Which of them exists for a given number is that operator's decision, not ours.
| Shape | What it fences | Suits | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily pack | The clock. One day of allowance, and when the day is over so is the pack. | A single busy day — a journey, a day out, a phone that only occasionally needs data. | Whether the day runs from the moment it activates or to the next midnight is the operator's rule, and it decides how much of the day you actually get. |
| Weekly pack | The clock, over a longer window. Usually a better rate per gigabyte than the daily equivalent. | A week you can predict — a commute, a work trip, a routine that does not change much. | A week you do not fill is a week you paid for, and a window that closes mid-trip leaves the line dry at the wrong moment. |
| Night or off-peak pack | The clock again, but on hours rather than days: the allowance only counts inside a window the operator sets. | Anything that can wait — backups, updates, downloads queued before bed. | The window is in the operator's own local time, not yours. On a foreign number that means night there, which may be the middle of your afternoon. |
| Social or app pack | The traffic. The allowance covers a named list of apps or services and nothing else. | A phone used mostly for messaging, where the rest of the internet is a rounding error. | The list is the operator's. A link opened from inside the app, a video playing in it or the app's own update may all fall outside it and draw on the ordinary balance instead. |
| All-purpose pack | Nothing beyond its size and validity — the plain shape everything else is a variation on. | Not wanting to think about it, or not knowing the usage pattern well enough to bet on one. | Usually the higher price per gigabyte. That gap is what the freedom costs, and it is worth checking rather than assuming. |
No sizes, hours or prices are printed here on purpose: they belong to the destination operator and change market by market. What loads when you enter a number is their current catalogue for that line, in their own words — the ordering screen sets out what it can and cannot tell you before you pay.
Match the shape to how the phone is actually used
Not to how it might be used on a busy week. The fence only pays off when it matches the habit.
Messaging, and little else
A social pack covers the bulk of it cheaply. Leave a little ordinary credit on the line for the links and clips it will not cover.
One busy day
A daily pack, and nothing to remember afterwards. Check when the day starts before you buy it late in the evening.
A steady week
A weekly pack, if the week you need covered is the week the window covers. A trip that runs over the end of it needs the next size up, not a second pack.
Big transfers that can wait
A night pack, where the operator sells one and the hours land while the person holding the phone is asleep rather than out.
Is an unlimited bundle available?
Not from us — we sell no plans and no unlimited product of any kind. If the destination operator publishes a large or genuinely uncapped pack for that number, it appears in their catalogue at their price and under their conditions, and we deliver it like any other.
Worth reading those conditions before treating the word literally: almost every unlimited offer has a number behind it. The three ways that usually works — a fair-use ceiling, a speed step-down, or deprioritisation at busy times — are set out on the mobile data page.
Four things to check before you load a shaped pack
A fence you did not notice is how an allowance goes unspent. None of the four takes more than a moment.
Open the catalogue- Which fence it uses — the clock, the traffic list, or both at once.
- When the window opens and closes, and in whose time zone. For a number in another country that is their clock, not yours.
- What is on the traffic list, and what sits just outside it — the app's own updates and anything opened through it are the usual surprises.
- What happens when the fence closes: the data stops, or the ordinary balance takes over at the operator's out-of-bundle rate.
Every one of those answers belongs to the operator, not to us. Where their listing does not spell a rule out, their own app or website is the authority — and what happens to the balance underneath a pack is covered on pay as you go.
Pack shapes, question by question
Payment, delivery and refund questions are answered in the help centre.
Open the help centreCan I buy a night or social bundle here?
If the operator that owns the number sells one, it is in the catalogue you choose from and it loads like any other pack. We do not create packs, decide which shapes exist or change their conditions — the list you see is theirs.
Does a social bundle cover video inside the app?
Sometimes, and only the operator's own list decides. Plenty of social packs cover text and pictures but meter video, and a link you open from inside the app often counts as ordinary browsing. If it matters, check the pack's terms with the operator before relying on it.
Do night-bundle hours follow my time zone or theirs?
Theirs — the window belongs to the network that owns the number, stated in that market's local time. It is the same footing as the operator maintenance windows in our delivery policy, and it is why a night pack bought for a phone abroad may be active while you are still at work.
What happens when a daily pack's day runs out?
One of two things, and the network chooses: the data stops until you buy again, or it keeps going against the ordinary balance at an out-of-bundle rate that usually costs far more per gigabyte than the pack did. Worth knowing which before the day ends, not after.
Can I buy a second pack while one is still running?
You can place the order — but whether the new pack stacks onto the first, queues behind it or replaces it is the operator's rule and differs by network. Nobody outside the operator can read what is already on the line, which the ordering screen explains in full.
Where to go next
This page is the shape of the pack. The pages around it are the size, the price and the screen you buy it on.
For the plan-level view — how the tiers are structured on a network that publishes them — one operator's plan tiers explained is a worked example, and the recharge routes compares paying for any of it in a browser, a shop or the operator's own app.
Know the habit? Then you know the shape.
Enter the number and the operator's own packs open, each with the size and the window they set, and the total on screen before anything is charged.