Should I buy an iPhone on a plan or should I pay for the full price upfront?

What are pros and cons?

To be honest I want to pay for it upfront because buying it on a plan feels like I'm just renting it. I want to feel like I actually own the phone.

But everyone in my family is on a plan and they say it's cheaper because they get free texts and stuff.

I don't know what to do? I know, first world problems but please help me. Plan or upfront?

Buy it from amazon with credit card. It the cheapest option. I bought mine like that.

Plan can have it's benefits. However if you lose your phone before your contract ends you may as well rip your hair out and go ***. You'll still have to pay if you lose your phone since it's a contract.

I prefer paying for the full price to get it done and over with.

Buying on a 2 year contract is best imo. Chances are you won't be jumping around to different carriers anyways, so why not do a 2 year deal and have them pick up most of the cost, then after 2 years its yours.

Buy outright if you can afford it. You can then get cheaper tariffs and are free to resell your phone (often for not a huge amount less than you paid for it) whenever you like if you wish to upgrade.

Not a lot of people notice, but when you get an iPhone on a contract most carriers apply a special iPhone tariff which costs more. They can fix it a few ways: by charging more for any non-inclusive minutes, SMS, MMS and data, or by simply including less of each allowance compared to other monthly contracts at the same price. Or they'll charge more for the initial phone purchase compared to other phones which may be cheap or free to start with at the same monthly cost. Often they'll combine all of those methods. IPhone resellers don't have much of a choice as Apple does not significantly discount their phones to resellers and so the only real profit they can make is on the contractual monthly costs; when you buy your phone outright the network hasn't got to factor in the repayments on your phone into the monthly tariff and can give you more bang for your bucks whilst still making a reasonable and easy profit on the deal.