I wanted to determine whether it was better to stay on Magenta Max and buy the phone outright through Apple or move to Go5G Plus to get the better trade values so I did some basic calculations.

Currently, we pay $112/mo for two lines on Magenta Max with an Insider discount. Both phones are paid off, so this is only the cost of the plan. Only one person needs a new phone, so let's assume we are talking about only a single line here. Assuming we move to Go5G Plus, that will cost an extra $10 per month, or $240 over the period of 24 months. With an iPhone 13 trade-in, an iPhone 16 Pro 256GB will cost $11.50-$12 per month. But there's also a $35 connection fee and sales tax.

TOTAL FOR T-MOBILE OPTION: $645 over the period of two years (24mo). This includes tax, connection fee, monthly phone payment, and the increased cost of moving to Go5G Plus.

If you trade through the Apple Store, they give $250 for an iPhone 13. The total cost with tax for the 16 Pro is $1191.

TOTAL FOR APPLE STORE TRADE OPTION: $941. Just the cost of the new phone, tax, minus the trade value.

So as you can see, it saves you about $300 by going through T-Mobile, but let's say you keep the iPhone 16 Pro a 3rd year, then you save only about $200. Now what if you buy the iPhone directly from Apple and rather than doing the trade, you sell it on Facebook or Swappa? I see the iPhone 13 listed for about $350 on Swappa.