If you’re like me, you get excited when it’s time to finally replace your old phone with a shiny new one. In the excitement of browsing new phones, you might come across the option to trade in your old phone.
You might even get excited when you see that your current phone is still on the list. However, what you might not realize is that your phone is actually worth way more than what’s being offered.
Trade-in deals are about convenience, not value
The whole idea behind trade-ins is to remove as much friction as possible for the buyer.
When you sell your old phone yourself, you have to take photos, post a listing online, answer questions, and arrange shipping or meetups before you actually get your money. It’s a tedious process.
With trade-ins, you simply send or drop off your phone at a store, and you receive store credit that can be used toward your next phone or another gadget. It makes sense that you’d get a bit less than your device’s full value for that convenience.
However, what you might not realize is just how much money you’re actually losing when you trade in your phone.
I was recently browsing the OnePlus 15 product page when I noticed that OnePlus offers trade-ins for any device.
This led me to experiment with the OnePlus trade-in calculator, purely because I was curious about how much OnePlus is willing to offer for various phones. On the right side, I noticed a list of both OnePlus and other devices, and I was immediately shocked at how little they’re offering for phones released this year.
For example, the OnePlus 13—only about a year old and still selling for around $750—is valued at just up to $300. That’s less than half its current retail price, and I’m assuming the “up to” applies to the 512GB variant, which currently costs $850.
According to that list, the highest trade-in value OnePlus will offer for any phone is up to $800 for the iPhone 17 Pro Max, a device released just a few months ago and starting at $1,200.
If the “up to” applies to the priciest variant, we’re talking about the $2,000 2TB model. Even then, it’s not even half the price for a practically new phone!
OnePlus is just one example, but most trade-in programs are similarly stingy.
I get it, though, they have to be by design. The carrier or retailer takes all the risk and pays for labor to inspect, test, potentially refurbish, and resell the device (either to other customers or to secondary vendors and marketplaces). If they offered anywhere near the full resale value, they’d go bankrupt in a week.
Real examples: trade-in vs. selling
To give you a rough idea of how much money you’re losing, I ran a few phones through trade-in calculators and checked their realistic resale value on eBay.
Keep in mind that all prices are estimates and constantly fluctuate, so what I saw today will likely be different from what you might see tomorrow. Still, it gives a pretty good sense of just how much you’re losing with trade-ins.
I wasn’t able to check some carriers, like Verizon, because their calculators require you to enter an IMEI before giving an estimate. However, feel free to check for yourself if you’re on Verizon.
The first phone I checked was the Pixel 9. It was released in 2024, so it’s a relatively new phone, but let’s say you were unhappy with the performance of the Google Tensor chip and wanted something more powerful. Here’s how much you could get for it:
- Resale value (based on eBay listings): around $380 for 128GB, $450–500 for 256GB
- Samsung trade-in: $263 (storage tier not specified)
- OnePlus trade-in: up to $158 for 128GB, $177 for 256GB
- T-Mobile trade-in: $270 for 128GB, $275 for 256GB (T-Mobile models only)
- AT&T trade-in: $240 for both 128GB and 256GB
It’s not great. The best-case scenario means losing around $100 for the 128GB variant, or significantly more for the 256GB one. This is a common trend you’ll see with trade-ins in general—you’re getting pennies on the dollar with internal memory.
Next up was the Samsung Galaxy S23 from 2023. The new generation of S26 phones is just around the corner, and many people will start upgrading from this still-powerful flagship that my wife owns and loves. Here’s how much you can expect to get for it:
- Resale value (based on eBay listings): $220 for 128GB, $270 for 256GB
- Samsung trade-in: $142 (storage tier not specified)
- OnePlus trade-in: up to $76 for 128GB, $87 for 256GB
- T-Mobile trade-in: $105 for 128GB, $115 for 256GB
- AT&T trade-in: up to $130 for both 128GB and 256GB
As expected, Samsung’s own trade-in program was the most generous, but it was still significantly below the real market value, especially for the 256GB variant. By the way, it looks like OnePlus isn’t very interested in your old Galaxy phone, given how little it’s willing to offer.
Finally, we have the iPhone 14 Pro. Released in 2022, it’s the oldest phone on our list, but iPhones generally hold their value much better. Here’s how it fares:
- Resale value (based on eBay listings): $300 for 128GB, $380 for 256GB
- Samsung trade-in: $272 (storage tier not specified)
- OnePlus trade-in: up to $173 for 128GB, $190 for 256GB
- T-Mobile trade-in: $195 for 128GB, $205 for 256GB
- AT&T trade-in: up to $225 for both 128GB and 256GB
I was a bit surprised by how much Samsung is willing to offer for your old iPhone. It actually comes close to the estimated resale value for the 128GB variant.
I’m assuming this is because Samsung is the biggest player in the US smartphone market after Apple, so it’s willing to sacrifice a bit of profit to convert an Apple user to its own ecosystem. Not bad!
If you have a phone that’s older than the ones in my examples, or if it’s not a flagship, you’ll probably get an insulting trade-in offer—assuming you get one at all. This doesn’t mean that you can’t sell your phone for a decent chunk of change, though.
Sell it for more, pass it on, or upcycle it
Based on my examples above, it rarely makes financial sense to trade in your phone—you can get a lot more cash if you’re willing to sell it yourself on Facebook Marketplace or eBay. The only exception was the iPhone with Samsung’s trade-in program, but that requires switching to Android, and even then, you could probably get more by selling it yourself.
If your phone is only a year or two old, you should be able to get a solid return—much more than what trade-in programs offer. Bonus points if it’s in excellent condition, and you still have the original box, charger, or other accessories to include.
However, if you’re not willing to go through the resale process or don’t care about maximizing the money you’ll get, consider gifting it to someone you care about instead. You could pass it down to a partner, parent, grandparent, child, cousin, or friend who has a worse phone. Putting a smile on someone’s face can be worth more than a couple of hundred bucks.
And if you have a particularly old phone that isn’t worth much and nobody wants it, you can still repurpose it for something else. You’d be surprised how many ways you can put an old Android phone to good use if you get creative.
5 ways to repurpose an old Android phone
Don’t let that phone rot away in a drawer.
