There’s plenty of cheap as chips pay as you go mobile phones available in the UK but is there anything like it in France please?
I don’t need to make calls and don’t really want a contract, so a simple pre-paid French mobile would be perfect.
Sorry if it’s been asked before, pointers would be gratefully received.
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LeClerc.
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Low sub seems to be the best you can get. French networks have been more successful than UK networks in demanding monthly payments as the only option and as good as zero PAYG is available.
All networks have offers around now and at other times so watch for promos if you can before you leap. NRJ and Lebara were 2 recent ones at close to zero Eur sub per month cancelable at any tme with reasonable choice of call allowances.
Chieck which physical network whatever you’re looking at comes on and make sure that where you’ll be, that network has a gòod signal. Checking any roaming arrangements/costs can turn out to be useful.
If you are in the mid range of price sensitivity then Leclerc supermarkets sell SIM cards for a network based on SFR physical network that quite a lot of people like.
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Can second Leclerc/Reglo. Not always the cheapest (but always cheapish) but one great feature is that you can adjust your bucket of data up or down online easily.
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Another vote for Leclerc/Reglo. I pay hardly anything a month but it’s there if I need it.
Me too, cheap as chips. Also known as Reglomobile.
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Not sure if LeClerc/Reglo do Pay As You Go for new customers any more.
They seem to have replaced it with a no-commitment plan for €1.80 pm which includes unlimited calls, sms/mms and 1 Gb of data.
Perhaps I didn’t understand the term ‘pay as you go then’, because it is the €1.80/month that I am on and have been for many happy years. 
I’m not familiar with the UK market or definition for ‘pay as you go’, but in the US the way that works is that you give a carrier a sum of money for a fixed period of time and then your calls, texts and data are charged and deducted from that sum at fixed rates. So you might fund $5 valid for a month and calls are billed at 10 cents a minute, texts are 5 cents each, etc.
I am not aware of any French carrier that does this, but Reglo probably comes closest to just keeping a line running cheaply.
Basically means no month-to-month contract - you just top up the balance on your phone when you need to.
Meant for low users and those who don;t want to get locked in to a long-term commitment, but the trouble with PayG is often that a) the purchased “minutes” expire if you don’t use them, and b) the rate per minute is higher than on a contract.
Nowadays most people who would have been PayG users are better served by a basic monthly contract (which can typically be cancelled easily) that just includes a small number of minutes, texts and data use.
The contracts to avoid IMHO are those that include the phone purchase on an HP basis over 24 months or longer; it’s usually better (cheaper) to buy a phone separately and get an unlocked SIM for the calls etc.
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Exactly as 1p mobile (UK) works. Top up then use at 1p minute and 1p text but data is pricey at 1p/mb.
Reglo PAYG costs €1.50pm, and you can top up with any amount. You can make calls etc. up to the value of that €1.50 at no extra charge, but anything over that is deducted from your top-up balance. Any balance remaining at the end of the month is carried over to the next month, so you don’t lose it as you would with the likes of Orange!!
The €1.80 plan is paid every month for certain allowances - for instance -unlimited calls and texts within France and 1Gb of data etc. at no extra charge.
The plan is non-binding so you can pull out at anytime and is great if you make calls but don’t need data (internet).
Clear as mud? 
Here is the tariff chart, You will notice the PAYG is no longer on it.
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All I know is that I maintain €10 of credit there. Every Sunday I check the credit and if it falls below €10, I add another €10. At the moment I have more than double that because when I was taken into hospital I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to top up as I did not know how long I would be there so I rang my friend and asked him to stick €20 on it which I repaid him for in cash when he collected me.
As I am a very light user, hardly ever make any calls, only texts, I still have over €20 credit nearly 2 months later. 
I should add that it is a phone, not a pocket computer. 
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Lycamobile prépayée - 9.99€ with 200Go preloaded, from Amazon, ordered Saturday and arrived just now, popped in my old Moto G8 plus, activated with no problems - transferred to Frankenbox and working perfectly (unlike my Tesco unlimited card which sulked, odd as it was fine last visit and works in both phones that I have with me).
Edit: Hmmm, Lyca does not seem to have the cleanest of trading records
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Which network are they using Billy? The SFR of Reglo mobile has been pretty poor as has the SFR of my Lebara sim so looking to change next visit.
I only just notice the actual question (hi @fok - you never got back to me on what you are trying to do with your Wi-Fi) was mobile phones, not SIM deals.
Are there really PAYG phones, that are not just a phone, bundled with a PAYG SIM for (slightly above) market rate for the phone.
E.g Tesco will sell you a Galaxy A16 as a PAYG bundle for £199 - but Amazon will sell you the same phone for £179 (which will be unlocked so you can put any SIM in it).
Pay monthly deals can sell you the phone on credit because you’re entering a contract but no one is going to sub the up front price of a phone on PAYG - otherwise what’s to stop you saying “thank you very much”, never topping up and walking away with the phone.
Anyway there are plenty of cheap phones on Amazon - eg the aforementioned A16 for ~ 125-135€ in 4G guise (a bit dearer if you want 5G).
After that there are prepaid cards such as the Lycamobile one I mentioned or SFR do one which also has 200Go preloaded for the same price. TBH I only bought the Lycramobile one because it was on Amazon and did not appear to need an existing French number for activation (it didn’t).
However if you are here full time you would probably find a pay monthly SIM on a rolling 31 day contract better value - if you don’t need much data there are plenty of deals at less than 5€ per month.
Bouygues.
Probably all the same here as there’s only one 4G mast which properly covers the village.
Getting about 30Mbps down and 40Mbps up.
As I said the only reason I bought that particular SIM was the fact that I could just order it on Amazon and activation looked straightforward without needing another French mobile number.
9.99€ for 200Go is a bit dearer than, say, Lebara which do 350Go for 11.99€ a month but actually cheaper than (say) Free who charge 19.99€ a month (admittedly they include TV for that). If I can have fallow months without the thing self-cancelling and top-up early if I burn through a lot of data it could work out well.
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We managed to stream some films most days with some buffering using the Reglo mobile €5.46 100Gb but actual mobile phone with Lebara SFR was poor, thats on my LG phone, my wifes realme 10 was better reception so maybe its the phone as the router has twin external aerials. The Lebara signal has been getting worse in the UK of late and although I can level that possibly on my phone again the router with the Lyca sim is hopeless so back to a bit of shoping around I guess.
We have used SFR from Prixtel and Lebara to run our 4g router and they work fine streaming Netflix etc. We tried Lyca on Bouyges for the same purpose just to have an alternate in case one network was down and it didn’t work so well, (a lot of buffering) even though both networks are coming from the same tower. My wife uses Lyca on her phone and it works fine. YMMV.
Thanks for the info. Interesting how performance can differ even on the same tower, clearly more factors at play. Good to know before picking something for occasional data use.