The 2025 $0 kit with a 12-month commitment: the terms, start to end

Starlink’s free-kit-for-a-commitment offer ran from Apr 30, 2025 to Jun 25, 2025, in select US areas. The Standard kit cost $0 instead of its $349 list price, and you kept it, in exchange for committing to 12 months of Residential service. Leaving early meant a prorated change fee. It has ended. As of Oct 5, 2026, the only $0 Standard kit in starlink.com’s national listing is a rental, which works differently.

The offer, start to end

	Detail
Start	Apr 30, 2025
End	Jun 25, 2025 (one source gave Jul 14, 2025)
Kit	Standard kit, $0 (list price $349 since Oct 2024)
Condition	12 months of Residential service
Leaving early	Prorated change fee
Where	Select areas: parts of New England and the Mountain West; not most of the Midwest or Southeast
Ownership	You kept the kit
Status in our log	Ended, flagged “end date conflict”

Broadband Breakfast reported the launch on Apr 30, 2025, quoting Starlink’s wording: “$0 for the Standard Kit with 12-month residential service plan commitment.” 5Gstore covered it on May 5, 2025. Broadband Breakfast reported the end on Jun 13, 2025: the promotion would end on Jun 25. One other source gave Jul 14, 2025, which is why our deals log flags the row with “end date conflict” instead of quietly picking one.

What you agreed to

Twelve months of Residential service. Broadband Breakfast reported that both Residential tiers offered at the time qualified. You paid your plan’s regular monthly price throughout; the commitment discounted the hardware, not the service.

A fee if you left early. Starlink’s support page on commitment offers describes a prorated change fee for leaving a 12-month commitment early. “Prorated” means the fee depends on how much of the term is left: leaving in month two costs more than leaving in month eleven. Starlink publishes no fixed amount in our sources; the figure for any given customer was in their order’s terms.

Other triggers. Broadband Breakfast’s launch report said a change fee may apply if users move, miss payments, or try to transfer their equipment, and that equipment had to be returned in some cases or additional charges applied. We couldn’t confirm the exact triggers on Starlink’s own pages, so treat that list as reported, not definitive.

The 30-day trial inside the commitment

Broadband Breakfast reported that customers on the offer got a 30-day trial with a full refund option. That lines up with Starlink’s general policy: a full hardware refund if the kit comes back undamaged within 30 days. In practice, the first month was the safe exit. After that, the commitment and its fee applied.

Why it was a good deal for some and a gamble for others

The offer saved the full $349 kit price. Whether that was a good trade depended entirely on whether you’d keep Starlink for a year.

Good deal: a household in a covered area that planned to keep Residential service for at least 12 months. They saved the kit price and gave up nothing they weren’t going to do anyway.

Gamble: anyone who might move, switch providers when fiber arrived, or use Starlink seasonally. A prorated fee in the early months could cost a large share of what the free kit saved, and seasonal users couldn’t simply pause their way through winter without checking whether that broke the commitment.

Wrong choice: anyone testing whether Starlink would work through their trees. The 30-day trial helped, but a marginal sky view sometimes takes longer than a month to judge across seasons.

Two worked examples

These are hypothetical customers; only the offer terms and the $349 kit price come from our sources.

Casey, in a covered part of New England, stayed the full year. Casey took the $0 kit in May 2025 and kept Residential service through May 2026. No change fee applied. Casey saved the full $349 and owns the kit, so pausing with Standby or keeping it as a backup is possible. For Casey, this was the best Standard kit offer in our log: better than the half-off $175 kit that followed, and better than any rental, because the kit is Casey’s.

Robin, in a covered part of the Mountain West, moved after five months. Robin took the offer in June 2025 and moved for a new job in November. A move was one of the reported triggers for a change fee, and leaving early triggers the prorated fee in any case. With seven months left, Robin’s fee would have been set by the order’s terms; we don’t have a formula to calculate it. Robin still owned the kit, but the free kit was no longer free. Had Robin rented instead, the exit would have been a kit return within 30 days of cancelling and no fee.

The pattern: commitment offers pay off for people whose plans are stable, and cost money for people whose plans change.

Why it ended: what was reported

Broadband Breakfast’s Jun 13, 2025 report noted that the end of the promotion coincided with new federal guidance for the BEAD broadband program, which opened new bidding rounds. The outlet presented that as timing, not as Starlink’s stated reason. Starlink didn’t publish one in our sources, and we don’t guess. The practical point for buyers is simpler: the offer ended without a long notice period, which is common for Starlink promotions in our log.

How it compares with today’s $0 option

	2025 commitment kit	2026 $0-up-front rental
Up front	$0	$0 in the national listing (address can differ)
Who owns the kit	You	Starlink
Term	12 months, prorated fee to leave early	None stated; cancel any time
When you leave	Pay the fee if early; keep the kit	Return within 30 days of cancelling, or pay the kit’s full retail price
Monthly hardware fee	None	$0 in select areas since about Jul 20, 2026; otherwise $10
Standby	Owned kit, so available	Not available on some rental kits
Status	Ended Jun 25, 2025	Live, seen Oct 5, 2026

The rental is more flexible on the way out: no fee to leave, as long as you return the kit. The commitment kit was better if you stayed: you ended up owning it. Our rental guide has the full terms.

What came after it

The 2025 record after the commitment offer is a run of cheaper purchases, not more free kits:

• Aug 11 to Sep 12, 2025: the Standard kit half off at $175 nationwide, with discounted first-year plans in mapped areas; the plan discount was lost if you changed, paused or cancelled.
• From Sep 13, 2025: an $89 kit in low-demand areas.
• Holiday 2025: $279 with a Roam plan.

So if you missed the free kit, the next few months offered other ways to pay less, all of which have since ended too. The Standard kit price history shows them in sequence.

If you’re still inside one of these commitments

The offer ended in mid-2025, so anyone who signed up near the end could still have been inside their 12 months into mid-2026. If you’re unsure where you stand, or you took a similar commitment with a later promo:

1. Find your order’s terms in your Starlink account. They set your fee, not any article.
2. Count the months remaining before you cancel, move or change plan.
3. Ask support for the exact change fee before acting. “Prorated” depends on your dates.
4. Check whether a plan change counts. Downgrading or switching plan type might be treated as leaving the commitment.
5. Keep records of the conversation and the quoted amount.

Our commitment offers help page covers this in more detail, including what happens when a promo price ends.

Common mistakes

• Reading old headlines as current. “Free Starlink kit with 12-month commitment” articles from spring 2025 still rank. The offer ended Jun 25, 2025.
• Confusing it with the rental. Today’s $0 kit is rented, with a return obligation and no commitment.
• Assuming no fee because the kit was free. The fee was the price of the free kit.
• Moving without checking. A move was one of the reported triggers for a change fee.

What we don’t know

• The exact end date: Jun 25, 2025 per Broadband Breakfast, Jul 14, 2025 per one other source.
• The full list of covered areas.
• The change-fee formula; Starlink says prorated, and the figure lived in each customer’s order.
• Whether Starlink will offer a commitment-for-kit deal again.

What to do next

Our free kit page shows every $0 offer that’s live today and its catch. For the full picture of what “free” has meant in Starlink offers since 2025, read “Free Starlink dish”: what the phrase has meant. Every ended offer, including this one, stays in the deals log, struck through with its dates.