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In England and Wales, a call from prison to a mobile costs 5.50p a minute on weekdays. The same call to a landline costs 2.48p — about 55% less. The person inside pays, out of a weekly spending cap.
Published HMPPS rates for England and Wales, effective 1 April 2025. Last checked 2026-08-16.
| To a mobile | To a landline | |
|---|---|---|
| Weekday, per minute | 5.50p | 2.48p |
| Weekend, per minute | 3.60p | 2.20p |
| A 10-minute call | £0.55 | £0.25 |
| A 30-minute call | £1.65 | £0.74 |
| An hour | £3.30 | £1.49 |
Averaged across a week — HMPPS charges the weekday rate from midnight Sunday to midday Friday — a minute to a mobile works out at about 4.93p and a minute to a landline at about 2.40p.
The part that catches people out
Prisons cap what a person can spend from their own account each week. The cap is set by their regime — Basic, Standard or Enhanced — and it is a limit on money, not on minutes. Put more in and it sits there.
| Regime | A week | MobileMins/month, mobile | LandlineMins/month, landline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | £6.00 | 527 | 1,085 |
| Standard · most common | £21.75 | 1,911 | 3,933 |
| Enhanced | £36.25 | 3,186 | 6,555 |
Same cap, same money — 2× the minutes. That is the entire reason the number they dial matters.
Private cash limits are the PSI 01/2012 figures. Regimes are set by the prison under the incentives policy and can change.
Calls from a UK prison are charged by where they land. On the published HMPPS rates for England and Wales, a call to a mobile costs 5.50p a minute on weekdays and 3.60p at weekends. A call to a landline costs 2.48p on weekdays and 2.20p at weekends — less than half. A half-hour call to a mobile costs £1.65; the same call to a landline costs £0.74.
Not in England and Wales, and not for what you pay. People say jail and prison to mean the same place, and the rates on this page are set nationally by HMPPS. They apply the same in a local remand prison as in a long-term one. If someone is in a police cell rather than a prison, that is different — that is a matter of hours, not a phone account.
The person inside pays, out of their own account. Calls come out of private cash — money they have earned in the prison or that family have sent in — and prison work typically pays a few pounds a week. That is why the cost of calls is a household problem even though the household is not billed for them.
Because terminating a call on a mobile network costs the prison's telephony provider more than terminating one on a fixed line, and that difference is passed through in the published tariff. Nothing about the conversation changes — the rate is set by the type of number dialled, not by who answers it.
Not past a point. Prisons cap how much private cash a person can spend each week — on the standard regime it is £21.75. Once the cap is reached, more money in the account cannot be spent that week. Because the cap is a limit on money and not on minutes, the only way to get more talk out of it is to lower the rate.
There is no minute allowance — there is a spending cap, and the minutes fall out of it. On the standard regime the weekly cap of £21.75 buys about 1,911 minutes a month of calls to a mobile, or about 3,933 minutes of calls to a landline.
Calls to the Samaritans and to legal advisers on the approved list are not charged to the caller's account. Ordinary calls to family are charged at the published rate, and prisons run their own arrangements for compassionate calls, which staff decide case by case.
RingYard gives you a UK landline number that rings the phone you already have. It goes on their phone list like any other number, and every call they make to it is charged at the landline rate.