Top 5 Ways to Reduce Prison Phone Calls

Staying in regular phone contact with someone in prison matters enormously. The evidence is clear that maintained family contact reduces reoffending, supports mental health on both sides, and helps preserve the relationships that make a difference when someone is eventually released. But the cost of calls particularly calls to mobile numbers can make regular contact genuinely difficult for families already under financial pressure. The good news is that several of the most effective solutions cost nothing, and the most powerful one costs less per month than a typical streaming subscription.

Before we get into the five methods, here is the single most important thing to understand about prison call costs. The rate a prisoner pays depends not on who they are calling, but on what type of number they dial.

Every strategy below works with these rates as the foundation. The most effective ones take direct advantage of the 55% gap between the mobile and landline rates.

Use a Virtual Landline

If you take only one thing from this guide, make it this. Switching the number your loved one calls from your mobile to a virtual landline is the single most impactful change a family can make to reduce prison call costs. It cuts the per-minute rate in half immediately, requires no change to your phone or SIM, and works from the first approved call.

A virtual landline is a standard UK local phone number, for example a 020 London number or a 0161 Manchester number — that has no physical socket behind it. When someone calls it, the call is automatically forwarded to your mobile. To the prison phone system, it looks exactly like a landline call, so the prisoner is charged the lower landline rate of 2.48p per minute on weekdays instead of 5.50p per minute for your mobile. You answer on your mobile as you always would. There is no app to install, no change to how calls arrive, and no new equipment needed on either end.

To understand why the saving is so large, consider what a 20-minute daily weekday call currently costs if your loved one is calling your mobile. At 5.50p per minute, that is £1.10 per call — around £24 over 22 weekdays. The same call to a virtual landline costs 49.6p — around £10.91 for the same 22 calls. The £13 monthly saving comes directly out of the phone credit account, meaning the same amount of money sent in goes more than twice as far.

Prison Call provides this service from £19.99 per month with same-day number activation, no setup fee, and a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. Setting it up takes about five minutes and most families break even on the subscription cost within the first week.Here is how to get started:

‍1. Sign up at callfromprison.co.uk and choose your plan. Your local UK landline number arrives by email within minutes.
‍2. Write or pass the number to your loved one so they can add it to their approved PIN contact list through the prison's kiosk or administration system.
‍3. Wait for the number to be approved by prison security staff — this typically takes two to five days depending on the prison.
‍4. From the first approved call, every minute costs 2.48p instead of 5.50p. No further steps needed.

Your Prison Call number works at every UK prison. If they are transferred, they simply add the number to the new PIN list. You do not need to sign up again or change anything.

Time Calls For Weekends And Friday Afternoons

This is the easiest zero-cost saving available and one of the most overlooked. HMPPS charges different rates depending on the time of day — or more precisely, the day of the week. The weekend rate for calling a mobile is 3.60p per minute, compared to 5.50p per minute on weekdays. That is a reduction of approximately 35% for the same call made a few hours later.

The definition of "weekend" in the HMPPS tariff is worth knowing precisely. HMPPS defines weekend as midday Friday through to midnight Sunday. This means that a call made on Friday afternoon at 1pm is already being charged at the weekend rate, not the weekday rate. For families who have any flexibility over when calls happen, this is an easy way to reduce costs without changing anything else.

If your loved one's prison has in-cell phones, which most modern and refurbished establishments now do, they have the flexibility to call at any time within their permitted hours, meaning the timing of calls is genuinely something they can plan around. Prisons with communal-only phones are more limited, as calls are restricted to association periods, but where flexibility exists, using it is free money.

The weekend saving is smaller than the virtual landline saving, but they compound. A family using both a Prison Call virtual landline and calling primarily at weekends is paying 2.20p per minute instead of 5.50p on a weekday mobile call, a saving of almost 60%.

The HMPPS weekend rate kicks in from midday Friday. If your loved one has flexibility to call in the afternoon, Friday calls after 12pm are charged at the lower weekend rate of 3.60p per minute (or 2.20p per minute to a virtual landline).

Replace With a Cheaper Alternative

Phone calls are the most immediate and personal form of contact, but they are the most expensive per minute. Using a mix of communication methods reduces the total call time needed while maintaining strong contact, which means credit goes further and longer calls happen when they are most needed.

Email a Prisoner
The Email a Prisoner service at emailaprisoner.com lets you send messages that are printed and delivered to the cell, usually the next working day. Costs around 30 to 40 pence per message. That is less than the cost of three minutes on a mobile call. Many prisoners can also send typed replies through the same system. For sharing news from home, longer updates, or anything that takes up call time but does not specifically require a live conversation, Email a Prisoner is a cost-effective alternative.

Letters
A first-class stamp and an envelope is all it takes. There is no limit on how many letters you can send and no per-page cost. Letters give your loved one something physical to hold onto and re-read, which many families report is particularly valued during difficult periods. Using letters for longer updates and reserving calls for conversation keeps the balance of communication high while keeping the cost of calls lower.

Prison Voicemail
Prison Voicemail (prisonvoicemail.com) lets families leave recorded messages that prisoners can listen to on the in-cell phone system without using their outgoing call credit. If your loved one is running low on credit, this means they can still hear from you without the cost of a call. It also works as a backup for times when you miss a call and want to respond before the next one.

Video Calls
Video calls are available at most UK prisons through the Prison Video app at prisonvideo.gov.uk. They require the prisoner to book a slot from inside the prison and are subject to availability, but they offer face-to-face contact that phone calls cannot replicate. For children especially, seeing a parent makes a significant difference. Setting up video calls as a supplement to regular phone calls reduces the pressure on those calls to carry the full weight of the relationship.

National Prison Radio
National Prison Radio broadcasts 24 hours a day into cells across England and Wales. Families can submit song requests, written messages, and pre-recorded voice messages at no cost through nationalprisonradio.com. It is a small gesture but one that lets your loved one know they are being thought of between calls.

Avoid The Minimum Charge Trap

This is a detail most guides miss, but it has a real impact on how quickly credit runs down. Every call from a UK prison incurs a minimum charge of 10p regardless of how long the call lasts. A call that lasts 10 seconds and a call that lasts three minutes both cost a minimum of 10p before any per-minute charge kicks in.This means that very short calls — a quick check-in, a missed connection attempt, a call that drops — are disproportionately expensive on a per-minute basis. At the weekday landline rate of 2.48p per minute, the minimum charge is not reached until a call exceeds just over four minutes. At the weekday mobile rate of 5.50p per minute, it is not reached until just under two minutes. Any call shorter than these thresholds costs more per minute than the headline rate suggests.Practically, this means two things. First, where possible, your loved one is better off making fewer, longer calls than many short ones. A 20-minute call is considerably better value than four 5-minute calls. Second, if you miss a call, the prisoner has already used 10p of credit just from the attempt — so making sure your phone is available and nearby when a call is expected reduces wasted credit from failed connection attempts.

✓Keep your phone accessible at the times your loved one usually calls
✓Agree on a rough daily call time so neither party wastes credit on missed attempts
✓Aim for fewer, longer calls rather than frequent short check-ins
✓Use letters or email for quick updates that do not need a live conversation

Top Up Through The Correct Channel

How money reaches your loved one's phone credit matters more than many families realise. In most UK prisons, you cannot top up phone credit directly. Money is sent to the prisoner's private cash account, and the prisoner then allocates funds to phone credit through the weekly prison canteen ordering system. Understanding this flow helps you avoid delays, confusion, and wasted effort.The official and only widely accepted method for sending money to a prisoner in England and Wales is the GOV.UK service at gov.uk/send-prisoner-money. You pay by debit card (Mastercard, Visa, or Maestro), you need the prisoner's full name, date of birth, and prison number, and the service is completely free. Funds typically arrive within one to three working days. Bank transfers, postal orders, cheques, and cash by post are no longer accepted.

✓Always use gov.uk/send-prisoner-money — it is free and the funds are tracked
✓Double-check the prisoner's name, date of birth, and prison number before submitting — a mismatch triggers an automatic rejection and refund, which can take up to 10 days
✓Remember that money goes to private cash first, then the prisoner allocates it to their canteen order — phone credit arrives when the weekly canteen order is processed, not instantly
✓Do not send more than the weekly spending limit in one go — most prisons cap spending at around £20 per week regardless of the private cash balanceThe most important thing to understand about topping up is the relationship between credit and cost. Sending more money does not make calls cheaper — it just gives your loved one more credit to spend at the current rate.

The only way to make each pound of credit go further is to reduce the per-minute rate, which is what a virtual landline achieves. Doubling the call time available from the same amount of credit is a more effective use of your money than simply sending twice as much.

Prisoners in Scottish prisons receive 200 free call minutes per month through the Scottish Prison Service. After that allowance is used, calls cost 5p per minute for all UK numbers. If your loved one is in a Scottish prison, the priority is making use of the free allowance before worrying about additional cost reduction.

If you found this guide useful, these pages on the Prison Call site cover the topics in more detail. Understanding the full breakdown of how much prison calls cost gives you the complete picture of the HMPPS tariff and why the rates are what they are. If you want to see your specific saving in pounds and pence, the free savings calculator lets you enter your call frequency and length and shows you an exact monthly and annual figure. For a step-by-step guide to how to receive calls from prison including the PIN list process, that resource walks through the full setup from day one. And if you need to send money to someone in prison, that guide covers the GOV.UK process in detail including what to do if a payment is rejected.