No service sold to you can give someone in prison unlimited calls. The prison charges them by the minute, out of their own credit, and no subscription you buy changes that. When the word "unlimited" means anything in this market, it is describing the forwarding side, which is your side, not theirs.
That sounds like a quibble until you look at where the money leaves. Once you know who is charged for what, the word becomes easy to test.
Who is actually paying for the call?
In England and Wales, calls from a prison PIN phone are charged to the person making them, from credit they buy out of their prison earnings. Since 1 April 2025 the rates have been 5.5p a minute to a UK mobile on a weekday and 2.48p a minute to a UK landline, falling to 3.6p and 2.2p at the weekend. Those figures were released by the Ministry of Justice after a Freedom of Information request and published by Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners (Inside Time, 14 July 2025). Because that charge sits on their PIN account and not on any account you hold, no subscription you buy can make their calls unlimited. It can change only which of those two rates applies. A plan sold to a family covers the forwarding of a call once it has left the prison, and that is a different thing from the call itself.
Their earnings are why this matters. Minimum prison pay is £2.50 a week if someone is unemployed and £4.00 a week if they are employed, with governors setting the actual rates locally (PSO 4460, re-issue 27 January 2020). At the weekday rates above, our calculation is that £4.00 buys about 73 minutes to a mobile, or about 161 to a landline, in a week.
It helps to set the two sides out side by side.
| What it is | Who pays for it | What a subscription can change |
|---|---|---|
| The per-minute charge on the prison phone | The person in prison, from their own credit | Only which rate applies, landline instead of mobile |
| The monthly cost of a forwarding number | You | This is the thing you are buying |
| How long the phone is available each day | Nobody. The regime sets it | Nothing |
| Whether the number is added to their approved list | Nobody. The prison decides | Nothing |
Everything sold under the word "unlimited" lives in the second row.
What does a plan sold to families actually buy?
A forwarding plan buys a telephone number and the minutes that carry a call from it to your mobile. That is the whole of it. Ours are bundles of minutes, and the size of the bundle sits on the pricing page, because a figure printed here would be out of date before it was useful.
Here is the mechanism, in the open. The number is a real UK geographic landline number, 01 or 02, regulated by Ofcom, and it forwards to a UK mainland mobile. The person in prison has to submit it as a social contact through the prison's normal process. The prison decides, and it can refuse. Some do. Calls are still recorded and monitored in the usual way. What changes, if the number is added, is the rate they are charged. There is a fuller account in our explainer on what a virtual landline for prison calls actually is.
If you want that mechanism written out step by step before weighing up any plan, this is the page for it.
Why can't any plan make the calls longer?
Two things cap the length of a prison call, and no subscription reaches either of them.
The first is the regime. Time on the PIN phone "must not normally be less than two hours each day", and phone schedules follow the prison's working day and are applied centrally within each establishment, which is why the hours differ from prison to prison (PSI 49/2011, re-issued 27 August 2026, §6.10 and §6.11). A queue for the phone is not something a plan can shorten.
The second is whether the number goes on the list at all. Published HMPPS policy is explicit about numbers of this kind. The Interception, Monitoring and Security of Prisoner Communications Policy Framework, issued 11 August 2026, says at paragraph 7.9:
"Establishments must ensure that any restrictions to requests to add numbers are imposed only when necessary and proportionate in accordance with Prison Rule 34/YOI 9. Requests for the addition of 0800 numbers as social contacts, and numbers linked to call diversion and re-routing services, must be restricted under these grounds, as such numbers/platforms can facilitate diversion to certain contacts, circumventing restrictions that have been imposed and potentially causing serious harm."
That is the category this product falls into, and we say so (HMPPS, 11 August 2026). It is the prison's decision, it can go either way, and no provider can promise you the outcome. If yours has been refused, we cover why a prison blocks a number separately.
How far does £10 of credit go?
This arithmetic is in minutes rather than percentages, because minutes are what the person paying runs out of.
At the weekday rates in force since 1 April 2025 in England and Wales, our calculation is that £10 of credit buys about 403 minutes to a landline and about 181 to a mobile. Roughly twice as long, on the same money. The difference is 3.02p a minute on a weekday and 1.4p at the weekend, small enough to look trivial and large enough to matter over a month of daily calls.
That is why the word "unlimited" does so little work here. The constraint families meet is not a cap written into a plan. It is a few pounds a week of prison pay meeting a per-minute charge. Andy Slaughter, chair of the Justice Select Committee, observed that keeping in regular contact can still cost around £20 a week (Inside Time, 14 July 2025).
Whether the rate difference is worth a monthly cost depends entirely on how much you talk, and we have published the break-even arithmetic, including the point where it stops paying.
If you doubt the saving is real, that is the honest place to check it.
What to check before paying for anything sold as unlimited
Apply these to us as readily as to anyone else. If a provider will not answer them in writing, that is your answer.
- What exactly is unlimited? If the answer is the calls the person in prison makes, it is wrong. Those are charged to their credit by the prison. If the answer is forwarding minutes, ask how many.
- What happens when the minutes run out? Does the number stop forwarding, does it keep going at a rate, or does the account bill again. Get it from the terms, not an email.
- How do you cancel? With us, you cancel from your account and the number stays active to the end of the period already paid for.
- Where does it forward to? It must be a UK mainland mobile. Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey are rejected at sign-up.
- What is claimed about approval? Anyone telling you a number will be approved, or that a service is approved or compliant, has not read paragraph 7.9.
Frequently asked questions
These are the ones that come up most often around the word itself.
Can I buy unlimited calls for someone in prison?
No. In England and Wales the prison charges the person making the call by the minute, from credit on their own PIN account, and nothing you buy sits on that account. A family subscription can change the rate their calls are charged at, if the prison adds the number. It cannot make the calls themselves limitless.
What happens when a bundle of forwarding minutes runs out?
That depends on the provider, and it belongs in the terms you agree to rather than the advertising. Ask before you pay. A number that stops forwarding mid-month is one the person in prison will keep ringing without reaching you.
Are there any calls from prison that cost nothing?
A few, and they are narrow and set out in policy rather than sold by anyone. We have covered what "free prison calls" means and which publicly funded calls genuinely exist.
Do these rates apply in Scotland or Northern Ireland?
No. The figures on this page are for England and Wales. The Scottish Prison Service and Northern Ireland run separate contracts at different rates. We have not verified those, so we do not quote them.
If you want to see what a bundle of minutes costs before deciding anything, the figures are on one page.
The useful question was never whether a plan is unlimited, but which side of the call it is on.