social-tariffs
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Most people meet BT Home Essentials the way you meet anything BT-related. A standard bill creeps up. You go looking for something cheaper. Three pages in, you find a plan you could have been on the whole time, sitting quietly behind an eligibility check that nobody mentioned. That plan is Home Essentials, and on Universal Credit it can roughly halve what you pay.
It is the most widely available social tariff in the UK, running on the same Openreach lines as everyone else, so the wire under your pavement does not care that you are paying less. What it does have is a pricing structure that three different sources online quote three different ways, usually wrong. So we have pulled every tier apart, flagged the one trap that catches people, and checked the lot against Ofcom and BT's own page on 09 June 2026.
BT Home Essentials is not one plan. It is three, and the difference between them is the bit the cheaper guides skim over.
So when a comparison site tells you BT Home Essentials is "£15 a month for 36 Mbps", it is quoting the No Income plan and not saying so. Most claimants will not be on £15. If you have any earned income, even a few hours of work a week, you are looking at £20 for the same 36 Mbps speed or £23 for the faster line. The £15 figure is real. It is just not the one most people pay.
That is still cheap. BT's standard fibre runs well north of £30 a month once the introductory period ends, so £20 to £23 is a genuine cut. But you should walk in knowing which of the three numbers applies to you, because the gap between £15 and £23 is £96 a year. That is not a rounding error. That is a month of council tax.
The No Income plan is the one that catches people out, so it is worth being blunt about how it works.
To qualify for the £15 tier you need to be on Universal Credit and have no earned income in your latest assessment period. The moment you have earned income, you are off the £15 plan and onto the £20 one. Same speed. Same router. Same line. Five pounds a month more, because you did some work.
It is one of those rules that reads as sensible in a meeting and lands as absurd in a kitchen. A claimant who picks up a few shifts to bring money in pays more for the same broadband than one who does not. Nobody designed that to punish work. It is just what falls out when you means-test the means test. Worth knowing before you fill in the form expecting £15 and get quoted £20.
If you are not sure which Universal Credit situation you are in, our guide to social tariffs on Universal Credit walks through how the benefit interacts with these plans.
You qualify for Home Essentials if the main person on the account receives one of these:
The benefit recipient has to be the named account holder. You cannot qualify on a partner's benefit unless the contract is in their name. If you are on Pension Credit specifically, note it has to be the Guarantee Credit element, not Savings Credit on its own.
BT checks eligibility against the Department for Work and Pensions using your name, date of birth and National Insurance number, in an instant electronic check. No letters, no posting off proof. If you are a new customer BT also runs a credit check, and a low score can mean a security deposit. Existing BT customers switching across are not credit-checked.
Home Essentials is a 12-month contract, and you can cancel any time inside it without an early exit fee. That is BT's own term, not a regulator's nicety: "Cancel anytime without any early exit fees."
While you are on the tariff, your monthly price does not move. The annual March price rise that lands on standard BT contracts does not apply to Home Essentials. Out-of-bundle charges, the calls and extras outside your plan, still go up 5% each March, but the broadband line itself holds at what you agreed.
The interesting part is month 11. BT re-checks whether you still qualify. If you do, it rolls you onto another 12 months of the latest equivalent Home Essentials plan at that plan's current price. If you no longer qualify, it moves you to the equivalent standard package at its lowest available price, and from then on that price rises by £4 each 31 March like any other BT contract. So the protection is real, but it is tied to staying eligible. Stop qualifying and you rejoin the normal queue, where prices behave normally.
You apply directly on BT's social-tariff page. The DWP check happens electronically, so the application itself is short. New customers get service set up from scratch. Existing BT customers can switch across in their account.
Home Essentials is not BT-only, and that is the part most people miss. BT, EE and Plusnet all sit under the same company, so qualifying customers on any of the three can move onto it. BT and Plusnet customers apply through BT on 0800 800 150. EE customers call 0800 079 5122. That makes the tariff reachable for a large chunk of the country without changing networks.
This is where the marketing tends to overpromise, and where the live version of this very page used to.
Ofcom's rules say that if your provider offers a social tariff, you can move onto it at any time, free of charge, with no exit fee, even mid-contract. So if you are already a BT, EE or Plusnet customer, you can switch to Home Essentials today without paying to leave your current plan.
If you are with a different provider that does not offer a social tariff, it is not guaranteed free. Ofcom's wording is that your provider "might let you leave your current contract without paying a penalty fee." Might. It is encouraged, not required. So you may have to either wait out your contract or ask your current provider nicely. The fee-free guarantee only covers moving onto your own provider's social tariff, and plenty of guides quietly drop that "own provider" caveat. We are not going to.
If you want to check the standard BT range against this, our BT broadband page has the current non-social deals, and the am I overpaying tool puts your real monthly cost next to what is available at your address.
For most eligible households, yes. It is the most widely available social tariff in the country, it runs on the same Openreach fibre as BT's full-price plans, and the price genuinely holds for the contract. The 67 Mbps tier at £23 is a fair line for a household that streams and works from home.
The two things to get right before you apply: know which of the three tiers you actually qualify for, because £15 is the No Income plan and not the default, and remember the protection ends the moment you stop qualifying. If a cheaper headline matters more than BT's wide coverage, Virgin Media Essential starts at £12.50, and you can line every option up on the social tariffs hub. For coverage and price-stability together, BT is hard to beat.
We make money when you switch through us, the same as every comparison site in the UK. We rank on what a plan actually costs you, not on commission, and you can read how we rank if you want the workings.
Refused a broadband social tariff? The common reasons, the fix for each, a copy-paste complaint template, and the free appeal route if it comes to that.
