social-tariffs
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Most social tariffs work like a fire exit. Your income drops, you find the cheaper door, you walk through it. Sky Broadband Basics is not that door. It is a discount Sky offers its existing customers, and only its existing customers, which means the people most likely to need a cheaper bill, the ones shopping around because money is tight, are the exact people who cannot have it.
So before anything else, the one fact that decides whether this page is for you. You can only get Sky Broadband Basics if you already have Sky Broadband. You cannot sign up to Sky as a new customer to get it. If you are not with Sky today, skip to the last section, where the alternatives are.
Almost every other social tariff is open to switchers. Virgin Media, BT and Vodafone will all take a new customer on benefits and put them on the cheap tariff. Sky will not. Broadband Basics is a retention discount wearing a social-tariff badge. It rewards the loyal customer who has hit a hard month, and it quietly excludes everyone else.
That is not against the rules. Ofcom asks providers to offer social tariffs; it does not force them to open those tariffs to the whole market. Sky has read that sentence carefully and built the narrowest version of it that still counts. The result is a tariff that looks like help and is help, but only if you were already in the building.
Sky Broadband Basics is £20 a month for an average 36 Mbps download speed, on a 24-month broadband contract. The underlying product is Sky's Superfast line; where full fibre reaches your address it can be delivered on a faster connection, but 36 Mbps is the speed the tariff is sold and listed on, so that is the number to plan around.
Twenty pounds for 36 Mbps is fine. It is also not generous. Virgin Media's Essential is £12.50 a month and Community Fibre's London tariff matches it. At £20, Sky Broadband Basics sits at the top of the social-tariff price band for a middling speed. For most households 36 Mbps streams, video-calls and handles a couple of phones at once without drama, so the speed is not the problem. The price, against the rest of the market, is the thing to be clear-eyed about.
When the 24 months are up, the price reverts to the full standard cost. If you are still on a qualifying benefit, you have to apply again to keep the discount. There is no early exit fee, so if your circumstances change before the term ends you are not trapped.
You qualify if two things are true at once. You are already a Sky Broadband customer, and the main person on the account is claiming one of these benefits: Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Income Support, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance or income-based Employment and Support Allowance.
Note the word income-based on JSA and ESA. The contribution-based versions of the same benefits, paid for the same reason into the same bank account, do not count here. It is the kind of distinction that pays a comparison-site copywriter's salary and costs a claimant a cheaper bill. Sky checks your eligibility electronically with the Department for Work and Pensions using your National Insurance number, so you do not post off any letters.
The old version of this page said eligible customers also get a free Sky Mobile plan included. They do not. Sky Mobile is an optional add-on, not a freebie that lands in your basket.
To get the linked mobile offer you need to be taking Sky Broadband Basics and either already have, or add, a 3GB Sky Mobile data plan, and that mobile deal runs for 12 months. If a cheaper mobile plan suits you, you are under no obligation to take Sky's. Treat the broadband tariff as the thing you came for and the mobile add-on as a separate decision, because that is what it is.
If you are already a Sky Broadband customer, you apply through your Sky account or by calling Sky's social-tariff line. The DWP check happens automatically once you start the process. Apply on Sky's site →
If you are not a Sky customer, this tariff stays shut to you, and there is no clever workaround that gets round the existing-customer rule. Your two honest options are to look at a social tariff from a provider that takes new customers, or to join Sky on a standard package first and apply for Broadband Basics once you are a customer. The first route is almost always quicker and cheaper.
On switching: Ofcom guarantees you can move onto your own provider's social tariff at any time, fee-free, even mid-contract, and the price will not rise mid-contract. Moving from a different provider's contract is a softer promise. Ofcom says your current provider might let you leave without a penalty fee, not that it must. So if you are mid-contract elsewhere and eyeing a switch, check the exit cost before you commit, rather than assuming it is waived.
For a side-by-side of the rest, the social tariffs hub lays out every provider we cover, and our note on who qualifies for a social tariff on Universal Credit walks through the eligibility maze in more detail.
The verdict is short, because Sky Broadband Basics is a short story. If you are a Sky customer on a qualifying benefit, it is a solid, fee-free way to cut your bill, and you should take it. If you are not, do not waste an afternoon trying to get in. There is a cheaper, more open door a few feet to the left.
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.
