How much does a business phone system cost in the UK? (2026 pricing guide)

The headline: per user, per month

UK cloud phone systems are sold per user per month. The realistic range in 2026 is roughly £10 to £30 per user. Under £10 usually means a stripped licence with call charges on top; over £30 usually means contact-centre features a small business will never open.

Our own plans start at £19 per user per month with UK landline and mobile calls included. That's the figure we'd want to be compared on, because inclusive calls are where cheap plans stop being cheap.

What a "user" actually means

A user is a person or an extension, not a phone number and not a simultaneous call. One user can have an app on their mobile, a desk phone and a laptop softphone at no extra cost on most services.

Watch for providers who charge per device or per number. Ask directly: if one person uses three devices, is that one licence or three?

Setup, porting and migration fees

• Setup or provisioning fee: commonly £0 to £150 per site
• Number porting: commonly £15 to £40 per number, more for large ranges
• Call flow configuration: sometimes free, sometimes billed as a day rate
• On-site install: only relevant if you're having physical handsets cabled in

We currently include number porting and setup rather than charging for them. If you're comparing quotes, get every one of those four lines written down — that's where the difference between two similar-looking prices usually lives.

Handsets: buy, rent or skip

A decent desk phone is £70 to £160 to buy outright. Renting one is typically £4 to £8 per month, which is worse value beyond about two years but keeps the upfront cost at zero.

Plenty of small businesses now buy none at all and use mobile and desktop apps. If your team is out on jobs or working from home, handsets are an expense with no return.

Contract length and what it's worth

Twelve, twenty-four and thirty-six month terms are all common. A longer term usually buys a lower monthly rate and free hardware. The trade-off is obvious: you're locked in with a provider you haven't worked with yet.

If you're moving off an old system for the first time, a shorter term is worth paying a couple of pounds a month for. Check the exit terms too — early termination is often the full remaining balance.

The extras that inflate a bill

• Call recording, often £2 to £5 per user per month
• Extra numbers, typically £1 to £3 each per month
• International calling bundles
• Integration with a CRM, sometimes a higher tier rather than an add-on
• Out-of-bundle call charges, especially to 03, 070 and non-geographic numbers

Worked examples

Sole trader, one number, calls to mobile: around £19 a month all in, no hardware, no setup fee under our current offer.

Five-person office keeping one main number and five direct dials, no handsets: around £59 a month on our Team plan. Add five desk phones and you're adding roughly £500 once or £30 a month rented.

Ten users across two sites with call recording: budget around £99 to £150 a month depending on recording and numbers.

How to compare quotes fairly

• Total monthly cost for your actual user count, not the headline per-user rate
• Are UK landline and mobile calls included, and up to what limit?
• One-off costs: setup, porting, configuration, hardware
• Contract length and early exit terms
• Who owns the numbers at the end

Our full plan breakdown is on the pricing page. If you send us your current bill we'll tell you plainly whether we can beat it — sometimes the honest answer is no.