VOIP with no monthly line rental and "pay as you go"?

Hi. A newbie enquiry, having not had a standalone VOIP service before.

Are there any VOIP services in the UK with no monthly line rental which operate on a "pay as you go" basis - just for each call made, without any kind of fixed cost call package? Or at least a very low monthly charge?

Currently, we are with Vodafone for home broadband (FTTP) via CityFibre. We ported in our landline number which we've had for over 30 years from our previous FTTC provider to Vodafone and we could simply plug our phone into the router. Vodafone do not charge any line rental or expect you to take out a monthly call package and calls are charged on a call by call basis. In practice, we rarely make an outgoing call, as the family all have unlimited minutes on our mobile plans, so it's just used for receiving incoming calls.

However, we are looking to move away from Vodafone as we near the end of our contract, as latency is pretty awful, as they route all our internet traffic from Reading to Manchester and back again. Looking around for alternatives, other providers either expect you to take out a monthly calls package, charge a line rental and many do not offer a landline at all, or want you to sign up to their own third party VOIP service, again with an ongoing monthy charge.

We are thinking about moving to Toob, who offer a competitive deal and come out well in reviews, including low latency but they do not provide any telephony. Is anyone aware of a third party VOIP we can sign up to and port our number in from Vodafone, who do not charge a line rental or require you to buy a monthly calls package, so we can carry on receiving incoming calls and keep our landline number "live"? Of course, no objection to paying a fee for porting the number in, or paying for calls out on a pay as you go basis.

Finally, regarding Toob, does anyone know if the router they provide has the necessary socket to plug in a landline phone (via a suitable adaptor of course)? Or would any additional hardware be required to use a third party VOIP service?

Edited by cazian2 (Sat 19-Jul-25 18:25:02)

You could try discountvoip.

I don't pay a line rental for my Sipgate accounts.

I do pay a small monthly charge for my A&A service.

I don't think there are any remaining totally free offerings for (what really amounts to) number rental, but the cheapest I have seen lately is aa.net which costs £1.20/month ongoing plus an additional one-off setup fee and a further one-off fee for number porting (if that's what you require). After that, incoming calls aren't chargeable and outgoings are payg. Sounds like a good match for your scenario.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

You could try discountvoip.

They are outgoing only

Minor correction, AA are £1.44 per month if you've ported in a number (it's treated as "bronze", regardless of how pretty it is)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Minor correction, AA are £1.44 per month if you've ported in a number (it's treated as "bronze", regardless of how pretty it is)

So we are. I went back through my invoices and saw they've had a few changes of mind on this as I have both a new number from AA, and a ported in number. In times gone by both were the lower price, then for a bit both were £1.44, now there is one of each.

This month they are billed as you confirmed.

A&A is as close to free inbound as you're going to get. I don't see how a company could host your number, keep up with Ofcom regulations and deliver inbound calls to you without collecting any revenue at all, unless they're cross-subsidising it from another area of their business.

If you are at the point where you want a 'landline' then presumably it's for something - emergency calls, you have it registered as a security contact with a bank etc. at which point you would probably benefit from having some sort of contract in place between you and the company providing that service.

I find a good combination is:
1. A&A for incoming calls only, having ported my landline number to them
2. FreeVoipDeal for outgoing calls only, with no monthly charge, and setting my caller id to any phone that I own, including the "landline". This company has a large number of associated identities, which offer similar rates.

The toob router does not have a phone socket. They supply a special edition Linksys which is excellent as is the performance of their connection via City Fibre. Had a brief interaction with their customer service which was very professional.

Thanks for all your replies. I wasn't expecting anything completely free, just something low cost for something that would be used very little.

jjgrahics, thanks for the feedback about the Toob router. As it does not have a socket to plug in an analogue phone, would you be able to use a ATA adaptor plugged into an ethernet socket on the router? How many ethernet sockets does it have?