Find out the cost of calling any telephone number

Often you will see UK telephone numbers with codes such as 087xx, and a price for calling that number will be listed. How do you know that the price is actually correct?

I would have thought the BT would have a simple page where you can enter a telephone number into a box and be told instantly the correct cost of calling it. I’ve been unable to find such a page but I have (after a fair bit of searching) managed to find out how to get this information from BT’s web site. I wanted the information from BT’s website as it is more likely to be accurate and up to date than from any other site.

I was prompted to find out how to do this as I wanted to be sure of the cost of an access number for calling a Japanese mobile phone. The web page of the dialing company told me it would cost 7p / minute.

0871 call cost

Looking up the price seems to be a two stage process. You need to find the Tariff Guide on their Products and Services page in the Personal section of their site.

You need to click on the Residential and Business special number call prices PDF link under the Pricing information heading.

This document has a large list of the starting codes of all phone numbers. You need to search through this list until you find the one that matches the number you have. You then need to make a note of the ‘Type of call’ code. In my case it is ‘g13’.

telephone number lookup

Further down the document you will find another table that tells you the cost of calling each ‘Type of call’ number. By cross-referencing these two pieces of information I’ve confirmed that the number is correctly advertised as costing 7p / minute.

call cost table

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