Belgium's social internet tariff: is it really the cheapest?

Yes, if someone in your household receives an allowance from the public welfare centre, the federal disability service, the federal pensions service or a regional old-age benefit. The social internet offer then costs €19/month at Proximus. Which leaves the question nobody asks: at your address, is that actually the lowest price?

The social internet offer is a tariff plan framed by law, with its minimum content and maximum price set by regulation. It replaced Belgium's old social telecom tariff on 1 March 2024. Before that date the scheme took the form of a rebate of roughly €11.50 applied to any fixed telephony or internet bill. Since then it is no longer a discount: it is a complete offer, with its own speed, volume and capped price.

Who qualifies for the social internet tariff in Belgium?

Five categories open the entitlement, and they are read at household level rather than per person. It is enough for one occupant of the home to fall into one of them.

People receiving an allowance from the public welfare centre, known as the CPAS in French and the OCMW in Dutch. People receiving an allowance from the FPS Social Security, disabled persons directorate. Older people drawing the matching regional benefit, paid by AVIQ in Wallonia, Iriscare in Brussels, the German-speaking Community ministry in the east of the country and the Vlaamse Zorgkas in Flanders. Families receiving the supplementary child benefit for a child with a disability, through those same regional bodies. And people receiving an allowance from the Federal Pensions Service, including the income guarantee for the elderly.

The FPS Economy runs an online eligibility checker, and it has the final say. Two limits tend to surface at the worst moment: your legal residence must be in Belgium, and a household counts only one beneficiary. Two eligible people under one roof still means one social offer.

Self-employed people and companies are excluded. So are people living in a collective setting, care homes included, unless the contract is in their own name and for their exclusive use.

€19 for 30 Mbps and 150 GB, and nothing more

The content of the offer is written into law, not decided by the operator. Recorded on 27 August 2026 on the Proximus page for the offer, it reads as follows: 30 Mbps download at most, 4 Mbps upload, 150 GB of monthly volume, €19/month, plus a €29.50 installation fee that already includes the 50 % reduction the scheme provides. The version with television, over 80 channels and the operator's own app, comes to €40/month.

A word on the amounts, because Belgian sources do not agree. The legal ceiling is index-linked and now sits above the price actually charged: the regulator publishes €20/month for internet alone and €42/month for the combined formula, while Proximus bills €19 and €40. The ceiling, in other words, is not the price, and an operator is free to undercut it. Comparison site Selectra, updated on 27 August 2026, states "€19 per month for 150 Mbps", while CallMePower, part of the same group and under the same byline, wrote €20 for 30 Mbps and 150 GB two months earlier. The 150 Mbps figure appears nowhere in the legal text: the 150 GB volume has simply slipped into the speed column.

What happens beyond the 150 GB?

Your speed drops until the end of the month, unless you buy extra 20 GB blocks. For scale, 150 GB is roughly fifty hours of high-definition streaming for the whole household, closer to twenty if the television is running in 4K. Proximus says as much in its own terms: TV options eat a lot of volume, and the social offer is precisely the one that rations it. The €40 internet-plus-television version therefore consumes its own quota.

Does the social tariff beat the cheapest offer on the market?

Not everywhere, and this is the point the pages devoted to the subject never address. The social tariff is always compared with the standard catalogue of the three big operators, where it obviously wins. Compared with the bottom of the Belgian market, it loses.

The arithmetic is blunt. Over a full year the social offer costs €257.50 in year one and €228 thereafter. The DIGI 5G box, open to anyone, costs €84. Its entry fibre plan, recorded at €10/month, comes to €120 a year. Once the first year is behind you the gap reaches €144 a year in favour of the open market, for an advertised speed three times higher and no volume cap. A household that meets the social conditions and lives on a street served by DIGI is therefore better off not applying at all.

Against Scarlet the arbitrage flips: €19 versus €23, a €48 annual saving for the social offer, with a capped volume as the trade-off.

At your address, the answer changes

DIGI serves only a handful of municipalities in Brussels and Charleroi, and its rollout advances street by street. Everywhere else the arbitrage closes and the social offer goes back to being the floor price.

It is the same logic as for any fixed offer in Belgium: two neighbours separated by one street do not get the same catalogue, because cable, VDSL and fibre do not stop at the same façades. Check what reaches your home first, and only then the price. Our guide to fibre availability at your address sets out the operator-by-operator checks, and our comparison of the cheapest internet in Belgium tracks the bottom of the market.

Only three operators are required to offer it

Proximus, on its own copper and fibre networks, everywhere in the country. Telenet, on its own cable network in Flanders and Brussels. Orange, on the Walloon cable network taken over from VOO and still sold under both brands depending on the municipality.

Others may offer it, none has to, and none has stepped forward. The reason is straightforward: the obligation falls on operators that run their own fixed network.

What does a household lose by switching its bundle?

Here is where the real calculation sits, and it appears on no official page. The social offer is not a discount laid over your contract: it is a separate tariff plan that replaces the old one. Proximus states plainly that switching affects your internet connection, your wi-fi booster, its My e-Press service and the multi-mobile discount. In a four-SIM household that lost discount runs to tens of euros a year, and it can wipe out half the gain.

Five limits worth knowing before you apply:

• Mobile stays outside the scheme. Only fixed internet and bundles that include it are covered.
• One beneficiary per household, at a single address in Belgium.
• The old social tariff and the social offer cannot be combined, and moving from one to the other is final.
• Installation fees are still payable, merely halved.
• The 150 GB is not guaranteed usage: beyond it, the speed falls until the first day of the next month.

How to apply, and why so few people do

You apply through your operator, never directly to the regulator. The operator forwards the file, the FPS Economy verifies eligibility, and the tariff is then applied automatically on the next bill. At Proximus you have to walk into a store. The BIPT, Belgium's telecom regulator, answers procedural questions, and eligibility is re-checked every six months.

The figure that says everything about the scheme lies elsewhere. By late February 2025, RTBF counted close to 21,000 contracts signed since launch, against an eligible population of around 500,000 households. One year after the launch, roughly four eligible households in a hundred had claimed it. The old social tariff, with a less generous rebate, reached ten times as many.

If you fall into none of the categories, the ordinary route is renegotiation: our method for cutting your telecom bill sets out the six steps, and our internet ranking carries the prices recorded this month. Consumer organisation Test-Achats publishes its own regular survey of the bottom of the Belgian market.