Lifeline Program 2026: What It Pays, Who Qualifies, Rules That End It

✓Last verified: 2026-09-23

Lifeline is the federal program, run by the FCC through the Universal Service Administrative Company, that pays a phone or internet company up to $9.25 a month so that a low-income household's service costs less, or nothing. It is the mechanism behind every free government phone. This page is the current rulebook: what the money is, what a carrier has to give you for it, how the National Verifier decides your application, the three rules that end the benefit, and the changes the FCC proposed in 2026 that have not yet happened.

What Lifeline pays, and to whom

The support amount is set in 47 CFR 54.403. A carrier receives $9.25 a month for each enrolled household. At an address on federally defined Tribal lands, which include reservations, Alaska Native regions and the former reservations that cover most of Oklahoma, it can claim up to $25 more, so USAC states the Tribal benefit as $34.25. A plan that offers voice only, with no broadband, gets $5.25. That lower figure was due to be phased out, but the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau paused the phase-out on July 1, 2026 (DA 26-651) until December 1, 2027.

You never handle the money. The carrier builds a plan around the subsidy and sells it to you at $0, or applies the discount as a line on a bill you already pay. That is also why the program is hard to compare across carriers: two companies receiving the identical $9.25 can offer 25 MB of data or 4.5 GB, depending on which support tier they claim and how much of their own margin they spend.

The program is funded and capped. In July 2026 the Bureau set the indexed budget for calendar year 2027 at $3,053,892,630 (DA 26-796), against $2,976,503,538 for 2026.

What the money has to buy: minimum service standards

A carrier cannot claim broadband support for a plan below the FCC's minimum service standards (47 CFR 54.408). The standards that take effect December 1, 2026 were published in DA 26-796, and the Bureau has frozen the broadband figures at their current level until December 1, 2027 rather than letting the annual formula raise them.

The practical reading of that table: a free plan that gives you 4.5 GB is a plan the carrier is claiming broadband support for. A free plan that gives you 25 MB, which several carriers still offer in states without a state subsidy, is not being supported as a broadband plan and the carrier is claiming the voice amount. Neither is a scam; they are different products built on different support tiers. Our carrier records record the published data figure for each one so that you can see which is which before you apply.

Who qualifies

Two doors, and you need only one. The first is income at or below 135% of the federal poverty guidelines for your household size. The second is that someone in the household is enrolled in one of these programs:

• SNAP / Food Stamps (EBT)
• Medicaid
• SSI (Supplemental Security Income)
• Federal Public Housing Assistance
• Veterans Pension or Survivors Benefit
• Tribal programs (Tribal TANF, FDPIR, Head Start, BIA General Assistance)

Alaska and Hawaii use their own, higher poverty guidelines. Addresses on Tribal lands can also qualify through BIA General Assistance, Tribally administered TANF, income-qualified Head Start and FDPIR. Some states accept more programs for their own state discount than the federal list allows; California's list, for example, includes WIC, LIHEAP and school lunch, which the National Verifier does not recognize. The full tests, the documents that work, and the household rule are on Lifeline eligibility.

How an application is decided

In most states the decision belongs to USAC's National Verifier. It takes your name, address, date of birth and the last four digits of your Social Security number (or a Tribal ID), and runs them against the government databases it is connected to. Which databases exist varies by state: Medicaid, federal public housing and the Veterans Pension are checked automatically almost everywhere, SNAP in some states, and SSI, Tribal programs and income almost always need a document. A match approves you on the spot. No match means you upload proof, and the two reasons uploads fail are a benefit letter older than a year and a name that does not match the record. Once approved, your carrier enrolls you in the National Lifeline Accountability Database, NLAD, which is what stops a second carrier from enrolling the same household.

Three states work differently, and a fourth used to. Texas and Oregon opted out of the National Verifier and run their own eligibility systems; a Texas application goes through the state's Low Income Discount Administrator, which matches Medicaid and SNAP data USAC cannot reach. California ran its own federal verification until the FCC revoked that arrangement effective February 1, 2026; the federal $9.25 now goes through the National Verifier and the state's own $19 discount is a separate application. Addresses on Tribal lands can be checked against USAC's Tribal Lands Verification Tool, launched March 26, 2026. Each of these has its own guide below.

The three rules that end the benefit

1. One per household

One Lifeline benefit per household, where a household is people who live together and share income and expenses. Two adults at one address who keep separate finances can each qualify, but each has to sign USAC's household worksheet. Applying to two carriers at once does not get you two phones; it gets the second application rejected as a duplicate.

2. Use it every 30 days

On a plan that costs you nothing, 47 CFR 54.405(e)(3) requires the carrier to act after 30 consecutive days without use. It sends a notice that the service will end, waits 15 days, and de-enrolls you if you still have not used it. Use means a call, a text, a data session, answering a call from someone other than the carrier, or a purchase. One outgoing call a month satisfies it. Carriers are only reimbursed for subscribers who used the service in the last 30 days or cured their non-usage (54.407(c)(2)), so they enforce this.

3. Recertify every year

Once a year USAC, or the state administrator in Texas and Oregon, checks that you still qualify. It tries the databases first; most people are renewed without doing anything. If the databases cannot confirm you, you get a notice and 60 days to respond, and 54.405(e)(4) requires the carrier to de-enroll anyone who does not respond within five business days after the 60 days end. California federal subscribers approved before February 2026 are going through a one-time version of this check that began August 6, 2026.

A rule that is not on this list: there is no waiting period before switching carriers. The 60-day "port freeze" that older pages describe was eliminated by the FCC's 2017 Lifeline order. You can move your benefit to another carrier whenever you like; the new carrier asks for your consent because the transfer ends the benefit with the old one.

What the FCC proposed in February 2026

On February 18, 2026 the FCC adopted a notice of proposed rulemaking, FCC 26-8, that would change several of the rules above if finalized. It proposes to treat Lifeline as a federal public benefit limited to citizens and "qualified aliens" under the 1996 welfare law; asks whether Texas and Oregon should be moved onto the National Verifier; proposes revising the formula behind the mobile data standard; would extend the usage rules to all plans rather than only free ones; and adds verification and consent steps, including Social Security number collection for Tribal Link Up. Comments closed June 2, 2026. As of this page's date it remains a proposal: USAC's orders page lists no final rule, and the Bureau's July 2026 waiver order describes the proceeding as ongoing. Nothing on this page has changed because of it yet.

State programs that sit on top of Lifeline

Four states or situations change the numbers enough to need their own page.

Every other state uses the federal rules on this page as written. The carrier lineup does change at each state line, and the state guides rank the carriers we track in each one by their verified free tier.

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Sources

• 47 CFR 54.403, Lifeline support amount
• 47 CFR 54.405, non-usage and recertification de-enrollment
• 47 CFR 54.407, reimbursement and the usage requirement
• 47 CFR 54.409, consumer qualification
• FCC DA 26-796, 2027 budget and minimum service standards (Jul 29, 2026)
• FCC DA 26-651, waiver holding standards and voice support until Dec 1, 2027 (Jul 1, 2026)
• FCC 26-8 Lifeline NPRM, Federal Register (comment dates)
• FCC DA 25-965, California opt-out revocation
• USAC, recertification
• USAC, Lifeline orders (2017 order eliminating the port freeze)
• USAC, benefit transfers
• USAC, eligibility verification by state
• USAC, enhanced Tribal benefit
• Lifeline Support consumer FAQ

Gov-Grants.org is an independent guide, not a carrier and not a government agency. We never charge fees, and every fact above links to its source with the date we checked it. Program details change; confirm on the official site before applying.