Yondr Pouch Cost in 2026: The Price Sheet, Unlocking Bases, and What Schools Paid

Yondr pouches cost roughly $25–$30 per student. Yondr doesn’t post prices on its website, but the price sheet it filed with a Texas purchasing cooperative is public: $30 per pouch at list, $27 for co-op members, with unlocking bases and accessories included in the first year. For a 500-student school that sheet comes to $15,525 in Year 1, or $31.05 per student, before shipping.

Want your own number? Use the 5-year pouch cost calculator (it also appears below this article), then read on for where each figure comes from.

Yondr’s Public Price Sheet, Line by Line

Yondr holds a contract with the Education Service Center Region 13 purchasing cooperative in Texas (contract 2026-01, Electronic Device Storage Systems, renewed through August 31, 2027). The price sheet Yondr filed prices a sample school of 500 students. Every school building gets Yondr’s Year-1 “Education Package,” which is why most of the hardware shows as included:

Three things to know before you use these numbers:

• • It is one co-op’s sample, not a national price list. Prices on other contracts, or in a direct quote, can differ.
• • It prices Year 1 only. The sheet lists no Year-2 fees, renewal terms or replacement policy. Ask Yondr for those in writing.
• • The lockbox is listed two ways. The table counts it as one of the included base options, but the product notes describe the lockbox as not included and available for purchase. Confirm which bases your package covers.

Texas districts can also buy Yondr through BuyBoard, another purchasing cooperative. BuyBoard’s Yondr pricing isn’t posted publicly, but Beaumont ISD’s 2025 purchase included $43,417.50 in BuyBoard discounts (KABB).

How Much Yondr Pouches Cost for a Whole School

The sheet only prices a 500-student building. If Yondr applied the same structure to a larger school, the Year-1 math would look like this. This is our arithmetic on Yondr’s published ratios, not a Yondr quote:

What Districts Actually Paid for Yondr Pouches

Public records and local reporting show what real districts spent. Figures are quoted as each source reported them; where a per-pouch price can be read straight off the source, we show it.

For scale: before the recent surge, districts in 41 states had spent $2.5 million on Yondr pouches over eight years, according to GovSpend data reported by NBC News in December 2023. Yondr declined to tell NBC the value of its public school contracts in 2025.

Can You Buy a Single Yondr Pouch?

Not from Yondr’s website. Yondr’s site lists no prices and routes schools to its team, and school programs are sold by quote or through purchasing co-ops like ESC Region 13, where the list price is $30 per pouch. When a student loses or breaks a pouch, the school usually charges a replacement fee:

• • Peoria Public Schools (IL): $30 to replace a destroyed or lost pouch (WCBU).
• • Abilene ISD (TX): one pouch free at the start of the year, $32 to replace a lost one (KTAB).
• • Lawton Public Schools (OK): families of students in grades 6–12 pay $35 for the pouch plus $25 for device insurance in 2026–27 (KOKH).

Unlocking Bases and Magnets: What They Cost

On the co-op sheet, each magnetic unlocking base lists at $100, in three styles: a round base that mounts on a table or wall, a handheld magnet for teachers and high-traffic areas, and a wall-mounted lockbox. Yondr allots one base per 60 pouches and includes them in the Year-1 package, so a 500-student school gets nine.

Yondr doesn’t sell its magnets separately on the sheet. Its maintenance guide warns that magnets Yondr didn’t issue can damage both the pouch’s lock and the phone inside it, and notes that the pouch itself contains no magnet; the lock is a spring mechanism. For comparison, CellockED, another pouch maker on the same co-op, lists round magnetic detachers at $45 each for up to 50, $35 for 51–100 and $30 above 100 (CellockED price list, Sept. 2, 2025).

Year 2 and the Costs That Aren’t on the Sheet

• • Replacement pouches. The sheet budgets 15% spares in Year 1 but doesn’t say what replacements cost after that. At the co-op price, every lost or broken pouch is $27 unless families pay the fee.
• • New students. Each incoming class needs pouches. Ask whether that is priced at $27, list, or something else.
• • Staff time. Someone runs the unlocking stations at dismissal, checks that phones go into pouches, and handles forgotten or broken ones. No public source puts a reliable number on this, so the calculator below lets you enter your own.
• • Support after Year 1. The Year-1 package includes a Partner Success Manager; on-site days are $2,250 each. Ask what support costs in later years.

The calculator below is a model, not data. Its starting assumptions are ours: 20% of pouches replaced each year, and 40 minutes a day of handling for four staff per 1,000 students at $26 an hour. With those defaults, a 1,000-student school comes to $116,400 over five years: $30,000 for pouches, $24,000 for replacements and $62,400 of staff time. Replace each input with your own figures; the replacement rate and staff time move the total the most.

Is There a Cheaper Alternative to Yondr?

It depends on what you count. A few honest comparisons, using only published prices:

• • Other pouches. CellockED’s signal-shielding pouch lists at $25 each for orders under 4,000 and falls to $18 above 50,000 on the same Texas co-op. You still need detachers and spares.
• • Phone-lock apps. There are no pouches to replace or bases to install, but you pay a subscription every year. One app maker, Opal, told the Los Angeles Times its school plans start at $20 per student per year.
• • LockedIn (our product). LockedIn is quoted per school or per district, based on enrollment and the number of campuses, so we don’t publish a per-student price to set against Yondr’s $27–$30. See how LockedIn pricing works. Qualifying Title I schools can apply for subsidized or fully covered access.
• • “Off and away” rules. Free to buy, but a 2026 USC survey found that more than half of teens at schools that restrict phones in class don’t follow the rules (details in our enforcement guide).

The fair comparison is a five-year total for your enrollment: get a written quote from each vendor, then model the pouch side in the cost calculator. For a feature-by-feature view, read Yondr vs. LockedIn, and for every pouch type and vendor price we could find, see our school phone pouch buyer’s guide.

Is Yondr Worth the Cost?

The best evidence so far is mixed. The largest U.S. study of pouches, an NBER working paper using Yondr’s own data on schools that adopted them, found that pouches substantially reduced phone use during the school day. It also found average effects on test scores close to zero, a rise in discipline incidents in the first year that faded, and a dip in student well-being that recovered and turned positive in later years.

Some schools have decided the cost isn’t worth it. Sutter Middle School in Folsom, California, dropped pouches after one year (NBC News), and Beaumont ISD in Texas stopped requiring them in 2026, a year after its $249,131 purchase (KABB). Others keep them: CBS News counts at least 2.5 million U.S. students using Yondr pouches.

Pouches fit best when a school wants phones physically out of reach, works with any phone, and has staff to run unlocking at dismissal. They fit less well when you need a record of who complied, or when replacements and decoy phones are already eating into the budget. The problems schools report are covered in Yondr pouch problems.

How to Pay for It

Looking for money to pay for a phone-free program, pouches or software? Our funding guide covers federal Title funds and state grant programs.

Sources

1. ESC Region 13, Yondr Product Pricing - Region 13 ESC (PDF) (Oct. 6, 2025)
2. ESC Region 13, Yondr, Inc. cooperative contract 2026-01, Electronic Device Storage Systems (renewed through Aug. 31, 2027)
3. ESC Region 13, CellockED Price List, New School Hero (PDF) (Sept. 2, 2025)
4. NBC News, Schools spend millions on pouches to keep phones out of students’ hands (Sept. 12, 2025)
5. CBS News, Schools across U.S. turn to a locked magnetic pouch as a cellphone ban solution. Here’s what to know (Sept. 6, 2025)
6. NBC News, Schools in 41 states have spent millions on pouches to lock up kids’ phones (Dec. 26, 2023)
7. New Haven Independent, District-Wide Yondr Pouches Approved (Jan. 10, 2025)
8. KABB / Fox San Antonio, Waste Watch: Beaumont ISD spent $250,000 to lock up student phones, now reversing course (July 27, 2026)
9. 25 News (WEEK), PPS takes step toward phone-free schools at cost of almost $250K (June 25, 2024)
10. WCBU Peoria Public Radio, PPS students’ phones are heading for locked pouches this school year (June 25, 2024)
11. KTAB / BigCountryHomepage, Abilene ISD approves $125,000 purchase of Yondr pouches for new phone policy
12. WECT, Columbus County school board approves implementing YONDR pouches & vape detector system (June 9, 2025)
13. OPB / Northwest Public Broadcasting, Walla Walla locks down cellphone use in its middle schools (Sept. 6, 2024)
14. KOKH / OKCFox, Lawton Public Schools returned $50,000 grant to implement cell phone ban (Aug. 14, 2026)
15. Yondr, Yondr Maintenance Guide (PDF, distributed by Fowlerville Community Schools)
16. Yondr, overyondr.com
17. National Bureau of Economic Research, The Effects of School Phone Bans: National Evidence from Lockable Pouches (Working Paper 35132, Allcott, Baron, Dee, Duckworth, Gentzkow and Jacob) (April 2026, revised Sept. 2026)
18. Los Angeles Times via Governing, How One L.A. School Is Enforcing Phone Limits Without Taking Phones Away (Jan. 2, 2026)

Researched and written by the LockedIn team (co-founders Brian Ohebshalom and Noah Fakheri). Sources checked October 12, 2026. We make LockedIn, a phone-lock app that competes with pouches; the prices above are Yondr’s and the districts’, not ours. Spot an error? Email hello@lockedinapp.co.