The increased life expectancy and prevalence of non-communicable chronic diseases have serious health and economic consequences on the population. Among the useful tools for preventing osteoporosis, prebiotics are thought to be an effective, healthy and relatively cheap way of optimizing calcium absorption. The objective of this review was to summarize the present knowledge on the physiological effects of prebiotic carbohydrate consumption and its possible interference with calcium bioavailability. The possibility of using prebiotics to fight calcium deficiency was also assessed. The keywords calcium, prebiotics and probiotics were used to search the PubMed, Lilacs and SciELO databases for the most significant original studies on the subject published in the last 6 years.