Skype and Google Voice alternatives for calling real numbers

Free, good quality, and the right answer whenever the person you are calling already uses the same app. They reach people, not phone numbers: both ends need the app, a smartphone and a data connection. If that describes who you are calling, stop here and use them.

Good for many domestic calls if you live in the US. Personal Google Voice is US-only, so it is not an option for most people living abroad.

Where Google Voice stops working

New Skype Credit, subscriptions and numbers are gone. Existing paid users can still use the Skype Dial Pad in Teams Free, but Teams Free does not sell paid calling to new users.

What replaced each part of Skype

Prepaid credit, a browser tab, and a call that arrives on the ordinary phone network so the far end needs no app, no account and no internet. This is what a bank's fraud line, an embassy, an airline or a phone menu requires, because none of them will install anything to take your call. It is what Airlophone is.

Which browsers can place a call, and what it costs

Aircall is built for teams that answer calls. If yours mostly places them, the seats are the expensive part and the queue is the part you never use.

OpenPhone is a shared number and a shared inbox, and the texting is the half that does not travel. International calling is metered on top of a licence per person.

Dialpad welds the AI to a seat you must buy before anyone dials, and puts it on a higher tier. Here it is two cents a minute on the account that uses it. The account costs nothing to hold, and Professional includes recording, transcripts, and on-demand AI call notes priced per minute rather than per person.

JustCall is a dialer for a sales floor. We do not have one, and that is a refusal rather than a gap: prepaid credit plus an auto-dialer is the shape telecom fraud takes.

Vonage sells two different things under one name. This page is about the seat-based phone system, and the disclosure is that we are a customer of the other one.