What kind of number is this, and what does it cost to call?
Paste any international phone number below and we read its country and its band off the digits: landline, mobile, freephone or service number. You get the published per-minute price for that exact number before you dial, not a country average. No account needed.
Type or paste a number, with or without its country code.
Why does the country not tell you the price?
Because a country is not one rate. We publish a landline price and a mobile price in 200 countries, and in 45 of them one costs at least twice the other. Portugal is the extreme: 30 times between the two.
And the mobile is not reliably the dearer one. In 24 countries the landline costs more, Colombia, Angola and Netherlands among them. So a calculator that asks you to pick “mobile or landline” for a foreign number is asking you to guess, on a question where the intuition you would guess with is wrong in 24 places, and where being wrong costs you the gap below.
| Country | Landline | Mobile | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portugal | $0.05 | $1.49 | 30x |
| Germany | $0.07 | $0.99 | 14x |
| Algeria | $0.29 | $3.99 | 14x |
| Martinique | $0.09 | $0.79 | 9x |
| Spain | $0.07 | $0.59 | 8x |
| Argentina | $0.12 | $0.99 | 8x |
| France | $0.07 | $0.49 | 7x |
| Estonia | $0.22 | $1.49 | 7x |
Per minute in USD from the caller ID we present. Every figure here is read from the same rate table the checker above and the keypad both use, so this table cannot disagree with what you are charged.
What this checker does not tell you
Who owns the number. This is not a reverse directory. It will not name a person, a company or a network, and it will not tell you whether a call you missed was spam. If that is what you came for, nothing here will help and we would rather say so than keep you reading.
Whether the number is in service. A price means we can route a call to that range, not that somebody is on the other end. You are only ever charged for a call that connects, so a number that rings out or fails costs nothing.
What your own carrier would charge. The price shown is ours. Roaming and international direct dialling on a normal mobile plan are billed by your carrier under their own rates, which is the comparison the full rate card sets out.
Questions
- How do I find out what kind of phone number I have?
- Paste it into the checker on this page. The band is decided by the digits themselves, not by the country, so a number resolves to a landline, a mobile, a freephone or a service number without you being asked to pick. Portugal is the clearest case: a landline costs $0.05 a minute and a mobile $1.49, so the same country code covers two very different calls.
- Can you tell me who owns a phone number?
- No. This checks what a number is and what reaching it costs, not who it belongs to. It is not a reverse directory and it does not identify callers or flag spam, so if you are trying to find out who rang you, this is the wrong tool and we would rather say so than waste your time.
- Does calling a mobile always cost more than a landline?
- No, and that is the trap. We publish both prices in 200 countries. In 45 of them one band costs at least twice the other, but the mobile is not reliably the dearer one: in 24 countries the landline costs more. So guessing is not just risky, the intuition most people would guess with is wrong in 24 places, which is why we read the band off the digits instead of asking.
- Is the price the same no matter where I am calling from?
- Not always. Calls into Europe in particular are priced by the caller ID being presented as well as by the number being dialled, and the difference can be large. The figure the checker shows is the price from the caller ID we would actually present on your call, so it is the price you would be charged rather than a headline rate.
- Do I have to sign up to check a number?
- No. The checker is open to anyone and needs no account. You only sign in when you want to place the call, and the number you checked carries through to the keypad.